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‘Honey badger’ admiral emerges as top contender for Navy chief

Adm. Daryl Caudle has spent the past two weeks meeting with senators.

By Jack Detsch, Joe Gould and Daniel Lippman

Adm. Daryl Caudle — a longtime admiral who has demanded accountability from America’s ailing shipbuilding industry — has emerged as the front-runner for the Navy’s top officer post, according to five people with knowledge of the process.

The likely selection of Caudle, a four-star admiral who heads the command that trains and equips the Navy’s sailors, comes just two months after President Donald Trump fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first female in that role. He terminated her in an abrupt purge of top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown.

A three-decade Navy officer who has commanded submarine fleets, Caudle could prove a fairly safe choice. Unlike Navy Secretary John Phelan, he has significant Pentagon experience. Democrats, who are angry about Franchetti’s sudden dismissal, may find it harder to oppose a well-regarded career officer.

“He’s a no-nonsense guy, you can’t bullshit him,” said one former Navy colleague, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “He goes and finds problems, he turns over the rock, and whatever’s underneath it, he chews it up, spits it out and comes back.”

Caudle, if selected, would inherit a fleet that has struggled with embarrassing and costly shipbuilding delays and which is now 14 times smaller than China’s. He would join as Phelan is examining what to cut in the service’s contracts and as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency investigates the Navy’s shipbuilding efforts.

The admiral traveled with Phelan in late March off the southeastern coast and to the Connecticut shipyard where the Virginia-class submarine is built. He also has spent the past two weeks visiting senators, two people familiar with the conversations said.

He would replace acting Navy chief of staff Adm. James Kilby, who has been on the job since Franchetti was dismissed.

U.S. Fleet Forces Command declined to comment. The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

POLITICO previously reported that a number of top military officials were in the running for the post. This included Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Paparo and his predecessor, retired Adm. John Aquilino; Vice Adm. Brad Skillman, who runs the Navy’s Office of Operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources; and retired Rear Adm. Keith Davids, who served as the director of the White House military office during the first Trump administration.

Paparo, who was a leading contender for Navy chief during the Biden administration, took himself out of consideration, according to a person close to the White House. He and Caudle interviewed for the Navy’s top military post in July 2023 but lost out to Franchetti.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command did not respond to a request for comment.

Caudle has been unusually blunt in calling out failures in the defense industrial base. “I am not forgiving of the fact they’re not delivering the ordnance we need,” Caudle said in 2023 when defense contractors were slow to restock the Navy’s depleted weapons arsenal. He has also criticized the service’s lack of public shipyards to maintain warships and said the Navy should be “embarrassed” that it can’t develop lasers to provide air defense aboard ships.

He joined the Navy more than three decades ago and commanded nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines before taking over the service’s submarine fleet in the Atlantic and serving as a vice director on the Joint Staff. He earned the call sign “honey badger” due to his tenacity and ability to solve hard problems, the former Navy colleague said. He has led the U.S. Fleet Forces Command since 2021.

Caudle has taken on an even more public profile in recent months, praising the Navy’s efforts to patrol U.S. territorial waters after the Trump administration ordered more military assets to the southern border.

He appeared in a Navy video in March that touted the deployment of guided missile destroyers to waters off the U.S. coast for the border mission. The longtime admiral referred to the location as the Gulf of America, which Trump renamed from the Gulf of Mexico in an executive order.

“Our Navy is answering the call to safeguard America’s southern border,” Caudle said after the USS Gravely left Norfolk, Virginia, in a campaign-style video that featured soaring music and stock footage of U.S. warships.

“He’s really astute and he’s aware of all of those problems,” the former Navy colleague said. “He’s spread his talent across the entire fleet.”

Caudle has had to deal with everything from the high rate of suicide aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the condition of barracks, barges and parking at the old shipyard.

“The solutions are out there, we’ve just got to have open and honest conversations about the problems,” Caudle said at the Sea Air Space conference this month. We need to “find ways to unite our collective energies behind solving those problems without a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 event being required to motivate us.”