Austin recommends Pacific leader as next Navy chief, passing over female admiral

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has recommended Adm. Samuel Paparo as the Navy’s next chief of naval operations, two administration officials said, tapping an operational leader focused on the Indo-Pacific and passing over Adm. Lisa Franchetti, widely regarded as the frontrunner for the job.

The Pentagon sent over Austin’s nomination suggestion to the White House days ago, the U.S. officials said, but President Joe Biden has yet to make a final decision. Both officials were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters before an announcement.

NBC News was first to report the development. The White House declined to comment. “This is a presidential decision,” said Navy spokesperson Rear Adm. Ryan Perry. “The United States Navy has several highly qualified senior leaders, and it would be inappropriate to speculate which leader the president will nominate to serve as the next chief of naval operations.”

If nominated and confirmed, Paparo would replace Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday, whose four-year term ends this fall. Paparo currently commands the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, where he has focused on confronting China’s growing naval power, a perch that’s given him a front-row seat to Washington’s most pressing problem.

“He’s been doing a lot of innovative thinking” with new concepts for how to employ U.S. naval power in the Pacific, and has instituted a series of experiments and exercises aimed at testing new ideas, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and retired Navy officer.

“He’s been much more creative than other commanders” who have led the Pacific fleet in recent years, Clark said, adding that Paparo’s potential nomination “reflects the desire to get serious” about the growing naval imbalance in the Pacific and how the U.S. can address it.

Biden had been expected to nominate Franchetti to lead the Navy, making her the first woman to serve as a member of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. As vice chief of naval operations, she’s the Navy’s No. 2 officer.

But the vice chief is rarely elevated to the chief of naval operations. Rather, the job often goes to a combatant commander with fresh operational experience.

Adm. John Aquilino, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently made a push for Austin to recommend Paparo over Franchetti due to his experience with the China threat, according to a former senior Defense Department official familiar with the discussions, who was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive personnel moves. A spokesperson for Indo-Pacific Command denied that Aquilino made such a recommendation.

As the service chief, Paparo would not be in the military's operational chain of command, but would be responsible for ensuring the naval forces are trained, equipped and prepared for combat.

Paparo, a career naval aviator, has also commanded in the Middle East and did a tour in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, as the commander of a Provincial Reconstruction Team.

His potential nomination comes as more than half of the members of the Joint Chiefs turn over this year. The White House has in recent weeks nominated Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown to be the next chair; Gen. Eric Smith to lead the Marine Corps; and Gen. Randy George to take over the Army. It must still nominate a new Air Force chief of staff to replace Brown.

Gilday, the current Navy chief, will turn over leadership of a service that has been heavily criticized by Congress and has multiple shipbuilding plans wrested from its control by the Pentagon, which was frustrated by the lack of growth in the fleet.

The Navy has been unable to increase the size of the 297-ship fleet since declaring a 355-ship goal in 2016, and will actually shrink over much of the rest of the decade before starting to climb in the 2030s, if current plans hold.

It will be a tough path forward however, with the new debt ceiling compromise struck between the White House and Congress capping defense spending for the next two years just as the Navy has some big bills coming due.

The service has just started building the first of a new class of ballistic missile submarines, which will carry the bulk of the nation’s nuclear strike capability and will eat up a considerable portion of the shipbuilding budget. Paparo would also have to grapple with what to do with the failed Littoral Combat Ship program, an experiment by the Navy in building small, light ships that was supposed to perform multiple missions.

Despite ordering 38 ships, the Navy has already started retiring the first batch of LCS hulls, some just four years old, a move that has infuriated many in Congress.

Paparo would also have to shepherd in several new classes of uncrewed ships, which the Navy has struggled to design and develop under Gilday’s tenure, as well as attempting to find more shipyards that can maintain and repair warships and get them out to the fleet more quickly, something Gilday and his predecessors have also grappled with varying degrees of success.