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John Phelan: “I still don't have an org chart of the Navy and what…”

Featuring: John Phelan, Secretary of the Navy | National

Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan

Published January 29, 2026 | Video Starts at 55:42

We need to have to get at it. I will tell you. So I have been on the job now 10 months, I think. Yeah, about 10 months. Sorry. 11 months. Sorry. And I still don't have an org chart of the Navy and what everybody does. I have been yelling about it for a while, so I've just slowly started to figure it out myself. And so we do a lot of things, again, that are just. (55:42–55:47)

CLAIM

Asserts that after 11 months, he lacks a complete organizational chart of the Navy.

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.

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John Phelan

“US GDP has surged 5.6%.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 19:30-19:34
“Between fiscal year 20 and 24, the prior administration consistently underfunded Navy shipbuilding, requesting a cumulative $127 billion.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 26:21-26:33
“Congress recognized the shortfall and enacted $142 billion, a $15 billion gap that would have represented ships not built and capabilities…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 26:32-26:44
“In fiscal year 21, the administration requested a 19.9 billion, a 16% cut from the previous year.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 26:45-26:54
“The President has significantly increased the defense budget top line to 1.5 trillion.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 27:48-27:55
“When I first reviewed the Don's unmanned programs, there were over 200 unmanned system efforts previously dispersed across six program…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 31:38-31:51
“The US Navy announced the $100 million prize challenge for Platform Agnostic Command and Control autonomy.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 39:09-39:17
“The fact is, I can't, and no one can tell you what it costs to run the United States Navy.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 47:48-47:55
“The Marine Corps attack drone team in Quantico got a drone working in 14 months, which should have taken one week.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 50:52-51:03
“If you put VLS tubes, that's an extra $600 million. That's an extra nine months to do it.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 1:01:53-1:01:59
“American companies are bringing their production lines back home.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 19:16-19:21
“Our manufacturing sector is surging forward with unprecedented momentum, unveiling multibillion dollar investments to onshore production.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 19:20-19:30
“The latest job report yesterday showed the largest increase in more than a year.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 19:34-19:39
“Even the beleaguered manufacturing industry added jobs for the first time since November of 2024.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 19:38-19:46
“The Golden Fleet is America's shipbuilding renaissance.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 20:41-20:45
“Restoring American industrial power, integrating unmanned and AI enabled systems and partnering with the private sector to deliver…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 20:44-20:57
“Congress had to add $3.4 billion just to keep critical programs afloat.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 26:58-27:03
“President Trump has correctly identified this as unacceptable.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 27:03-27:08
“The One Big Beautiful bill Act provides $29.2 billion for U.S. navy shipbuilding program and other efforts to bolster U.S. shipbuilding…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 27:09-27:21
“Fiscal year 26 appropriations that includes 27.2 billion for 19 vessels and 2.6 billion in maritime industrial based supplier capacity…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 27:22-27:38
“This is a cumulative $59 billion since President Trump took Office almost double the annual spend of the Biden administration.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 27:37-27:47
“Unmanned systems are not a side project of the Golden Fleet. They are a core element in the foundation of the maritime industrial base…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 29:36-29:46
“The Ukraine war has revealed a fundamental the cumbersome nature of how we buy and build weapons.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 30:19-30:27
“RAS allows us to harness the ingenuity of a much broader industrial base and to do it faster than traditional acquisition pathways ever…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 32:46-32:57
“Medium unmanned service vessels are becoming the strategic lay down trucks of the fleet.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 33:48-33:54
“Today, there is no policy decision classifying them as combatants. They are designated as other combatants, which gives us the flexibility…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 34:02-34:17
“Platforms alone do not deliver advantage; integration does.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 35:27-35:32
“Ship OS is the connective tissue of the Golden Fleet.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 35:49-35:53
“AI gives us decision advantage in contested environments.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 36:19-36:24
“The Navy is deploying DEC, the Data Edge Collection Kit.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 37:10-37:15
“The government cannot deliver the Golden Fleet alone, fast enough or at scale.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 37:45-37:51
“Private sector partnership is not optional; it is foundational.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 37:51-37:55
“Large surface combatants, a requirement defined by the U.S. navy, are designed to deliver long range, high speed, sustained fires, robust…”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 39:58-40:13
“The Trump class battleship will serve as an unambiguous statement of American resolve.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 40:13-40:20
“Small surface combatants are affordable, producible and lethal at scale.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 41:38-41:45
“The Navy is rapidly adopting AI and digital capabilities to increase the lethality and survivability of the fleet.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 42:07-42:15
“There's no incentive to cut costs in the Navy.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 47:48-47:55
“Until we get an audit done, until we really look at numbers and how to understand things, that's a hard question to answer.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 47:59-48:07
“We've gotten way too fragmented. And I think that's just a growth in bureaucracy not having enough accountability.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 48:13-48:25
“We have underinvested in our infrastructure for 20, probably 30 years.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 52:32-52:39
“One of the piers is so degraded that the cranes can't sit on them and handle submarine Load or ship load.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 53:23-53:32
“The payback on fixing the other half of the pier is like within a year.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 53:48-53:53
“We have to be clearer about our requirements [for subsea drones].”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 57:21-57:26
“We get this budget, and you either spend it or lose it, and that leads to some of the inefficiency.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 57:46-57:52
“If you look at the 26 budget, we had 17 or 19 ships in there.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 58:24-58:29
“You should expect that's at least more than double [the number of ships] in the new budget.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 58:30-58:35
“There is a pretty big contingent of auxiliary and support ships [in the new budget].”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 58:36-58:42
“The President has correctly addressed [the need for upgrading the maritime industrial base] in the budget.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 59:04-59:04
“We are challenged in every program.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 1:00:26-1:00:29
“Why can't we get ships out? I went to Rota and those guys crank it out.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 1:00:59-1:01:05
“Labor looks at our backlog and our building very different than we do as C suite executives.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 1:03:06-1:03:13
“Those are the people we need to get to, and that's who we need to attract into industry and make them want to do these jobs.”
Morning Keynote: The Honorary John Phelan | Uploaded January 29, 2026 | 1:03:14-1:03:20