The Navy needs a leader. Now. It needs someone committed to fixing the unglamorous, boring issues preventing the service from accomplishing its core objectives. It needs someone with smart approaches and a firm grasp on how the Navy can rapidly adopt game-changing technology. Most importantly, it needs someone deeply invested in the Navy’s long-term health.That’s why President Donald Trump needs to hurry up and nominate acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao for the permanent job. That a Democrat like me, who served Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro under former President Joe Biden, is saying as much should tell Trump all he needs to know about the sheer scale and urgency of the problems facing the Navy. It should also tell him that, despite Democratic misgivings, Cao is the sort of serious leader the Navy needs.Make no mistake, our Navy is treading water, and the sharks are circling. Virtually every shipbuilding project in the last quarter century has been over budget and behind schedule. Our ship maintenance backlog stretches over 20 years. Our defense industrial base is “crumbling,” and the Navy’s process for onboarding new technology, with some hopeful exceptions, is glacial. Our pacing threat, China, on the other hand, now boasts more warships than us and a defense industrial base that dwarfs ours. We are rapidly losing our ability to deter or, if necessary, defeat China at sea.