Ryan D. McCarthy

McCarthy graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history from the Virginia Military Institute. He has a Master of Business Administration degree from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.[3]

A former United States Army Ranger, he served in the 75th Ranger Regiment during the United States invasion of Afghanistan.[3]

Early in his career, McCarthy worked at The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. He became a professional staff member on the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs. McCarthy later served as a special assistant to former United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, where he was "the right hand of the Defense secretary with front-office access."[3]

McCarthy joined Lockheed Martin in 2011, where he worked on programs including the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. He most recently served as the vice president of the sustainment program for the F-35 program.[4]

In June 2017, President Donald Trump nominated him to become the Under Secretary of the Army.[5] He was confirmed as Under Secretary of the Army by the United States Senate on August 1, 2017, by voice vote.[6][7]

While Under Secretary, he served as acting Secretary of the Army twice. The first was from August 3 to November 20, 2017. The second was from June 24 to July 15, 2019, while Secretary of the Army Mark Esper was acting as Secretary of Defense.[6][7]

The President nominated McCarthy to become the Secretary of the Army on June 21, 2019.[8] He was confirmed on September 26, 2019 and was sworn in on September 30, 2019 as Secretary of the Army.[9]

In 2020, amid the George Floyd protests, McCarthy gave the order to deploy helicopters in response to the protests. The helicopters, which included Black Hawks and a Lakota with a Red Cross emblem, engaged in dangerous threatening maneuvers against protesters in Washington, D.C.[10]

• Biography at Defense.gov
• Appearances on C-SPAN

Media related to Ryan D. McCarthy at Wikimedia Commons