Warships Caked In Rust Prompting Late Night Trump Texts To Navy Secretary Nominee

President Donald Trump, through his pick to be the next Secretary of the Navy, has thrust long-running criticisms of what is commonly called “running rust” on American warships back into the mainstream limelight. Navy Secretary nominee John Phelan told Senators yesterday that he gets late-night text messages from Trump complaining about the issue. Unaddressed rust and corrosion on Navy ships has downstream effects on maintenance and readiness, as well as less quantifiable impacts from how the service presents itself publicly at home and abroad.

John Phelan, a long-time businessman and prominent Trump donor with no prior military experience, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about how he would run the Department of the Navy at a confirmation hearing yesterday. If confirmed as Secretary of the Navy, Phelan would also be the top civilian official in charge of the U.S. Marine Corps.

“I jokingly say President Trump has texted me numerous times very late at night, sometimes after one [o’clock] in the morning” about “rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me what am I doing about it,” Phelan said in response to a question from Angus King, an independent Senator from Maine. “I’m not confirmed yet and have not been able to do anything about it, but I will be very focused on it.”

“Please don’t give that to President Trump because I’ll get a text at like one in the morning,” Phelan also said after Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, showed a picture of the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Dewey coming into port in Singapore last week.

Senator Rick Scott asks Secretary of the Navy nominee John Phelan a question at yesterday’s confirmation hearing. A picture of the USS Dewey during a recent stopover in Singapore is seen to the left of Scott. Senate Armed Services Committee capture

The picture in question, seen again in the social media post below, was taken by a local ship spotter and has been circulating online since at least February 18. Dewey‘s outward appearance, which appears to be significantly worse looking on the port side than the starboard one, had already drawn new criticism around the ‘running rust’ issue from commentators on social media.

As already noted, the rusty appearance of Dewey and other Navy warships reflects real wear and tear that requires maintenance attention. Rust and corrosion, which are exacerbated by persistent exposure to salt water, can cause serious structural integrity and other problems, something the Navy does not deny.

“The harsh environment in which we operate degrades our ships, and our Sailors work hard to address corrosion along with all the maintenance and crew training required to sustain our Navy’s warfighting readiness,” a Navy spokesperson told TWZ back in 2021 in response to questions about ‘running rust’ on the highly advanced stealth destroyer USS Zumwalt.

Depending on the severity of the rust and corrosion, the remediation work required can be significant. This, in turn, can translate to more lengthy and costly maintenance periods and decreases in overall readiness.

This is also not a new issue for the Navy and previously came to particular public attention during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw American warships make fewer port visits to help shield crews from the virus. As a result, those ships had fewer opportunities to more seriously address rust and corrosion. This had also put new emphasis on longer-standing debates about Navy safety regulations, which impose limits on the kinds of maintenance work that crews can do, especially at sea, as well as past switches to less toxic paints and coatings that critics say wear more readily.

“NAVSEA [Naval Sea Systems Command] has worked successfully for decades to improve the corrosion-control performance of coatings while simultaneously reducing the adverse impact of coatings on the environment. In the 1990s, Navy tank coatings had a performance life of five to seven years, but emitted paint solvents when applied,” a spokesperson for the command told Naval News in 2023 in response to questions about how new paints and coatings, specifically, had factored into the ‘running rust’ issue. “NAVSEA worked with domestic and foreign commercial coating manufacturers to develop ultrahigh solids epoxy tank coatings that do not contain any paint solvent. Since these coatings were first applied in the early 2000s, many coated tanks have remained corrosion-free for 15 to 20 years. These coatings are required on all Navy ships and have contributed to extending the drydocking periodicities.”

All of this rolls into the Navy’s larger and very serious struggles with maintaining its ships and submarines, which have been well documented over the years, and is something TWZ has covered extensively.

“Our prior work found that the condition of the naval shipyards is poor, and their capital equipment is generally past its useful life. Their dry docks are unable to support newer ship classes, such as the Ford class aircraft carrier and some Virginia class attack submarines, and are vulnerable to flooding and seismic risks,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, said in a new report released just yesterday. “In addition, the shipyards’ inefficient layouts contribute to thousands of days of maintenance delay for aircraft carriers and submarines. Absent improvements, the shipyards will be unable to support about a third of the Navy’s planned maintenance availabilities for aircraft carriers and submarines through 2040.”

Shipyard capacity for maintenance, or a lack thereof, also reflects broader concerns about the ability of the U.S. shipbuilding industry to meet the Navy’s current and future needs. The Navy itself has previously briefed members of Congress on the extremely worrisome disparity in shipyard capacity between the United States and China, the latter being America’s current chief global competitor. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has previously assessed that Chinese shipbuilders are 200 percent more capable of producing warships and submarines than their counterparts in the United States. The Navy has been trying for years now to help facilitate an expansion of the U.S. industrial base. The service has also been looking to see where foreign firms in allied and partner nations may be able to help provide additional capacity.

A ONI briefing slide from circa 2023 showing the gross disparity between Chinese and U.S. shipbuilding capacity. ONI

All of this has been further compounded in recent years by often extended deployments for ships and submarines across the Navy’s currently shrinking overall force structure, as well as recruiting and other manpower challenges.

Last year, a bipartisan group of legislators introduced a broad-sweeping proposal to try to address many of these issues dubbed the Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security (SHIPS) for America Act, which you can read more about here. At the time of writing, the SHIPS for America Act has progressed little through the legislative process.

At yesterday’s hearing, Secretary of the Navy nominee Phelan was also grilled on these larger issues. He said he would bring a new “sense of urgency” to shipbuilding and shipyard related matters if confirmed.

The matter of ‘running rust’ on ships, specifically, has other important, if more subjective impacts. As highlighted by the USS Dewey recent stopover in Singapore, U.S. warships in foreign ports are very public symbols of American military prowess and general global influence. As such, the being well kept, especially externally, carries additional significance. There may also be negative impacts to general morale.

“It’s terrible. I think they should be ashamed,” Phelan said at the hearing yesterday when shown the picture of the Dewey. “Would you want to go on that ship?”

John Phelan at yesterday’s confirmation hearing. Senate Armed Services Committee capture

Trump already has his own history of opining on the general aesthetics of Navy warships.

“The ships that they were building, they looked terrible,” Trump said during a speech at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin at the tail end of his first term in 2020. “I said, ‘That’s a terrible-looking ship. Let’s make it beautiful. It’ll cost you the same, and maybe less.'”

“I said, ‘This is not a good-looking ship. Let’s change the design of it.’ And I got people in, and we looked at different designs,” Trump continued. “And as long as we’re going to do it — and look at what you’re doing, how beautiful it is.  They gave me a beautiful model that’s absolutely — it’s like a yacht with missiles on it.”

Trump was talking at that time about what is now known as the Constellation class frigate, which is derived from the Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM), or European Multi-Mission Frigate, developed jointly by France and Italy. The Navy has been roundly criticized since then for extensive changes to the Constellation design, which now shares relatively little with its Franco-Italian parent, leading to significant cost growth, delays, and technical issues, as you can read more about here.

A rendering of the future Constellation class frigate USS Lafayette. USN

Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who served during Trump’s first term, also wrote in his 2022 book A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times that the President was highly critical of the look of U.S. warships, especially the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. Esper said that Trump described unspecified Russian and Italian designs as looking “nicer, sleeker, like a real ship,” as well.

What new steps Phelan might take to address rust and corrosion on American warships, as well as the other shipyard-related issues facing the Navy, if confirmed as service’s next top civilian, remain to be seen. He is already facing pressure from President Trump to do more.

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