SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Well, good afternoon. How are we doing? Oh, man, it is great to see this beautiful group and to be here in Newport News and I want to thank all of you for what you do. That's why we're here.
That's why we're launching the Arsenal of Freedom Tour. It's about all of you. Some of you are wearing a uniform. Some of you are not. All of you are wearing hard hats and all of you are contributing to the warfighter.
The kind of urgency that we need is — you understand. The speed and the specificity of the beautiful machines that you create require an expertise and an investment that this administration is prepared to make and make fast.
It's always inspiring to stand amongst patriots who quite literally are building our nation's firepower. I had a chance this morning to swear in some new recruits. We have a historic recruiting surge at the Department of War. Record amounts of Americans want to join our uniform class. Last year was a record of multiple decades.
This year, we're already ahead of last year. Americans are fired up to serve. I also had a chance to go to our next aircraft carrier, the JFK. I don't know if you heard, but our aircraft carriers have been busy recently.
That one will be busy for decades to come, ensuring America is free and safe and powerful. And now here we are at Newport News shipyard, at the USS Oklahoma. And I'm here on behalf of the president, who has from his first day in office operated on a few core principles, at the baseline, pure, unadulterated common sense. First, that a leader's primary duty is to put America and Americans first. Second, that the surest and only real path to peace is through strength.
We're in the strength business. You are in the strength business. And third, that a nation that cannot build things a nation that can't create its own tools or its own defenses or its own future is a nation that is in managed decline. President Donald J. Trump looked at that managed decline, a decline that had been accepted by elites in both parties and he rejected it and we fundamentally reject it. And in doing so, he has unleashed a great American revival, a reawakening of our industrial spirit and our national confidence, a new golden age for America that you are all a part of building.
As his Secretary of War, my mission is to execute President Trump's vision within our armed forces and ignite that revival. The mission has three core components, three pillars upon which we are building our national security. It's actually quite simple. First, we're reviving the warrior ethos inside our fighting force, reminding our warriors and our uniformed military that their sole purpose is to be the most lethal fighting force on the planet.
So no more DEI, no more dudes in dresses, no more distractions. We're done with that shit. It's just standards, accountability, readiness, training, discipline and lethality, back to basics across the department, which is what our warriors really want.
Second, we must and we are rebuilding our military with the best equipment, training and leadership to ensure our warfighters are never in a fair fight. And you've seen historic investments over a trillion in the last budget, you'll see even more and it isn't just in platforms, it is in people. And third, we're reestablishing deterrence that's so absolute and so unquestioned that our enemies will not dare to test us.
You see, under the previous administration, whether it was the debacle of the withdrawal in Afghanistan that cost American lives and smeared our reputation, whether it was the war unleashed in Israel after October 7th by Hamas or the war in Ukraine that never would have started under President Trump, the world started wondering whether America really was strong and whether America really could lead.
Well, that's over now, just ask the Houthis and our ships that now sail freely. Imagine that, under the previous administration, when our ships got shot at, we just said, I guess we have to deal with it. All the way back to Thomas Jefferson, we said, you're not shooting at our ships and if you do, you may not see tomorrow.
Well, we did that with the Houthis and our ships now sail freely all around the world without being attacked and without being shot at. That's peace through strength. Same with Midnight Hammer, where our B-2s flew 37 hours down and back and were never seen by the Iranians, and dropped 14 precision munitions exactly where they were supposed to drop, obliterating Iran's nuclear capabilities, not to mention the Tomahawks that came off of a beautiful submarine, and delivered that decisive blow as well on one of the nuclear facilities.
Deterrence is back. Not to mention drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, carrying drugs headed to the United States to poison the American people. We're not playing the whole catch and release game anymore. These are foreign terrorist organizations, the al-Qaida of our hemisphere, and we will sink every drug boat headed in our direction, reestablishing deterrence.
Our southern border, which allowed an invasion of people we didn't know who they were under the previous administration, seven months of zero crossings at our border, a country that isn't sovereign is not a country, reestablishing deterrence. And then we saw three nights ago in downtown Caracas in Venezuela, as nearly 200 of our greatest Americans went downtown in Caracas. Seems those Russian air defenses didn't quite work so well, did they?
Downtown Caracas and grabbed an indicted individual wanted by American justice in support of law enforcement without a single American killed, reestablishing deterrence. Because of President Trump's leadership, the world is taking notice. They're noticing American power. They're noticing American strength.
They're noticing American clarity and leadership, and you are at the core of ensuring that happens. Everything we're doing is aimed at those goals and that's why just before Christmas at Mar-a-Lago, I had the privilege of joining President Trump and the Secretary of the Navy for a historic announcement, the creation of the Golden Fleet.
The Golden Fleet is the Navy's investment to revitalize America's maritime industrial base and rapidly build and sustain the fleet and fundamentally change how we do business and maintain military supremacy. This new battle fleet anchored by a new generation of Trump-class battleships is a declaration to the world that our command of the seas is and will remain non-negotiable.
That announcement, along with the incredible vital work being done right here, is a generational commitment to American sea power. This investment in both the visible might of battleships and the stealthy lethality of the submarines built in this very yard is a direct investment in peace through strength.
It's an investment in the future fight, ensuring that America has the tools to win any conflict, anywhere, any time. And as I mentioned, as was mentioned today marks the first stop on a month-long Arsenal of Freedom tour from the War Department. And on this tour, we'll be traveling from the shipyards of the coast to the factories of the heartland to see the work being done by the military and our partners in American manufacturing to usher in a new golden age of peace through strength, a revival of our industrial base, all American-made by the best Americans.
We know that our treasured freedoms are only as secure as our arsenal is strong and nothing is more important than securing that freedom. So I'm here to thank you, the men and women assembled here today and those you represent, who are designing and constructing our weapons of war that my children and yours, my grandchildren and yours, will rely upon to ensure the peace stability and security of the United States.
You are standing shoulder to shoulder with the warfighters of the War Department. Allow me to for a moment to speak plainly about the threats to that freedom. We find ourselves in a world of growing threats, a world the comfortable elites in Washington refused to acknowledge for far too long. For decades, a bipartisan consensus sold this country a dangerous fantasy.
They told us that history was over, that the rise of peer competitors was a relic of the past and that we could afford to trade out our industrial might, our factories, our jobs — foolishness, recklessness, not anymore, not under President Trump.
While we were policing the world nation building and deserts and debating pronouns at the Pentagon, our primary competitors, like the Chinese Communist Party, did something very different. They studied us, they learned from our triumphs and our mistakes and then they started to build as well.
And they've undertaken some of the most rapid, ambitious and breathtaking naval buildup since World War II. While we decommissioned ships, they launched many of them. While some of our shipyards did not meet the demands of our country, they expanded at a rapid pace, but not anymore. While we seek good relations with China and the rest of the world, we are also ready.
President Donald Trump understands that the American people are ready and they deserve a new golden age. We recognize that we are in a new era of great power competition, a generational struggle to maintain peace through strength and we will rise to meet that challenge. That is why we proudly call ourselves the Department of War, not the Department of Defense, not because we seek war, but because we truly understand that in order to ensure peace, you need to be prepared to deter war and if necessary, decisively win it.
Our purpose is not to be reactive but to be dominant, so that no enemy, any enemy will ever attempt to challenge the United States of America. Now this revival is not a matter of speeches or policy papers or think tanks and white papers in Washington DC, this is a matter of action. Across the entire War Department, we are developing new operational concepts. We're deploying cutting-edge technologies at a speed that's not been seen in generations.
And we're making historic multigenerational investments in the capabilities that we will need to dominate the future fight, at a level of urgency that must match the urgency of the moment. Most importantly, we're getting these capabilities in the hands of our warfighters faster than we ever have since World War II.
Under President Trump, we are systemically dismantling the bloated risk-averse and self-serving bureaucracy that has stifled innovation for decades. We're streamlining our requirements and acquisition process, cutting through red tape. This is not the same old reform that is always talked about in Washington, but instead, it's an overhaul.
It's revolutionary. It is a renaissance of American manufacturing. I've made it crystal clear to the entire defense industry, which I didn't come from and I didn't work for, so I don't give a damn who wins. I just want the best. We've been clear, the era of rewarding delays and cost overruns is over. The days of cost plus contracts for programs that are years behind schedule are finished.
We will no longer give longer, larger — we will, excuse me, give longer, larger, more predictable contracts to companies that deliver on time and on budget, companies that invest in their people, that invest in more capability and more capacity, not companies that invest in stock buybacks or CEO salaries or more dividends.
For those who can't adapt, who are too comfortable with the old slow ways of doing business, we wish them well in their other future endeavors, because we will find new partners who will adapt, who will invest, who will take care of their people, who will move at speed and at scale. We will reward that speed, that scale, that innovation and that performance. We're not rewarding process, paperwork or just the C-suite.
This submarine behind me and the many more that will follow it is an embodiment of our commitment to and investment in the security of the American people, but it also represents something more profound. It represents national confidence, confidence in American shipbuilding, confidence in our industrial discipline and confidence in the United States' Navy's ability to deliver the combat power needed in the future fight.
The work you do here every single day is the leading edge of that national restoration. You are proving to the world and more important to — more importantly to ourselves, that it can be done, that history is not over, that we build and that we invest.
The media should take a long look at this vessel, the USS Oklahoma. This Virginia-class submarine is a paragon of American engineering and fighting spirit. It is the apex predator of the undersea domain and the most advanced and lethal submarine ever built. As our president says, and he's right, we're 20 years ahead of anybody else in this domain.
It is a strategic advantage that creates dilemmas on a daily basis for our adversaries all around the globe. It's a silent hunter that can operate with stealth in the most contested, dangerous waters on the planet. It can gather intelligence that no satellite can ever hope to see. That's what reestablishing deterrence looks like, and it's how we keep the peace in a dangerous world.
Let there be no mistake, under President Trump, the United States is serious about the command of our seas and about keeping the world's vital shipping lanes open. A larger, more modern and more lethal fleet from the new battleships of the Golden Fleet to the advanced submarines you build right here, will provide that undeniable deterrent.
It will ensure that America's Navy moves freely and uncontested today, tomorrow and long into the future. But all of the strategies from the Pentagon, all the funding from Congress and all the designs from our brightest engineers are ultimately meaningless without the people on this floor. The welders, the electricians, the pipefitters, the steamfitters, the engineers, the planners, the skilled tradesmen of Huntington Ingalls, you are the engine of the arsenal of freedom, patriots, all of you.
Our warfighters cannot win without you. We are in this fight together shoulder to shoulder. That's why we launched the Arsenal of Freedom Tours to ensure the workers across America understand how committed we are to you and how reliant we are on your ability to deliver.
It's a beautiful codependence, actually. There is an unbreakable line tying the wrench in your hand to the safety and survival of a 22 year old American sailor patrolling the depths of the Pacific. The quality of your work, your unwavering commitment to excellence, your speed, your patriotism itself, you give our warriors the decisive edge.
Yours is a high calling. You are building a shield for our nation, bolt by bolt and weld after weld. In a culture that too often celebrates the shallow, the virtual and the superficial, you are engaged in something real, something tangible, something lasting. Your workmanship is and should be celebrated. There is an inherent dignity involved in crafting useful, powerful and lethal things.
I mean, there's a reason Jesus was a carpenter, not a politician, right? There's something about building, something about building in America. We build better, stronger, more capable and we will build more and faster, because we've done it before and we're going to do it again. And that's why this administration and this department is fighting for you, your way of life and the renaissance of manufacturing in this country.
We're holding your leadership accountable. We're holding your leadership feet to the fire. Their jobs are on the line to ensure that you can deliver what America needs, that your craftsmanship is unleashed, that you are taken care of, that you are paid properly, that your work is done safely, that we can move at speed and at scale.
Because when our workers succeed, our country succeeds and a nation that builds is a nation that wins, and our president is a builder, and that's why we will win. So to all of you here today from the newest apprentice to the most experienced master shipbuilder and to our sailors who work with them, again back to where I started, thank you.
I want you to know that whether you're wearing a uniform, coveralls or a suit, the work you're doing is important. It's patriotic and essential to our nation. It is a noble calling in a world that has forgotten what nobility looks like. You know, I used some words when I spoke after the raid a couple of days ago that feel outdated to some, but they fit perfect for our warfighters, guts, grit, gallantry and glory. May we revive those words. May we live them out. No matter how small the task or how big the task, simple or mundane the task or complex the task, every aspect of what had to come together to make that mission successful was an ingredient to the kind of guts, grit, gallantry and glory that our warriors embody and you contribute to that.
Be proud of what you do here. Be proud of the incredible vessels that you bring to life. They are the guarantees of freedom, the guardians of our peace, a message to the entire world that you should never ever bet against America. And know that we have your back as you move faster on time and on budget, investing in your plants and in your people.
We have a lot left to accomplish on behalf of the warfighters and we look forward to continuing to do it. It's the honor of a lifetime. I serve to serve. My job is to make your job easier. That's why our ear is to the ground everywhere we go, what can we do to make you more useful in how you operate, because together we will rebuild our military.
We will restore our industrial might and secure peace for generations to come. We will build the arsenal of freedom. God bless you, God bless our Navy and God bless our great Republic. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
