In a prepared statement emailed to Navy Times, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer welcomed the White House on the nomination of Moran, calling him \u201ca stalwart partner and adviser.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richardson told Navy Times he was \u201cthrilled with this announcement\u201d because Moran “is an amazing leader and good friend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe has been central to the Navy adopting a fighting stance in this great power competition,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cAs I turn over and go ashore, I will rest easy knowing that, pending confirmation, Adm. Moran has the watch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moran released a terse message, saying only that he was “honored and deeply humbled by the nomination and look forward to working with Congress during the confirmation process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Widespread support<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Past and present military leaders lauded the president\u2019s decision and urged lawmakers to confirm a four-star they believe is the perfect fit to lead the sea service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen he shakes your hand and he says something to you, you look at him and immediately recognize that he\u2019s real and that he cares,\u201d said retired Command Master Chief Aaron Shipley Jr.<\/a>, who served as Moran\u2019s top enlisted adviser after he took command of the Norfolk-based Patrol and Reconnaissance Group<\/a> in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moran is slated to become only the fifth of 39 VCNOs to relieve the CNO as the Navy\u2019s top officer but supporters say he\u2019s uniquely qualified to do the job and they point to his role as chief of naval personnel before taking his current Pentagon post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Navy\u2019s top personnel officer between 2013 and 2016, Moran unleashed a stream of reforms designed to drag the Navy\u2019s human resources system into the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moran\u2019s ambitious \u201cSailor 2025\u201d program not only has sought to modernize the Navy\u2019s entire personnel system and training process but also change the culture of the sea service to embrace flexibility, reward merit and scrap broad purges of sailors like the despised Enlisted Retention Board<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He fought to hike career sea pay and got it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He wanted to preserve military fitness standards but ditch outdated body composition assessments and won those fights, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He tried to muscle the Navy bureaucracy to make it more welcoming to families, including growing the capacity of child development centers, lengthening the hours they\u2019re open, liberalizing paternity and adoption leave and making it easier for military spouses to work in the same community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As VCNO, Moran also emerged as a candid but insistent voice on Capitol Hill for sustained funding to shore up years of readiness woes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was Moran who delivered the stark warning to House Armed Services Committee members in early 2017 that a spending bill was soon to expire and the Navy would almost immediately run out of operations and maintenance funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He predicted that without a supplemental infusion of cash the Navy would begin to shutter air wings and defer maintenance for surface ships and submarines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lawmakers overwhelmingly passed hefty defense spending hikes<\/a>, including increased aircraft and shipbuilding procurement and more funding for maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A man from Walden<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n A native of the Hudson Valley hamlet of Walden, Moran wasn\u2019t drawn to nearby West Point. Instead, he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1981 and pinned on his golden wings as an aviator in 1982.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A P-3 Orion<\/a> pilot, his job was to hunt Soviet submarines. That crucial mission took him to Brunswick, Maine and then a long association with Florida \u2014 Jacksonville and nearby Naval Station Mayport, home to the famed flattop Forrestal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From mid-1989 to late 1990, he served on board it as a Carrier Strike Group Six staffer, rising from his role as the admiral\u2019s flag lieutenant to qualify as a Battle Group Tactical Watch Officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He got his initial immersion in personnel issues as a detailer at the Bureau of Naval Personnel between 1995 and 1998 but was chosen to command Patrol Squadron 46 and departed for Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He went on to command Hawaii-based Patrol Reconnaissance Wing 2 and Patrol and Reconnaissance Group in Virginia before becoming a Beltway fixture in 2010 \u2014 first in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations, then as Chief of Naval Personnel and VCNO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once confirmed, Moran, 60, will be the first of the nine aviators who became CNO who never rose through the ranks of carrier-based commands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Retired military leaders who served with Moran over the decades pointed Navy Times to a succession of posts where his competence and commitment telegraphed his ascension to higher rank and greater responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They included his stint as a junior captain serving as an executive assistant to Adm. Thomas Fargo at U.S. Pacific Command between 2002-2003 and then a similar task as a senior captain to two chiefs of naval operations nearly a decade later, the position he\u2019s preparing to fill now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShortly after I took over in May of 2002, I had to pick a new executive assistant,\u201d Fargo told Navy Times . \u201cI was so impressed with Bill that I moved him up into that slot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To Fargo, it was an unusual move. Typically, those slots are reserved for senior captains soon to pin on their first stars. Rarely do the go to \u201cfresh-caught\u201d captains who had yet to hold a major command, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was so impressive in terms of his ability to work with the senior officers on the staff as well as the action officers, folks external to the command, that I just made the decision to bring him into that job at an early point in his career,” Fargo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Selected for flag rank a dozen years before he retired, Fargo recalled a number of good executive assistants but said the most junior of them, Moran, \u201cwas at the very top.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That assessment was shared by retired Adm. William “Shortney\u201d Gortney<\/a>, who helmed both U.S. Fleet Forces Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command<\/a>, U.S. Northern Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A career aviator with 1,265 carrier-arrested landings, mostly in the A-7E Corsair II and the FA-18 Hornet attack jets, Gortney said he likes to chide Moran on his P-3 lineage, but he\u2019ll never disparage Moran\u2019s proven ability to tirelessly conquer any task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gortney marked Moran as a rising star while watching him serve as the executive assistant to CNOs Mike Mullen and Gary Roughead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe all saw his innate skills,\u201d Gortney said. \u201cHe has the ability to pick things up \u2014 fast \u2014 to listen and understand quicker than almost anyone and that\u2019s why he can be given any task and he\u2019ll proceed to knock it out of the park.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fargo and Gortney said it was that drive and intelligence that made him a two-star and sent him to become the Director of Air Warfare on the CNO\u2019s staff. By their reckoning, he was one of the best to ever hold the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI believe he was the first and only P-3 guy to be given that job, and again, he was given that job at a more junior level than that job has normally seen in the past,\u201d Fargo said. \u201cBut he has such a command of not only the aviation community, but the Navy at large that he was more than up to the task and, in fact, excelled in the job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His secret, they said, was Moran\u2019s ability to study and solve problems, coupled with communication and listening skills that connect him up and down a chain of command, quickly developing strong ties, and trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that\u2019s one of the reasons, because he engages and listens really well,\u201d Fargo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe goes out and figures things out first-hand. His willingness to go forward and spend time with the operators and work to understand their problems is how he\u2019s done business his whole career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ambassador to the Goat Locker<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those bonds weren\u2019t merely forged with senior officers but also enlisted sailors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Retired Command Master Chief Shipley told Navy Times that Moran has a deep understanding of the role of the chiefs mess. As a commissioned leader, Moran would tap into the authority of the Goat Locker in a self-effacing and genuine way, the same way he interacts with everyone, Shipley remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe first opportunity we had to really talk, once he took command I took him over to the chief\u2019s mess for lunch,\u201d Shipley said. \u201cWe talked about everything, but at one point, he came out and told me that \u2018I\u2019m going to need your help to learn how to be a flag officer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shipley didn\u2019t think that Moran really needed his help to become a flag but he understood the sort of counsel he was seeking. To the command master chief, it was \u201cmy first of many aha moments with him,\u201d episodes when he saw Moran\u2019s sincerely \u201chumble and modest kind of leadership style.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On all hands calls across the globe, Shipley watched Moran \u201clisten more than he talked.\u201d When a sailor asked a question Moran couldn\u2019t immediately answer, he\u2019d promise to find out \u201cand would always follow through, even if it took weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He often made the phone call or wrote the email himself instead of delegating the duty, Shipley remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat builds trust,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shipley recalled Moran donning a flight suit and visiting squadrons at odd hours, simply to talk to sailors to canvass their views. That irked a few commanding officers, Shipley said, until they began to see Moran\u2019s true motives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey learned that he wasn\u2019t coming to inspect them,\u201d Shipley said, only to hear their unvarnished thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moran also watched his senior enlisted adviser and noticed he was always hanging out at smoke pits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMoran knew I wasn\u2019t a smoker, asked me why I was always out there,\u201d Shipley recalled. \u201cI told him it\u2019s because you get a new crowd every 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Moran, Shipley wanted to hear raw opinions and complaints. So Moran started accompanying him to the pits or making solo trips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over time, Moran\u2019s respect for the chiefs mess became mutual. While serving with him, Shipley decided to make a pitch to then-Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Rick West to anoint his boss as an honorary master chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But before he went to MCPON, he took a poll of the Group\u2019s subordinate command master chiefs and they voted unanimously to honor Moran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Moran6.jpg.jpg\")
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