WASHINGTON The Navy secretary has spent more than a full year of his five-year tenure on overseas travel, racking up more than 930,000 miles on trips that cost taxpayers more than $4.7 million.

Ray Mabus, the former Mississippi governor, has taken at least 40 trips outside the U.S as of July 2014, meeting officials and visiting sailors and Marines in more than 100 countries, according to data obtained and compiled by The Associated Press travel he said is critical to his job in furthering U.S. and Navy interests abroad.

The inspector general investigated after receiving a complaint about his travel and cleared him of any wrongdoing, Mabus said, but his 373 days on the road contrast with those of Army Secretary John McHugh, who took fewer than half the trips at less than half the cost over the same time period.

The travel costs come amid deep budget cuts across the Defense Department, including widespread efforts to slash headquarters spending, downsize the Army and Marine Corps, and cut back on acquisition programs, training and other costs.

Those cuts, said Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, make it "even more important that senior leaders scrutinize their travel and make sure that the travel they're doing is essential."

Mabus is so proud of his travel he even has a mileage ticker on his Navy website, showing he has traveled 932,129 miles as of this week. About 100,000, or one-fifth, of sailors and Marines serve in foreign posts. And, he said, negotiating issues such as basing ships in Rota, Spain, is more effective face to face.

"You could do that in a phone call, I guess. You could send them a note," he said. "I don't think they take it nearly as seriously if you're not sitting across the table from them."

He noted that a female sailor on a stop in Hawaii complained to him that she felt she had no future as a nuclear officer because women couldn't serve on nuclear submarines. That conversation, said Mabus, led to his finalizing plans to allow women to serve on the subs.

"I think the return on investment for my travel has been phenomenal," Mabus told the AP.

McHugh oversees an Army of more than 508,000 active-duty soldiers, including more than 130,000 in foreign posts. He said he tries to go where large concentrations of soldiers are as well as countries where there are national security issues.

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Navy secretary racks up 930K miles in world travel