Richard Spencer served for two years as Secretary of the Navy and was promoted to Secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration. Then he was fired after getting crossways with President Donald Trump, whom he went on to publicly criticize as having “very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

Five years later, Spencer is the new chairman of Austal Ltd., the Australian shipbuilder whose United States subsidiary, Austal USA, is poised for a dramatic expansion as a shipbuilder for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. And a second Trump administration is taking shape, with news breaking almost daily about the President-elect’s plans for international affairs and oversight of the military.