A U.S. Republican lawmaker has unveiled a proposal to dramatically increase spending on the defense budget.

Senator Roger Wicker said that, over time, the annual U.S. defense budget should grow to 5% of U.S. GDP.

“This is consistent with historic defense spending during periods of great power rivalry and is critical to maintaining technical superiority over our adversaries in many theaters,” Roger Wicker recounted.

The announcement comes amid a situation in the U.S. Army that is “experiencing a shortage of state-of-the-art equipment, training and maintenance funding, and a huge infrastructure backlog.”

The United States spent about 3% of its GDP on defense in 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

With the current budget approaching $900 billion, adding another 2% would mean hundreds of billions of dollars more in the defense budget.

As the country faces a “window of serious short-term danger and the prospect of a prolonged military competition” with countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, the plans claim that the U.S. “immediately” needs a sharp increase in the defense budget.

Wicker stated that the plan, with increased defense budget spending, involves significant investment in increasing ammunition stocks and production of key defense technologies.

“This will allow the United States to fix weak defense infrastructure, gain a new generation of equipment and maintain American technological leadership,” the senator stated.

Such actions, according to him, should prevent potential conflicts and create a healthier defense-industrial base.

The plan states that the army should “learn the lessons of war in Ukraine,” create new air defense units, combat UAVs and study the capabilities of NASAMS, FrankenSAM systems, etc.

The plans also say that in Europe, the U.S. military should permanently deploy an armored brigade combat group in Poland and increase forces in Eastern Europe.