United States Secretary of Defense
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The United States secretary of defense (SecDef), secondarily titled the secretary of war (SecWar), is the head of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), the executive department of the U . Armed Forces, and is a high-ranking member of the Cabinet of the United States. The secretary of defense's position of command and authority over the military is second only to that of the president of the United States, who is the commander-in-chief. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a defense minister in many other countries. The president appoints the secretary of defense with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is by custom a member of the Cabinet and by law a member of the National Security Council. Subject only to the orders of the president, the secretary of defense is in the chain of command and exercises command and control, for both operational and administrative purposes, over all DoD-administered service branches – the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force – as well as the Coast Guard when its command and control is transferred to the Department of Defense. Only the secretary of defense (or the president or Congress) can authorize the transfer of operational control of forces between the three military departments (Department of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force) and the eleven unified combatant commands. To ensure civilian control of the military, U . law provides that the secretary of defense cannot have served as an active-duty commissioned officer in the military in the preceding seven years except for generals and admirals, who cannot have served on active duty within the previous ten years. Congress can legislatively waive this restriction and has done so three times, for George C. Marshall Jr., James N. Mattis, and Lloyd J. Austin III. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the principal military adviser to the secretary of defense and the president; while the chairman may assist the secretary and president in their command functions, the chairman is not in the chain of command. Because the secretary of defense is vested with legal powers that exceed those of any commissioned officer, and is second only to the president in the military hierarchy, its incumbent has sometimes unofficially been referred to as "deputy commander-in-chief". The secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of defense, and the attorney general are generally regarded as the four most important (and are officially the four most senior and oldest) cabinet officials because of the size and importance of their respective departments. The current secretary of defense is Pete Hegseth, who was nominated by President Donald Trump and was confirmed by the Senate on 25 January 2025.