PLEDGE TO PROTECT
the military the “tools you need to prevent war.”
The president also toured the carrier and met with sailors and military leaders. He saluted the sailors as he arrived on the carrier.
During his trip to Newport News, Trump was joined aboard Air Force One by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
A draft budget plan released earlier this week by the White House would add $54 billion to the Pentagon’s projected budget, a 10 percent increase.
The U.S. currently spends more than a half-trillion dollars on defense, more than the next seven countries combined.
“To keep America safe, we must provide the men and women of the United States military with the tools they need to prevent war,” Trump said in his address to Congress on Tuesday night.
Trump, in his 2016 campaign, repeatedly pledged to rebuild what he called the nation’s “depleted” military and told supporters at Regent University in Virginia Beach in October that the region’s naval installations would be “right at the center of the action with the building of new ships.”
He often argued that the U.S. military is too small to accomplish its missions and pledged to put the Navy on track to increase its active-duty fleet to 350 ships, compared to the current Navy plan of growing from 272 ships to 308 sometime after 2020.
The PCU Gerald R. Ford CVN 78, located at Newport News Shipbuilding, will be the first of the Navy’s next generation of aircraft carriers and is expected to accommodate some 2,600 sailors.