In a visit to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., on Monday, President Trump continued to promise troops new weapons and equipment but offered no specifics on when or how he plans to deliver.
Trump said MacDill, home to both United States Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command that oversees the wars in the Middle East, is “quite a place.”
He then ad-libbed a promise to buy new aircraft for the base, which is home to an air refueling wing flying KC-135 Stratotankers and a mobility wing flying the C-37A.
“We’re going to be loading it up with beautiful new planes and beautiful new equipment,” Trump said. “You have been lacking a little equipment. We are going to load it up. You’re going to get a lot of equipment, believe me.”
Trump did not forget to mention troops assigned to SOCOM and CENTCOM, who are responsible for overseeing the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition in Iraq and Syria and the longest-running U.S. war in Afghanistan. Trump listed several recent terror attacks to justify his executive order severely restricting immigration from seven majority-Muslim nations. He did not mention the war in Afghanistan.
“No enemy stands a chance against our Special Forces, not even a chance. They don’t have a chance,” Trump said. “And that’s the way we’re going to keep it and you’re going to be better off because you’re going to have the finest equipment known to man.”
Trump extended that promise to the larger military, saying he will invest in new technologies, increased training and more ships for the Navy.
“We will ensure that the men and women of our military have the tools and equipment, resources, training and supplies you need to get the job done,” Trump said. “We have been depleted. Our Navy is at a point almost as low as World War I. That’s a long time ago. … It’s not going to happen anymore, folks.”
The administration is planning to seek an amendment to the Pentagon’s fiscal 2017 budget authorization as an immediate infusion of cash to pay for near-term readiness for war. Overall, the president promised a “historic investment” in the U.S. armed forces to “show the entire world that America stands with those who stand in defense of freedom.”
While the U.S. rebuilds its military, the nation’s allies will be expected to do the same, Trump said. He said some alliances have “been very unfair to us,” and singled out NATO as an example of foreign nations taking advantage of U.S. military protection without investing sufficiently in their own capabilities.
“We strongly support NATO. We only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing. Many of them have not been even close and they have to do that.”
Trump vowed to rebuild the military without wasting taxpayer funding. By way of evidence, he again claimed to have saved $700 million by directly intervening in contract negotiations between the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin [LMT] over the most recent batch of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
“I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35,” Trump said.
He then thanked Lockheed, Boeing [BA] and “all of the companies that really have opened up … and cut their prices, okay? Because that’s what they did.”
“We’ve got that program and it’s going to be back in really great shape from really being very troubled,” he added.
It is widely believed by aerospace industry analysts, and the F-35 Joint Program Office told reporters to expect, that the price of the jets would drop significantly in the Lot 10 contract that was awarded late last week. Those savings were baked into the program and are more a result of economies of scale than Trump’s intervention.
CENTCOM Chief Army Gen. Joseph Votel thanked Trump for visiting MacDill, saying “I cannot overstate this.”
“This is a very big deal,” Votel said. “It is a real testament to how important you are to him. He holds our military in the highest regard and we are enormously grateful for the president’s and the first lady’s – and indeed the entire first family’s – strong support for our troops serving around the world and their families.”