Federal Cabinet · Department of Defense

United States Secretaries of Defense

Every individual who has led the U.S. Department of Defense as United States Secretary of Defense — the current secretary, shown first with a “Currently serving” badge, followed by every former United States Secretary of Defense. Cabinet secretaries are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate; each profile below records the appointment type (Senate-confirmed, acting, recess, or designated), the full span of service, and the external authority records that back every fact. The full machine-readable roster is published as a versioned JSON dataset for downstream researchers and language models.

Currently serving

1

Former secretaries

30

Total

31

Department

U.S. Department of Defense