Hung Cao delivers remarks aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 7, 2026. (MCS2 Miguel Santiago/U.S. Navy)
Hung Cao is now serving as Acting Navy Secretary. He replaced John Phelan who left the Trump administration, the Defense Department said.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X, “On behalf of the Secretary of War and Deputy Secretary of War, we are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy. We wish him well in his future endeavors. Undersecretary Hung Cao will become Acting Secretary of the Navy.”
Cao, 55, fled Vietnam with his family when he was 4. Cao enlisted in the navy in 1989 before graduating from the US Naval Academy and earning a commission as a special operations officer.
He has a master’s degree in applied physics from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and completed fellowships at MIT and Harvard.
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