Naval Weapons Station Crane

Floor Speech

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Mr. BANKS. Madam President, Indiana sits at the crossroads of America, but we also sit at the crossroads of more than just freight traffic and geography. Indiana is also the crossroads of our country's defense industrial base.

Indiana's defense and manufacturing industry is helping to make America stronger each and every single day. And now that one of our most important military assets, the Naval Weapons Station Crane, will be getting a one-star Reserve flag officer, Indiana's defense industry will be stronger than it has ever been before.

And I just wanted to come to the floor today, as we begin this week, and talk about the important role that Indiana is playing in leading America's defense industry.

Indiana has one of the highest concentrations of manufacturing jobs anywhere in the country, and we have a great business environment, which is why we have a major defense footprint. In my backyard, in Fort Wayne, IN, a number of companies are located there, like BAE Systems, L3Harris, Raytheon, Ultra Maritime, and General Dynamics. They all call Northeast Indiana, where I live, home, employing thousands of Hoosiers.

Indiana leads the Nation, as well, in steel production, and the steel mills in Burns Harbor forge the steel plates that make up our Navy's ships.

And Indiana is home, as well, to some of the brightest minds that are working in national security and national defense. We have top engineering schools that send their graduates to Crane Navy base. Schools likes Purdue, Notre Dame, Trine, and Rose-Hulman pump out a lot of engineers who get good-paying jobs at Crane and in a number of these defense companies.

At Purdue University, the Hypersonics and Applied Research Facility is running some of the most advanced wind tunnel tests anywhere in the world, and the results of those tests will help better our advanced missile technology.

Purdue also has a presence at Crane at the WestGate@Crane Technology Park, a 750-acre campus dedicated to the research and development of hypersonics, energetic materials, and micro-electronics.

At Notre Dame, the Hypersonic Systems Initiative is focused on researching and developing advanced hypersonic flight vehicles. Notre Dame is also part of the Naval Engineering Education Consortium, a Navy-funded research and workforce bridge that allows Notre Dame students and faculty to work on hypersonics projects that are taking place at Crane Naval Base.

But perhaps more important than all of that, our coveted asset is the Crane Naval Weapons Station. Crane is the third largest Navy base in the world. A lot of people don't even know it exists, and it is in Indiana. In less than a decade, Crane has made nearly 2,000 new hires and has had over $3 billion of economic impact on the State of Indiana. It has been incredible to watch Crane grow into a truly state-of-the-art defense industrial powerhouse.

Earlier this year, I took part in the groundbreaking ceremony of the Prometheus project at Crane. Prometheus will be a leader in the production of solid rocket motors, which are vital for critical munitions that are increasingly in short supply. And I was proud to fight hard here in Congress to secure $150 million in the One Big Beautiful Bill to help projects like Prometheus take off. Crane is doing some of the most advanced missile and hypersonic testing and development anywhere in the world. I also helped secure almost half a billion dollars for the MACH-TB Program, a joint Department of War effort to accelerate hypersonics testing, which is also taking place at Crane.

Crane is also, by the way, managing the MACH-XL Program, another Department of War initiative designed to accelerate the development, testing, and production of affordable high-speed hypersonic weapon systems. And Crane is also leading the development of the Navy's nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, also known as SLCM-N.

I could go on for a long time. I am very proud of what happens at Crane and what is going on in Indiana. I have only scratched the surface of the incredible defense projects taking place in my great State. But it is precisely because of how important our defense industrial industry is, especially at Crane, that I applaud Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao's decision to assign a one-star flag officer to Crane--a really important development for our State. This is the most significant expansion of Crane since its creation. It will bring game-changing new authorities and manpower to our State and further cements Indiana as the heart of America's hypersonic enterprise.

The one-star position will be responsible for integrating the Navy's nuclear sea-launched cruise missile and conventional prompt strike weapons systems into and onto surface ships and submarines. It will bring more manpower, more authority, and high-skilled jobs to Indiana while strengthening Crane's role in protecting our country. Our country will be stronger because of this move that Secretary Hegseth and Acting Secretary Hung Cao have made.

President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth are rebuilding our Nation's military to make it even more lethal than it already was, and part of making our military stronger is by revamping our defense industrial base. Look no further than the great State of Indiana, which is leading the charge and showing the rest of the country what a robust defense industrial base can look like.

Hoosiers will continue to work hard to make our country safer, and I look forward to welcoming this one-star Navy admiral to Crane when he arrives later this year.

I thank the Presiding Officer for her time. I love to brag about Indiana and our defense industrial base and all the great things happening in our State to contribute to our national defense and our national security.

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