The photo taken on July 16, 2019 shows U.S. Secretary of Defense nominee Mark Esper attending a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States. The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Mark Esper as secretary of defense, ending a nearly seven-month period that the Pentagon has been without a permanent chief. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)
WASHINGTON, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted to confirm Mark Esper as secretary of defense, ending a nearly seven-month period that the Pentagon has been without a permanent chief.
Senators voted 90-8 in favor of the nomination of Esper, which was officially announced by the White House earlier this month.
He's expected to be sworn in at the White House later in the day.
The secretary of the U.S. Army, who had also briefly served as acting Pentagon chief, is succeeding James Mattis who resigned late last year over policy disagreements with President Donald Trump.
The White House announced in May this year that Trump intended to tap then acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan to lead the Pentagon but the decision was reversed a month later when the former Boeing executive said that he was withdrawing.
Esper, 55, was sworn in as Army secretary in November 2017 after serving for years as a senior executive at Raytheon Company, a major defense contractor.
An Army veteran deployed for the 1990-91 Gulf War, Esper also has extensive experience working on Capitol Hill.
