White House Names Pick for Pentagon No. 2 | Military.com: President Donald Trump named a Boeing Co. executive Thursday to replace Deputy Secretary Bob Work, a holdover from the Obama administration, as the No. 2 civilian at the Pentagon after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
The White House, on Mattis' recommendation, announced that fixed-wing and rotorcraft specialist Patrick Shanahan, now the senior vice president for supply chain and operations at Boeing, would be nominated as the successor to Work, a retired Marine artillery colonel who has taken on some of the toughest management assignments at the Defense Department on budgets, modernization and health care.
At Boeing, Shanahan previously was senior vice president of airplane programs and oversaw the management for the 737, 747, 767, 777 and 787 programs, the White House said.
Before that, Shanahan was vice president and general manager of Boeing's Missile Defense Systems unit and vice president and general manager for Rotorcraft Systems in Philadelphia, where he was responsible for all U.S. Army Aviation, including the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, the CH-47 Chinook and the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter.
Shanahan's was one of six nominations -- five of them from Virginia -- to fill posts at the Pentagon sent over to the Senate, all with Mattis' recommendations, according to the Pentagon.
David Joel Trachtenberg of Virginia will was named to serve as principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, following the withdrawal of the nomination to that post of former Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson. Several Republican senators had signaled their opposition to Patterson's nomination.
Trachtenberg is the president and CEO of Shortwaver Consulting LLC, a national security consultancy, and formerly was a staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. He previously served as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security policy where he was responsible for issues relating to NATO, Europe, Russia and Eurasia, technology security, counter-proliferation, missile defense, nuclear forces, and arms control, the White House said.
