The U.S. Senate confirmed Stephen Feinberg as the deputy secretary of defense on March 14, moving him up to the number two position at the Pentagon behind Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Feinberg was confirmed in a 59–40 vote on Friday afternoon, more than two weeks after his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
As the co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, Feinberg comes to the Department of Defense with a background in private investment. Over the years, Cerberus has managed a variety of defense, aerospace, and private security business ventures.
During the confirmation process, Feinberg emphasized his interest in expanding the U.S. defense industry, including by tapping into major mass market manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors to help produce weapons systems for the military. He said that the current model for producing military vehicles and weapons has become too reliant on just a few defense industry manufacturers.
Feinberg said he would propose reforming the process for setting requirements for new weapons systems.
“I believe our program requirements need to be far less rigid, far less gold-plated, much easier to achieve, less costly, and much quicker to meet,” he wrote in his questionnaire. “We also need to stop changing the requirements once we set them. This is essential to be able to not only meet our program demands but also to meet them on time.”
He said the current models for acquiring new defense systems have led to shortfalls in shipbuilding, nuclear modernization, aircraft development, cyber defense, hypersonics, space defense, and drone countermeasures.
During his confirmation hearing, Feinberg took questions about the Defense Department’s repeated failures to pass a full financial audit. If confirmed, Feinberg said he would “go over every program, every cost, line-by-line, with an army of people” to find the financial problems within the department, to help it pass its first audit.
Encouraging his fellow senators to confirm Feinberg on Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he “is the man to help us rebuild the military, reform the way the Pentagon does business, and turn this unaudited Pentagon bureaucracy around.”
While the vote mostly passed along party lines, six Democrat senators joined the Republican majority in voting to confirm Feinberg.
During Feinberg’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) expressed concerns about how he would handle staffing cuts at the Department of Defense.
“We can’t endlessly expand the force,” Feinberg said during one exchange. “We have to sometimes make change.”
Blumenthal replied: “You know from all of your experience in the private sector that you just can’t take a meat axe, you have to use a scalpel in determining who is necessary and not,.”
At other points in his confirmation hearing, Democrats pressed Feinberg to characterize the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine as an invasion by the Russian side. Feinberg avoided describing the conflict as a Russian invasion, stating that he wanted to be cautious about speaking on the topic as President Donald Trump and members of his administration work to bring both sides to the negotiating table.
“You’re not privy to the fact of whether or not Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war that’s lasted for three years?” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) asked in one exchange.
“I’m not privy to the details of what’s going on in the negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, what the sensitivities are, what the president is trying to accomplish,” Feinberg replied. “So I'd be afraid to speak out of turn and undermine that.”
In recent days, the Trump administration has backed a proposal for a 30-day cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine in hopes of bridging the gap to a lasting peace agreement.
