The Department of the Navy

The Continental Navy was born on October 13, 1775, disbanded after the Revolution, and reborn when the Quasi-War with France made a fleet necessary again. Congress created the Department of the Navy on April 30, 1798, taking naval affairs away from the overstretched War Department. For a century and a half the Secretary of the Navy sat in the cabinet, and the department ran its own shipyards, academy, and diplomacy, since warships were often the only American presence in distant ports. The National Security Act of 1947 folded it into the defense establishment as one of three military departments.

Uniquely among the three, the Department of the Navy contains two armed services. The Navy operates the fleet: about 295 battle-force ships, including eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, roughly seventy submarines, and the ballistic-missile boats that carry most of the nation's deployed nuclear warheads. The Marine Corps, a separate service since 1798 with its own Commandant on the Joint Chiefs, provides the expeditionary force that deploys from Navy ships. Both report to the Secretary of the Navy, a civilian, and each has a uniformed chief: the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

About 330,000 sailors and 170,000 Marines serve on active duty, with roughly 100,000 more in the reserves and a civilian workforce of about 220,000 concentrated in the shipyards and research centers. The Naval Academy at Annapolis has trained officers since 1845. The department's budget runs to roughly 250 billion dollars a year, the largest of the three, driven by the cost of ships that take a decade to build and serve for forty years. In law and tradition the Coast Guard, though part of Homeland Security in peacetime, transfers to the Navy in wartime.

Shipbuilding is the department's central problem. The Navy has set goals of 355 ships and more, yet the fleet has hovered near 290 for years as costs rise, shipyards shrink, and programs slip. China's navy is now larger by hull count. Debates over the carrier's vulnerability, the pace of submarine construction, and the Marine Corps's decision to shed its tanks for island warfare run through every budget cycle. The department also saw unusual leadership turnover in 2025, including the dismissal of the Chief of Naval Operations.