Objective reviews of how prepared the U.S. military is to defend the nation reveal the deeply disturbing conclusion that Americas’ armed forces are insufficient to meet the dire threats facing the nation.
The result shouldn’t surprise anyone. After years of underfunding and numerous wars that drained the strength of American armed forces, the strength of the nation’s guardians has been severely drained. In addition to attrition by fighting in the Middle East and Afghanistan, significant underfunding during the Obama Administration, the Biden White Houses’ Inflation has taken its toll on the Pentagon, in the same way it has hit American families.
Numerically, the Army should have 50 brigade combat teams. It has only 31. The Navy should have 400 ships. It has about 290. The Air Force should have 1,200 fighter and ground attack aircraft. It has only 1,174. The Marine Corps should have 30 battalions. It has 27.
Putin’s confidence in rattling his nuclear saber is buoyed by his lead in nuclear armaments. It’s not just in numbers, (5,977 nuclear warheads, compared to Washington’s 5,428) it is also in the reality that his force is more modern. Moscow’s ally China has at least 350, although it is strongly suspected that it has far more.
Just one example, from Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ) of how lack of financial support is affecting one service: “Moderate Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a retired Navy commander whose Norfolk district includes the world’s largest naval base: “I have delayed putting out a statement about the Defense Budget because frankly it would have been mostly full of words you might expect from a Sailor, but here goes: It sucks,” Luria said in a scathing Twitter thread objecting to Biden’s plan to decommission two dozen warships. “HINT: If you want to grow the Navy, stop decommissioning more ships than you build,” she said, adding that the Navy “has no strategy. Stop saying you do, because if you did you would be able to explain how this Fleet size will allow us to defend Taiwan.”
The crisis is getting worse. The Army has fallen short of its recruitment needs by 25%. The Air Force has barely met its personnel needs, and the Navy is lacking officers. Observers note that the emphasis on woke politics by politicized Pentagon leaders and what many believe to be a White House disregard for traditional American values and the has discouraged many likely recruits.
Writing in Real Clear Defense, Darin Gaub notes that “The Commander in Chief of the armed forces leads an administration targeting its own forces with friendly fire… The typical patriotic American signing up wants to be the wolf but is trained to be a sheep today. Those conservative and often rural families where a large number of America’s servicemembers originate also provide the true warfighters in our military. They are the ones saying, “no thanks.” Why join an organization to be told that your patriotic American beliefs are the problem and spend the term of an enlistment as a target of the chain of command?”
A study by the authoritative Heritage Foundation found that “As currently postured, the U.S. military is at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests. It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were. This is the logical consequence of years of sustained use, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged.”
Photo: Members of the National Guard train at Fort Bliss, Texas, Sept. 13, 2022. (DoD)