War Department in chaos over Hegseth dismissals

A White House official said that Trump and Hegseth agreed on the need for new leadership for the Navy, but a version of a good relationship between Trump and Phelan circulated in the US media, a relationship that was at the origin of the torpedoing. Hegseth allegedly felt bypassed.

The revitalisation of the US shipbuilding industry has been one of the Trump administration's main defence priorities.

Phelan was present at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in December, when the president unveiled his new Trump-class battleship and praised his Secretary of the Navy, calling him "one of the most successful businessmen in the country".

"He is probably cutting his salary more than anyone else," Trump said about Phelan, his campaign donor.

Phelan himself co-founded MSD Capital over twenty years ago to manage the family fortune of computer manufacturer Michael Dell. Later, Phelan founded Rugger Management, a private investment firm based in Palm Beach, Florida.

Phelan's relations with other senior Pentagon officials had been strained for months, and this undoubtedly influenced the forced resignation.

But the main problem seems to have been the relationship with the chief of the War Department, who last autumn fired Phelan's chief of staff, Jon Harrison, a sign that the two had not been getting along for some time. "Phelan did not realise that he was not the boss. His job is to carry out the orders he is given, not the ones he feels should be given."

"Hegseth," the source goes on to tell Axios, "has also had friction with Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, widely praised for the radical Army transformation initiative put in place, and a close friend of Vice President JD Vance.

The difference between Phelan and Driscoll is that Driscoll is achieving very good results with his transformation initiative.

In addition, he is close to Vance. Phelan is neither of those things,' said a source inside the Pentagon.

Hegseth remains in Trump's good graces because he enjoys a strong relationship with the president, with Vance, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and with General Dan Caine, chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "These are the four most important relationships I can have, and they are good ones," said a senior administration official. "But you never know here," he added.

The pace of redundancies imposed by Hegseth in the armed forces,' writes The Atlantic, 'is greater than that of any other Pentagon chief in the modern era, including those that occurred during the two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since Hegseth's arrival, the War Department abruptly removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the highest military officer), the commander of the US Navy and the number-two man in the Air Force, along with dozens of senior officers and military lawyers from all the armed forces.

The resignation and tensions within the Pentagon are only one of the problems involving Hegseth in recent months. The head of the War Department was also called into question when one of his brokers attempted a huge investment in major defence companies in the weeks before the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

Pete Hegseth has been in the crosshairs since his difficult Senate confirmation.

In mid-April, House Democrats filed a motion for impeachment against the head of the War Department, accusing him of serious crimes such as war crimes and abuse of power.

The measure has practically no chance of being passed by the current Congress, but it is a sign that the opposition party has compacted by identifying the veteran and former Fox news anchor as the new target.