# United States Navy The **United States Navy** is the maritime branch of the armed forces — the sea-control and power-projection service, operating the aircraft-carrier strike groups, submarines, surface fleet, and naval aviation that underwrite American global reach. Organized under the **Department of the Navy** (which also contains the [[United States Marine Corps]]) within the [[Department of Defense]], it is led administratively by the civilian Secretary of the Navy and professionally by the **Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)**, a four-star admiral who sits on the [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]]. Founded in 1775, it is one of the oldest American institutions. For the KB, the Navy is most relevant through the **2025 officer purge** and the politics of military leadership. ## The Franchetti firing (2025) On **February 21, 2025** — the same day the administration removed [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] Chairman CQ Brown — Secretary of Defense [[Pete Hegseth]] fired **Adm. Lisa Franchetti**, the Chief of Naval Operations. Franchetti was historically significant: the **first woman to serve as a service chief** and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Her name had reportedly appeared on a circulated list of officers the administration was considering removing for association with **diversity, equity, and inclusion** initiatives. She retired in April 2025 after more than 40 years of service. Her firing left the military's top four-star ranks once again filled entirely by men. Adm. [[Daryl Caudle]] was confirmed as the new CNO in a unanimous late-night Senate vote on **July 31, 2025**, reported the following morning — leaving the service's top uniformed post vacant for roughly half a year. In the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book of **August 14, 2026**, Caudle recorded that the Navy **cannot sustain its current level of support** for the [[Iran War 2026]], with barely a quarter of the destroyer fleet deployable; see [[Iran War 2026 Timeline]]. For the KB the episode matters less for naval strategy than as a marquee instance of the broader pattern: the removal of senior officers seen as insufficiently aligned, the rollback of DEI in the military, and the signal sent to the officer corps about the cost of independence. ## See Also - [[United States Marine Corps]] - [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] - [[Department of Defense]] - [[Pete Hegseth]] - [[Federal Agencies]] - [[Ocean Surveillance Systems]] — from SOSUS to autonomous undersea sensor networks - [[Law of the Sea]] — UNCLOS, exclusive economic zones, and the treaty the U.S. enforces but never ratified