A month after former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was sworn into his new role as Defense Secretary of the US, he has fired the Navy’s chief of naval operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti.
The 60-year old Admiral has had a long and distinguished career, spanning four decades, and became the first woman to hold the post of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). She was also the the first female member of the Joint Chiefs.
Last Friday, Defense Secretary Hegseth announced in a statement to reporters that he was dismissing a handful of top military officers, including Adm. Franchetti and General James C. Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff.
“Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” he said.
“The incumbents in these important roles, Admiral Lisa Franchetti and General James Slife, respectively, have had distinguished careers. We thank them for their service and dedication to our country,” he continued, adding that he was now “requesting nominations for the positions of Chief of Naval Operations and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff.”
Hegseth said in his statement that he would also replace top uniformed lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The announcement came shortly after President Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he was firing General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replacing him with retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, whom he described as “an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a “warfighter” with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
According to Defensescoop, Franchetti’s sacking had been foreseen. The four-star Admiral’s name was rumoured to be on a list of officers whom the Trump administration was considering to dismiss for their associations with DEI initiatives or for other reasons.
Admiral Franchetti’s career began in 1985, when she received her commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Northwestern University, at the age of 21. Just seven years prior, women were still prohibited from serving on ships at sea.
In 1989, she became a Surface Warfare Officer and has since commanded at every level, spending two decades out at sea, and rising to command the destroyer U.S.S. Ross, and later a destroyer squadron. She has also commanded two aircraft carrier strike groups, naval forces in Korea and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea.
Early in her Navy career, women were still not allowed to serve on warships. This prohibition ended in 1993, allowing officers like Admiral Franchetti to compete and work equally with their male counterparts. However, women were still not allowed on submarines — “because of concerns that the close quarters would make it difficult to manage men and women serving together.”
In 2010, the Pentagon finally lifted this ban.
When she became the first woman to have a permanent seat as a member of the Joint Chiefs in November 2023, the White House cited Franchetti’s “extensive operational and policy experience” as among the reasons then-US President Joseph Biden had chosen her.
Franchetti admitted in an interview last year that she initially intended to become a journalist, beginning her tertiary education at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She decided to take a different path after meeting the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps during her studies — “Free books, free college and a hundred dollars a month — my path changed forever,” she said.
During this interview, she said her achievement as the first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CNO was not something she thinks about a lot.
“But what I do think about is that this is the last time that anyone will have to be the first [woman] to be on the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” she told NBC. “So, you know, I hope that other folks will continue to be inspired by the opportunities I’ve had and continue to do all the things that they want to do in their lives … I’ve always thought if you can see it, you can be it.”
In another interview she gave during America’s Fleet Week last May, she was asked how she managed adversity during her career in the Navy.
She replied: “When I was younger, I saw this quote from Admiral Nimitz and it said ‘Learn all you can, do your best and don’t worry about what you can’t control’, and I think if you just focus on getting all the experiences, staying positive, everything else will fall into place.”
Franchetti’s dismissal comes after President Trump fired another four-star female admiral, Adm. Linda L. Fagan, less than a day after he was inaugurated in January. Fagan became the first female officer to lead a branch of the American armed forces when she took up the post in mid-2022.