U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and chair of the SASC Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, on Tuesday, received commitments from Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee, regarding Alaska and restoring military readiness during a SASC hearing on Hegseth’s nomination.
Specifically, Sen. Sullivan asked for and received commitments from Mr. Hegseth concerning the strategic importance of Alaska and the need to continue “to build up our military assets and infrastructure in Alaska to establish deterrence in the Arctic and in the Indo-Pacific.”
“If confirmed, Senator, it would be a pleasure to work alongside you and this entire committee to recognize the very real threat in the Indo-Pacific, the very real ways—even these past couple of weeks—that Russia has attempted to probe and push in and around Alaska, and also the very real strategic significance of Alaska vis-a-vis shipping lanes through the Arctic,” said Hegseth. “There are many, many ways in which Alaska is strategically significant. With a necessary shift toward INDOPACOM, Alaska, by necessity, will play an important role in that.”
Sen. Sullivan also received commitments from Mr. Hegseth to visit Alaska, to address the Navy’s shipbuilding crisis, to restore lethality and war-fighting as the core mission of the Department of Defense (DOD), and to root out woke policies that detract from that mission.
“My Secretary of the Navy, should I be confirmed, will not be focused on climate change in the Navy, just like the Secretary of the Air Force won’t be focused on LG-powered fighter jets, or the Secretary of the Army will not be focused on electric powered tanks,” said Hegseth. “We’re going to be focused on lethality, defeating our enemies.”