U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman pushed back on some of President Donald Trump’s proposed military policies, including the possibility of building ships overseas and renaming the Doris Miller, a future Ford-class aircraft carrier. The congressman, who is seeking his 11th term in office, touted increased defense spending he said could benefit Virginia.

The House of Representatives advanced its version of the Fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which would authorize $1.15 trillion in discretionary national defense funding. And, the Trump administration is pushing for an additional $350 million via the budget reconciliation process. That funding is necessary, Wittman said, to modernize the U.S. military, including building new ships.

“For the most part, over the last decade, we’ve just kind of marked time,” he said. “We’ve retired as many ships as we’ve built. The fleet hasn’t gotten any bigger.”

Last month, Trump ordered the Pentagon to explore building warships abroad and creating a fifth public shipyard on the Pacific Coast. Virginia Democrats and the Shipbuilders Council of America were critical of the decision, saying it could take away jobs and industrial capability as well as naval production investments that could otherwise go to Virginia.

Wittman did not immediately endorse Trump’s position but said the U.S. should expand the industrial capacity in the ship building and repair realm.

“The same skill sets that are used in ship repair are the ones we need in ship building, and because repair kind of goes in cycles — we have a lot of ships in the yard, and then those ships get repaired and they’re back out at sea — we don’t have as many ships in the yard,” he said. “Then these repair yards have to lay people off. Those are skill sets that we need in ship construction, so we have to do a better job of looking at how we fully utilize the workforce across both ship building and ship repair before we think about saying ‘let’s start building another shipyard, or let’s start building ships overseas.’”

Funding should also go toward expendable systems like drones, Wittman said. And, it has to go to military members and their families, he said.

“… You sustain the force by taking care of families and making sure that when we ask so much of our members of the military, that we give in return for what we ask from them.”

And we could be asking more of them if longer deployments become the norm, he said.

The USS Gerald R. Ford returned to Norfolk in May following 326 days at sea — a record for the longest post-Vietnam War carrier deployment. It operated in multiple regions, including the Caribbean, eastern Mediterranean and Red seas. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for nearly 300 days, most in a combat zone, and is expected back in San Diego within a month.

“We have to understand the challenges that places on families,” Wittman said. “I would rather the Navy be upfront and say, ‘well maybe our routine deployment is going to be a little bit longer.’”

In response to questions from ABC’s 8News about the war in Iran, Wittman previously said that the U.S. was not immediately in a direct conflict. But, he acknowledged the ongoing hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Gulf have been costly. Using additional weapons means more funding needed to restock — that’s where the $60 billion proposed in the reconciliation bill would go.

“And when you have longer deployments, that’s more wear and tear on ships,” he said. “So when they go to the yard for repair, they have to stay longer, and it costs more to repair them because there’s more to repair after they’ve been out there for a period of time.”

But, Wittman defended Trump’s continuation of the war, saying that the president wanted the conflict to be settled in ways that assure Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon.

Wittman also said the Doris Miller, named for a Black sailor who fought during the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently received the Navy Cross, should not be renamed. The aircraft carrier is the first to be named for a Black American. Trump is reportedly mulling renaming the future aircraft carrier after himself.

“Doris Miller is truly an American hero, and he served and sacrificed and deserves to be honored,” Wittman said. “I think that we ought to continue keeping CVN-81 named the Doris Miller, and, to me, you should name the CVN-82 the USS Yorktown.”

The CVN-82, a planned nuclear-powered supercarrier, is currently slated to be called the William J. Clinton.

“Ultimately the naming is up to the Secretary of the Navy, and I’ve also talked to Secretary (Hung) Cao about that, and I’ve gotten very favorable responses from both Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Cao,” Wittman said.

Wittman is running against Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor, a Democrat, for the 1st District seat.

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