By Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt
WASHINGTON — When it was first announced last spring, President Trump’s proposal for a new Space Force was resisted by the Pentagon and ridiculed by late-night comics who envisioned Luke Skywalker in the military. But it found a champion in Patrick M. Shanahan, the deputy secretary of defense who will soon become the Pentagon’s acting chief.
“We are not the Department of No,” Mr. Shanahan told Pentagon officials after Space Force was announced, arguing that it was a presidential priority and could help develop new military capabilities more quickly. “There is a vision, and it makes sense.”
Now, Mr. Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, has been thrust into the Pentagon’s top job at one of the department’s most tumultuous times in years. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who during his tenure pushed back on a number of White House requests, resigned last week in the wake of Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Mr. Mattis originally said he would step down at the end of February. But angered by the criticism in Mr. Mattis’s resignation letter, Mr. Trump announced over the weekend that he was shoving Mr. Mattis out early and elevating Mr. Shanahan — at least temporarily. One of Mr. Mattis’s final acts was to sign the order beginning the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, a Defense Department official said on Monday.
Mr. Shanahan finds himself in the job at least in part because his work on Space Force has demonstrated his willingness to translate Mr. Trump’s desires into policy. It has also made him well positioned to land the job permanently.
“You only have to ask Pat to do something once and it gets done,” said Jim Albaugh, a former top executive at Boeing.
Mr. Trump has written warmly about Mr. Shanahan’s experience as a Boeing executive, and he has fans in Congress. Other names being discussed by Republicans include former Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri; Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas; and Heather Wilson, the Air Force secretary who has been championed by members of Congress.
Ms. Wilson, a former member of Congress and an Air Force officer, was Mr. Shanahan’s chief opponent in the battle over Space Force. She has argued that creating a new bureaucracy risks slowing down space development — not speeding it up — just when the United States is facing new challenges from China.
The early reviews of Mr. Shanahan’s ability to bring his business expertise into the Pentagon are not uniform.
His supporters point to the Pentagon budgets he built to refocus the military on the threats of China and Russia.
But critics say he cut a bad deal with the White House and allowed the Office of Management and Budget to propose a steep cut in military spending. Only the intervention of congressional leaders has fended off those cuts, for now.
Mr. Shanahan’s background is unusual for a defense secretary. Only one other Pentagon deputy has ascended directly to defense secretary — William Perry in early 1994, after Les Aspin’s resignation. The other two deputies to later become secretary — Frank Carlucci in 1987 and Ashton B. Carter in 2015 — left the Defense Department between being the No. 2 civilian at the Pentagon and being nominated for the top job.
Mr. Shanahan arrived at the Pentagon promising to help the department run more like a business, a claim that caused eye rolls in a bureaucracy that has heard such promises before. Those promises, some officials said, reflected a dose of naïveté about how government worked.
A believer in highly precise Japanese manufacturing approaches, Mr. Shanahan quickly dug into the details of the technical side of the Pentagon as he went about remaking the budget under the direction of Mr. Mattis, according to current and former officials who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly.
Mr. Shanahan has tried to replicate at the Pentagon the leadership approach he perfected at Boeing, where he worked in both the defense business and commercial aviation.
At Boeing, Mr. Shanahan gained a reputation as someone who could turn around the business prospects of various divisions as well as solve technical problems such as those that troubled the 787 Dreamliner, one of the most advanced commercial aircraft and a program crucial to the company’s success.
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It was, his former colleagues say, a rare combination of someone who could fuse technical expertise with a broader vision.
“He is the brightest and smartest guy I worked with at Boeing,” said Carolyn Corvi, a former executive at the company. “He has the ability to see over the horizon and make what is there today into something different than it is.”
Former colleagues of Mr. Shanahan, an engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tell stories of him walking the factory floor and diving into technical details of design, manufacturing or supply chains to find better overall approaches to problems.
Inside the Pentagon, Mr. Shanahan has also gained a reputation for sweating the details.
He has been known to hold five-hour meetings, starting at 8 a.m., on Saturdays, specifically focused on F-35 strike fighter jets, according to one Defense Department official.
Because of his previous work at Boeing, Mr. Shanahan has recused himself for the duration of his tenure from questions involving the company, including performance reviews, budget decisions and other program decisions, according to Pentagon officials.
“If Mattis was Mr. Outside, focusing on policy issues and international alliances, Pat was Mr. Inside, the department’s chief operating officer,” said Dov Zakheim, a former top Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration, who has known Mr. Shanahan for a decade.
“He understood what his role was supposed to be — a manager,” Mr. Zakheim said. “He didn’t try to be what he wasn’t. He didn’t try to be Mr. Mattis’s alter ego.”
Some current and former Defense Department and military officials say Mr. Shanahan has spent little time wrestling with the thorny issues that consumed Mr. Mattis’s schedule and attention — a belligerent Russia, a resurgent China and tensions with Iran and North Korea.
Nor does he have any experience with the fight in Afghanistan and secretive counterterrorism missions in Syria — where Mr. Trump has ordered large American troop reductions or a complete withdrawal in the coming weeks and months.
But others close to Mr. Shanahan say that as Mr. Mattis was traveling, Mr. Shanahan would step into operational updates and decision making and worked closely with the Pentagon policy shop.
Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino, Mr. Shanahan’s spokesman, said the deputy secretary had worked closely with Mr. Mattis, engaged on military operations and led policy and operational discussions.
Defense Department officials who work with Mr. Shanahan say he intends to keep Mr. Mattis’s team in place. Mr. Shanahan is expected to rely more on Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who as a peer was at times deferential in strategic discussions to Mr. Mattis, one the most storied Marine generals of his generation.
Ana Mari Cauce, the president of University of Washington, worked with Mr. Shanahan when he served as chairman of its board of regents. She said his outsider perspective was helpful in questioning old practices, forcing people to look at problems in different ways.
“He was never embarrassed about asking questions when he didn’t know something,” she said. “And sometimes that led to deeper understanding.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff and John Ismay contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 25, 2018, on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: New Defense Secretary Supported Space Force And Will Back Trump. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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