Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., center, speaks Sept. 12, 2024, at a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing in Washington. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the committee chairman, is on the left. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., is on the right. (Madelyn Keech/Department of Defense)
WASHINGTON — Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi, a staunch ally of Ukraine and proponent of greater military spending, is set to become the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Wicker won reelection to the Senate on Tuesday night. With the Republican takeover of the upper chamber, he is in line next year to lead the panel that oversees the Defense Department and helps set defense policy.
A former Air Force officer, Wicker became the committee’s most senior Republican in 2023 following the retirement of former Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. The majority party member with the greatest seniority traditionally serves as chairman.
“I’ll become chairman, and it will just give me another opportunity, a more significant opportunity, to back our military,” Wicker told WDAM 7 news in Mississippi as he campaigned this weekend.
Wicker was the driving force behind a proposal to raise President Joe Biden’s 2025 defense budget request by $55 billion and successfully pushed the Senate Armed Services panel to agree to a $25 billion hike.
He also laid out a plan in the spring that called for a “generational investment” in the U.S. military, including boosting defense spending to 5% of the gross domestic product in the next five to seven years.
“We’re not where we need to be in our Navy and our Air Force, and we don’t compensate our men and women in uniform as we should,” Wicker said Tuesday night in an interview with Mississippi’s WAPT News. “That’s going to be an opportunity for me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.”
Under Wicker’s blueprint, the Navy’s fleet would grow to 357 ships by 2035, and the Air Force would buy at least 340 additional aircraft in five years. He also recommends more troops in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Chinese aggression.
Wicker is poised to take over the chairmanship from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who has led the panel since 2021. The triumph of Republicans in Tuesday’s election will give the United States the opportunity to “go back to [former President] Ronald Reagan’s concept of peace through strength,” Wicker told WAPT.
He said he would work across the aisle to build up the military “so we can stay out of war” and deter Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
“Peace through strength means that we tell this axis of aggressors, ‘We’re so powerful you won’t take us on,’ and so we have strength that leads to peace,” he told WAPT. “It keeps us out of war by having a strong military.”
Wicker is expected to continue his strong support for Ukraine even as members of his party increasingly bristle at U.S. commitments to the embattled country. Incoming President Donald Trump has described Ukraine as a burden and said he would quickly seek a negotiated end to the conflict.
But Wicker last month pressed Biden to surge shipments of weapons to Ukraine in his last months in office and lift restrictions on the use of U.S.-provided weapons deep inside Russian territory. He sharply criticized the pace of equipment deliveries.
“I am frustrated — and mystified — that your administration has accomplished so little in the last three months regarding the war in Ukraine,” Wicker wrote in a letter to Biden. “You seem poised to leave the next president a weak hand.”
