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The Budget Mistakes that Endanger America, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government continues its exposure of the defense budgeting errors that endanger the U.S. 

In his recommendations for the 2018—2022 budget periods, Senator McCain states:

“We are now at a tipping point…We now face, at once, a persistent war against terrorist enemies and a new era of great power competition. The wide margin for error that America once enjoyed is gone. This deterioration of America’s global position has accelerated in recent years, in part, because the Obama administration’s defense strategy was built on a series of flawed assumptions. It assumed the United States could pull back from the Middle East and contain the threat of violent Islamist extremism. It assumed that ‘strategic patience’ toward North Korea would improve conditions for negotiations and not exacerbate the threat. It assumed that a nuclear deal with Iran would moderate its regional ambitions and malign behavior. It assumed that U.S.-Russia relations could be “reset” into a partnership and that American forces in Europe could be reduced. It assumed that a minimal “rebalance” of efforts could deter China from using its rising power to coerce American partners and revise the regional order. “And it assumed with the Budget Control Act of 2011 that defense spending could be cut significantly for a decade. Though all of these assumptions have been overtaken by events, [President Obama] and many in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have nonetheless failed to invest sufficiently in our nation’s defense. Indeed, for most of the past eight years, including this one, Congress has forced the Department of Defense to start the year locked into the previous year’s budget and priorities, which in practice is a budget cut.

“As a result, our military is caught in a downward spiral of depleted readiness and deferred modernization. Readiness is suffering, in part, because the force is too small and being asked to do more with less. This, in turn, harms modernization, as future defense investments are delayed and mortgaged to pay for present operations. That helps to explain why all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have stated that our military cannot accomplish the nation’s strategic objectives at acceptable risk to the force and the mission. Reversing this budget-driven damage to our military must be a top priority for national leaders…

“Donald Trump has pledged to ‘fully eliminate the defense sequester’ and ‘submit a new budget to rebuild our military.’ This cannot happen soon enough. The damage that has been done to our military over the past eight years will not be reversed in one year. Just stemming the bleeding caused by recent budget cuts will take most of the next five years, to say nothing of the sustained increases in funding required thereafter…

“Our adversaries are modernizing their militaries to exploit our vulnerabilities…The cost of further inaction…is worse: We will irreparably damage our military’s ability to deter aggression and conflict. Indeed, as General Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army, has said: “The only thing more expensive than deterrence is actually fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than fighting a war is fighting one and losing one.
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“For many years after the end of the Cold War, U.S. defense planning and budgeting were guided by what was called a “two major regional contingency” force sizing construct. This required the U.S. military to be sized, shaped, and postured to fight and win two major wars in different regions of the world more or less at the same time. In 2012, the Obama administration departed from this construct…it stoked a perception of American weakness and created power vacuums that adversaries have exploited.

“A better defense strategy must acknowledge the reality that we have entered a new era of great power competitions. China and Russia aspire to diminish U.S. influence and revise the world order in ways that are contrary to U.S. national interests. They maintain large, survivable nuclear arsenals. They are modernizing their militaries in order to counter our ability to project power. And they are making rapid progress…the United States must have the will and military capability to deter and, if necessary, defeat these competitors in order to maintain peace through strength. Without sufficient hard power, which is our leverage, our diplomacy will be ineffective.

“A better defense strategy must also account for the threats posed by North Korea and Iran…But these dangers are serious and growing. North Korea already has nuclear weapons and is rapidly developing a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike the U.S. homeland. Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons has been postponed but not halted. And it seeks to use its malign influence to remake the Middle East in its image. If left unchecked, these threats will grow, to the detriment of American interests, allies, and partners. Finally, a better defense strategy must recognize that violent Islamist extremist groups will continue to pose a direct threat to American lives, and that U.S. forces will be conducting counterterrorism operations at varying levels of intensity, for the foreseeable future. … the scale of our defense challenges are clear: Major improvements can be made in the next five years, but we will not be able to rebuild and reshape our military to the degree necessary in that timeframe. In this way, the goal of the next five years is more digging out than building up—halting the accumulated damage done during the Obama administration through decreasing force size, depleted readiness, deferred modernization, and sustained high operational tempo.”

A professional opinion on the need for even greater increases in defense spending comes from the Military Officers Association .: “While many in Congress, especially the defense hawks, have applauded [President Trump’s] defense increase, several in key leadership positions on the Armed Services committees say it is not nearly enough. The administration termed the $603 billion budget request, which is an increase of $18.5 billion over what the Obama administration had proposed for FY 2018, as an increase of 10 percent, but that number is only in comparison to sequestration levels of $549 billion. So in reality, says Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Chairman of the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, ‘That’s really only a 3-percent increase and is fake budgeting’.”

The Report concludes Monday

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The Budget Mistakes that Endanger America

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government begins a three-part exposure of the danger caused by the disinvestment in America’s National Security

Two dangerously mistaken assumptions have guided American defense planning since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The first, made by successive administrations, was that there would no longer be a substantial military threat following the end of the USSR, and that the only true danger remaining would be regional conflicts. China’s extraordinary increases in spending on armaments, and its development of a highly advanced and sophisticated force with worldwide reach, has proven that theory wrong, as has President Putin’s dramatic reconstruction of Soviet power and strategy. Both nations have engaged in aggressive actions, confident that their armed strength shields them from repercussions.

Russia has twice invaded neighboring nations, and engages in intimidating actions towards its European neighbors and the North American coastline. China has illegally occupied a resource-rich maritime area belonging to the Philippines. It is now claiming domination over vital sea lanes in contradiction of all international law.  North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have reached an extremely dangerous point, and the Taliban is preparing for a major return to power in Afghanistan. If they do so, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal may be within their grasp.

Nikita vladimirov, in an article in The Hill.reports that “Russia and China are increasingly challenging the military superiority that the United States has held since the early 1990s…[they]…are spending heavily on ‘modernization’ to improve their militaries’ quality, efficiency and overall performance…According to the experts, China’s military advancement is most noticeable in its new naval and ballistic capabilities…Researchers at the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted the rapid development of China’s new air-to-air weapons that will ‘make the air environment more difficult for the F-35 and supporting aircraft.’…Moscow, meanwhile, is seeking to develop new technologies that would undermine U.S. capabilities in Europe and Asia.

“In summer of 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted the country’s military progress, asserting that Russia had achieved ‘substantial success’ in modernizing its forces… Tony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said improvements to Russia’s nuclear weapons and precision cruise missiles should be a major concern for the Pentagon…Another highlight of Russia’s push toward military innovation is its lethal T-14 tank…the International Institute for Strategic Studies said the ‘revolutionary’ tank will feature new technologies that will ‘change battlefield dynamics’ in the future.”

The second assumption, solely the work of the Obama Administration, was that significantly scaling back American defense spending and activities would induce hostile nations to do the same.  In essence, President Obama “Gave peace a chance,” to quote the rock song.  It didn’t work. Instead, it had the reverse effect: aggressive nations saw U.S. weakness as an opportunity, and took advantage.
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The errors of judgement and the rise of dire threats should have been headline news. But the prevailing leftist ideology within the American media has kept the overwhelming danger out of the headlines.  It is a mantra of Progressive politics that any penny spent on defense is a penny taken away from social welfare programs. Therefore, dependent on ever increasing benefits for support at the ballot box, left-leaning politicians have ignored the hazardous reality and continued their transfer of funds from the military to the programs that get them re-elected.

Former Defense Secretary  Ashton B. Carter noted  that “DoD’s [Department of Defense] 10-year budget projections have absorbed more than $750 billion in cuts, …DoD’s fiscal year 2016 budget is at a near-historic low, representing about 14 percent of total federal discretionary and nondiscretionary outlays.”

In 2010, the total defense budget was $757 billion.  The 2016 budget was approximately $585 billion.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) noted “Russia has challenged the postwar order in Europe by invading and annexing the territory of another sovereign nation…China has stepped up its coercive behavior in Asia, backed by its rapid military modernization…Military spending is not to blame for out-of-control deficits and debt.  It is now [at] the lowest [share of federal spending] since before World War 2.”

The Report continues tomorrow

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America’s Defense Time Warp

Washington’s leaders appear trapped in a time warp when it comes to making decisions about defense and foreign policy.

Still reveling in the bloodless victory a quarter-century ago over the Soviet Union in the first Cold War, President Obama, his progressive supporters, and some Republican budget hawks more concerned with balancing the budget than funding national security needs cling to the illusion that, since the USSR’s demise, there are no overarching threats from powerful nations.  In his State of the Union address, President Obama claimed that the only real threat to the U.S. came from failed states.

Arguments are frequently made that the U.S. military is funded far better than any potential adversaries. The reality is, of course, that a vast percentage of spending on the armed forces of nations such as Russia and China are simply not reported, a strategy made easier by the absence of a free press in those nations.

Substantially ignored by far too many in government and media are these crucial realities that make the current era the most dangerous in American history:

For the first time in a century, Washington’s alliances do not constitute the most powerful military grouping in existence.  That distinction goes to the Russian-Chinese-Iranian-North Korean axis.

For the first time in history, the U.S. does not possess the most powerful or modern nuclear force.  Since the Obama/Clinton “Reset” with Russia and the New Start Treaty, that distinction belongs to Moscow. Some believe that China’s vast military tunnel system may contain more nuclear weapons than America’s arsenal, as well.

The equipment, weapons and vehicles of America’s conventional forces are old and worn down by overuse. Those of our potential adversaries are fresher.

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The U.S. Navy, once the unquestioned master of the world’s oceans, has shrunk to less than half its previous size while facing adversaries who have dramatically increased the size and capabilities of their fleets. The Chinese Navy already has more submarines than the U.S. has, and by 2020, its navy will surpass Washington’s in total numbers.  Beijing also possesses some unique weapons, such as land-based missiles that can devastate ships nearly a thousand miles from shore, a true game-changer.

Politico  has reported: “We have a crisis in the fleet… Today, at 284 warships, the United States Navy’s fleet is the smallest since World War I. But even that number probably overstates the Navy’s true capability: The Pentagon recently changed the rules by which it counts active warships and if you apply the traditional and more stringent method, the Navy has but 274 warships. [The NY Analysis pegs the number even lower.] Given sequestration, the fleet will continue to decline.”

The U.S. military no longer has the capability to fight a two-front war. The Heritage Foundation  notes that “The common theme across the services and the United States’ nuclear enterprise is one of force degradation resulting from many years of underinvestment, poor execution of modernization programs, and the negative effects of budget sequestration (cuts in funding) on readiness and capacity. While the military has been heavily engaged in operations, primarily in the Middle East but elsewhere as well, since September 11, 2001, experience is both ephemeral and context-sensitive. Valuable combat experience is lost over time as the servicemembers who individually gained experience leave the force, and it maintains direct relevance only for future operations of a similar type. Thus, though the current Joint Force is experienced in some types of operations, it is still aged and shrinking in its capacity for operations.”

The American Enterprise Institute opines: “Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, American power has slowly but surely atrophied relative to the burgeoning threats that confront the United States. Seemingly attractive short-term defense cuts carried long-term costs, not only in monetary terms, but also in proliferating risk to American national interests. Military spending has fallen since 1991 by every metric—as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of the federal budget, and in real terms—even as a declining share of the Pentagon budget funds combat-related activities…

“American political leadership has consistently asked the military to do more with less. Without sufficient military credibility to deter or contain conflict, an ever-smaller American military has been sent abroad far more frequently than in the Cold War. If the rosy assumptions about threats to American interests had proved true, none of this would matter. Yet the past decade has seen drastic and widespread negative developments for American interests, from the direct threat of radical Islamist terrorism to China’s unwillingness to cooperate instead of compete and Russia’s delusions of grandeur. These threats to stability might each be soluble in isolation, but together they require sustained application of American economic, diplomatic, and cultural power, each buttressed by credible US military power. If American political leadership continues to underfund and overuse the military, it will not result in a less ambitious foreign policy. It will result only in greater risk to American national interests. A weaker military has resulted in less credible American security guarantees and increased likelihood of conflict. A strong American military will rebuild the trust of our allies and ensure stability for a new American century.”

Decisions over the fate and funding of America’s military have been tied to balance sheets, politics, and conflicting ideologies. It’s time that the only appropriate criteria—the ability to deter enemy aggression—replaced those comparatively trivial considerations.

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2016 Defense Budget exposes U.S. to danger

Defense spending for the next fiscal year, excluding veterans’ benefits, was finalized this month at $572.7 billion, a $94 billion decrease over the amount spent in 2009, when President Obama entered office.   Defense News projects that the pre-Obama spending levels will not be reached, if at all, until well after 2020.

A Defense Dept. review of the budget emphasizes what the FY 2016 deal does not adequately address, including:

NEAR TERM: — Balancing capability, capacity and readiness;

— Terrorism, instability across the Middle East and North Africa;

— Rising pressure from Russia and China;

— Globalization of advanced technology;

— Rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region;

— Cyber defense, attribution and response; and
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— Short-term budget deals, constrained resources and fiscal uncertainty.

LONG TERM: Priorities and uncertainties for fiscal 2017 and beyond include, among others, McCord said, nation-states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea; ISIL and the global counterterrorism challenge; balancing capability, capacity and readiness; compensation and retention for today’s force; the Force of the Future; innovation in investments and practices; operating in space and cyberspace; and modernizing the nuclear deterrent in the 2020s and 2030s.

As noted by the Department of Defense, reduced support for the military comes at a time when Russia and China have both dramatically increased their military spending and aggressiveness, made significant technological strides, and engaged in aggressive actions.  It also comes as North Korea moves rapidly ahead in nuclear armaments, and the threat from Islamic terrorists escalates to extremely dangerous new levels.

PressTV reports that “Russia’s Defense Ministry has announced an increase in future military equipment procurement…The announced plans included the annual purchase of some 200 planes and helicopters, up to 30 ships and submarines, and around 600 armored vehicles, the UPI reported on Tuesday.”The state program for armaments extending till 2021 will increase the share of modern weapons and military hardware to no less than 70 percent,” said Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov during a press briefing in Moscow.

China, by contrast, continues its rapid escalation in military spending. According to a CNBC report  “Beijing’s defense spending is estimated to grow 7 percent annually until 2020…By 2020, the center of gravity of the global defense spending landscape is expected to have continued its gradual shift away from the developed economies of Western Europe and North America and towards emerging markets, particularly in Asia.”

In addition to Beijing’s announced spending, a Quartz.com reports that “China is responsible for 30% of the world’s secretive defense spending,reports Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based anti-corruption NGO. Secretive spending, defined by TI as “military expenditure where no meaningful details are released either to the public or parliament,” is leading to corruption at home and mistrust in the Asia-Pacific region that could destabilize the area, the organization says… No information is available on acquisition planning, and only broad details are disclosed on actual and planned purchases.”

An analysis by The Week  opines: “The defense budget is often constrained for economic or political reasons. The gap between what the United States actually spends and what it takes to fully resource and execute the strategy is risk. Unfortunately, risk is difficult to measure, but all too easy to ignore. A particular threat may be out of sight and out of mind, but it still exists and could still harm a vital interest of the United States. It’s similar to buying cheap car insurance. It may save a few bucks and turn out fine as long as you never have an accident. That is what it means to accept risk… Since the imposition of the Budget Control Act in 2011, the base defense budget (excluding war costs) has gone down by 15 percent in real terms, while the threats to U.S. vital interests have, if anything, increased. The Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Index of U.S. Military Strength assessed the current capacity, capability, and readiness of the U.S. military as “marginal.”

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Obama’s dangerous experiment in sharp military cuts endangers U.S.

The Obama Administration’s dangerous experiment to determine whether aggressive states such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea would respond positively to a diminished U.S. military and a reduced worldwide presence has been a failure.

Russia and China have engaged in a vast, dramatic arms buildup of both their conventional and strategic nuclear forces. Both have developed aggressive postures, including invasions of neighboring nations (Russia in Ukraine, China in the offshore exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.) North Korea has accelerated its nuclear program, and Iran continues to advance its armed forces and supported terrorist activities.  Non-state actors, such as ISIS, have risen to previously unimagined strength.

While all this has been occurring, the Obama Administration has refused to change its deeply flawed and risky course. The American military, already sharply reduced from its 1990 Cold War levels, has been forced to further shrink and deteriorate. The proposed 2016 defense budget is smaller than its 2009 counterpart, when Mr. Obama first took office, and will result in further cuts.

The National Interest notes that “The announcement that the U.S. Army is to lose 40,000 troops and 17,000 civilian employees by 2017 has taken some by surprise. Although it has long been known that the Obama administration was to pursue reductions in the size of the military in line with sequestration, the timing by which those economies are to take place is causing some controversy—especially in light of ongoing events in the Middle East and Europe…they are yet more evidence of a macro-level acceptance by America’s political elite that the country’s global supremacy should be allowed to dwindle—particularly in military terms. By countenancing the strictures of sequestration instead of trying to find a bipartisan escape from mandated cuts, the U.S. political class has effectively acquiesced in a winnowing away of the country’s military supremacy, come rain or shine…

“ Under current spending plans, projections are that the Army will drop to around 420,000 active troops—a size that military planners warn would jeopardize the military’s ability to effectively deploy to multiple war zones at any one time. Not only would this number be a far cry from the circa 566,000 troop–level seen at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it would double-down on the Pentagon’s previous repudiation of a decades-old mantra that the United States ought to be able to fight multiple land wars simultaneously. Under President Kennedy, the military was supposed to be capable of waging two-and-a-half full-scale wars at one time. In the 1980s, Casper Weinberger even articulated plans for a three-and-a-half war strategy. But in 2010, Robert Gates announced that the United States would no longer even prepare to fight two wars simultaneously, preferring instead to organize itself for nontraditional threats like cybersecurity and terrorism.

In a review on the state of the U.S. military, the American Enterprise Institute  notes:

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“The combat Air Force is too small to ensure American air superiority. [It is] is stuck with 20th-century aircraft.

The Navy is too small to maintain presence in the Pacific, Persian Gulf, and Mediterranean…[It] cannot keep up with missile defense demand…The US Navy has a “carrier gap” in the Western Pacific…it is an 11 carrier navy in a 15 carrier world.”

“Since 2011, the Army has cancelled 21 programs, delayed 125 and restructured 124 . . . [as] procurement funding dropped from $21.3 billion to $13.5 billion. The Army is not ready to respond to large crises. Readiness has been degraded to its lowest level in 20 years. . . . Today we only have 33% of our brigades ready to the extent we would expect them to be if asked to fight.”

“American power has slowly but surely atrophied relative to the burgeoning threats that confront the United States. Seemingly attractive short-term defense cuts carried long-term costs, not only in monetary terms, but also in proliferating risk to American national interests. Military spending has fallen since 1991 by every metric—as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of the federal budget, and in real terms—even as a declining share of the Pentagon budget funds combat-related activities.”

The diminished American military now faces the most formidable threat in U.S. history, as the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian militaries train together and share, in many cases, common goals.

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U.S. armed forces are “degrading in strength”

Last week, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, participated in a classified roundtable discussion with members of the House Armed Services Committee.  Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said:

“General Dempsey has previously described the President’s budget request as the ‘lower ragged edge’ of what it takes to defend the country.  This morning we received a briefing on the growing threats we confront and the accumulating challenges facing our own military forces.  It is clear that continued cuts to our military would exact a very real cost on our ability to address those threats and significantly increase the dangers facing the nation.

“Uncertainty in budgets combined with a high operational pace and eroding military technological advantages are the new constants facing our military leaders.  As Congress debates critical national security issues, we must keep this enormous challenge, and unprecedented risk, in mind.  Addressing these threats must be our highest priority.”

The concern has been noted before.

Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno told the Army Times  that “The Army stands to lose 18,200 soldiers in the draw down plan for 2015, through attrition and reduced accessions, but also with retention screening boards that may lead to soldiers being forced out.”  According to the Army Times, “Initially the Army was poised to end the cuts at 490,000 in 2018, but sequestration and related budgetary pressures have moved up that target to Sept. 30, 2015, while taking an additional cut of 40,000 in 2016 and 2017. A worst-case scenario envisions follow-on cuts of 10,000 to 20,000 by the end of the decade.”

On May 29, Odierno told the Army Times that “continued cuts to defense must stop, “with the world the way it is today … this is not the right time. We’ve taken enough out of defense. Let’s stop and move forward.”

Continued cuts will damage the Army’s modernization efforts and readiness into the next decade, the general said.

“If we don’t get the dollars and continue down the road of sequestration, it’s going to affect readiness. It’s going to put us in a readiness hole for five years. It’s going to put us in a modernization hole for 10 years. And our ability to continue to meet the current mission is going to be challenged.”

Recently, the Heritage Foundation  reviewed the status of U.S. armed forces:

“The common theme across the services and the United States’ nuclear enterprise is one of force degradation resulting from many years of under­investment, poor execution of modernization pro­grams, and the negative effects of budget sequestra­tion (i.e., cuts in funding) on readiness and capacity. While the military has been heavily engaged in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere since September 11, 2001, experience is both ephemeral and context-sensitive. As such, valuable combat experience is lost over time as the service­members who individually gained experience leave the force, and it maintains direct relevance only for future operations of a similar type (e.g., counterin­surgency operations in Iraq and major convention­al operations against a state like Iran or China are fundamentally different).

“Thus, though the current Joint Force is experi­enced in some types of operations, it is still aged and shrinking in its capacity for operations.

“We characterized the services and nuclear enter­prise on a five-category scale ranging from “very weak” to “very strong,” benchmarked against cri­teria elaborated in the full report. These charac­terizations are not a reflection of the competence of individual servicemembers or the professional­ism of the services or Joint Force as a whole; nor do they speak to the U.S. military’s strength relative to other militaries around the world. Rather, they are assessments of the institutional, programmatic, and matériel health or viability of America’s hard mili­tary power.

“Our analysis concluded with these assessments:

  • Army as “Marginal.” The Army was at the low end of the middle grade (“marginal”) in capac­ity and capability and scored quite low in readi­ness (as reported by the Army), the three scores combining to place it in the low end of the mid­dle category.
  • Navy as “Marginal.” The Navy scored quite strong in readiness but at a cost to future capa­bility. Deferred maintenance has kept ships at sea, but at some point in the near future, this will affect the Navy’s ability to deploy. Combined with a weak score in capability (due largely to old plat­forms and troubled modernization programs) and a “marginal” score in capacity, the Navy is currently just able to meet requirements.
  • Air Force as “Strong.” The Air Force flies a lot and has significantly more aircraft than required for a two-MRC force, but it is an old Air Force, and its modernization programs are problematic. Still, its high scores in capacity and readiness placed it in the best position of all of the services.
  • Marine Corps as “Marginal.” The Corps’ strongest suit was in readiness, but even here there are problems as stated by the Corps itself. While the fighting competence of the service is superb, it is hampered by old equipment, troubled replacement programs for its key ground vehicles, and a shrinking force. The progress it has made in replacing its rotary-wing aircraft is a notable bright spot in its modernization portfolio.
  • Nuclear Capabilities as “Marginal.” Modern­ization, testing, and investment in the intellec­tual/talent underpinnings of this sector are the chief elements plaguing the United States’ nucle­ar enterprise. Its delivery platforms are good, but the force depends on a very limited set of weap­ons (in number of designs) and models that are quite old, in stark contrast to the aggressive pro­grams of competitor states.

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“In aggregate, the United States’ military posture is rated as “Marginal.”

“The consistent decline in funding and the consequent shrinking of the force are putting it under significant pressure. Essential maintenance is being deferred; fewer units (mostly the Navy’s platforms and the Special Operations Forces community) are being cycled through operation-al deployments more often and for longer periods; and old equipment is being extended while programmed replacements are problematic. The cumulative effect of such factors has resulted in a U.S. military that is marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”

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Sino-Russian military cooperation threatens U.S. technological edge

Pentagon sources were quoted by the Weekly Standard as being concerned that America is losing its edge in military technology to China.

In addition to its massive strides in cyber warfare and missiles that can destroy American aircraft carriers from almost a thousand miles away and knock vital U.S. satellites out of orbit, Beijing, according to a Spacewar report, has developed a laser that can shoot down light drones.  According to Chinese reports, the weapon has almost 100% accuracy and is transportable.  It is expected that a more powerful version will be developed for use against heavier craft as well.

The American people have been repeatedly told that cuts to the U.S. defense budget were not exceedingly dangerous because of both the higher rate of spending by Washington and the Pentagon’s technological edge.  That edge may no longer exist, and China and Russia’s massive increases in their defense spending may soon close the fiscal gap as well.
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There is also the increased threat from the sharing of research and technology between Moscow and Beijing.  China’s Xinhua news paper quotes Vladimir Putin as stating that Sino-Russian cooperation has “reached its all-time best.”   Putin placed particular emphasis on joint high-tech ventures.

Putin emphasized that the two nations are striving to create a “new security” framework in the Asian Pacific region.

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Sweden may join NATO

NATO was, for half a century, arguably the world’s most powerful alliance, successfully deterring the Soviet Union.  It became the winner of the Cold War without firing a shot at its principal adversary.

But following the fall of the USSR and its puppet league of captured nations, the Warsaw Pact, many believed that its principal mission had been completed.  Despite participating in several campaigns not having anything to do with its original function, the alliance weakened considerably as its member nations sharply reduced their military spending.

The extraordinary growth in the strength and quality of the Russian military, combined with the rapidly dwindling strength of NATO forces should frighten anyone seriously reviewing the facts.

For one nation, not normally thought of as participating in either the Cold War or the numerous conflagrations and disputes around the world, this worrisome situation has led to a surprising change of mind.  Sweden is seriously considering joining NATO.
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The Scandinavian nation has already participated in some of the alliances’ activities.  Swedish forces joined with the NATO Response Force  last October in a joint training exercise.  Finland and Ukraine (this was before the invasion)  also participated.  NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmssen  said that the relationship between the alliance and Sweden “is already strong and this will make it even stronger.”

Like the NATO nations, Sweden had seriously weakened its defense capabilities in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, according to Defense News. It has been estimated that the nation has only a quarter of the capabilities it had during the Cold War era. However, in the wake of the Ukrainian invasion, it is both re-examining its own military capabilities as well as the advantages of joining NATO.

Russia has engaged in provocative activities, including simulated attacks on Sweden.  That forced a new  look at the diminished capability of the nation’s armed forces, which reportedly could only endure a week in the face of an attack by Moscow.