OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The U.S. military has been consistently active as various service branches are deployed worldwide to safeguard American and allied interests, but it is facing critical challenges such as ongoing recruitment shortages and increased involvement in volatile regions during Joe Biden’s presidency.
In fact, a new analysis indicates that the United States has reached a perilous juncture where its military may be at risk of not being able to defend the nation adequately.
According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength, which serves as a report card on the armed forces, editor and retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Dakota Wood told The Daily Caller that he rated the current states of the American military as “weak.”
In 2023, the military conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, along with the United States’ response to escalating tensions in the Middle East, highlighted significant issues. These conflicts exposed weaknesses in the United States’ ammunition and weapon stockpiles, as well as its capacity to respond effectively to the president’s concurrent requests for involvement in multiple crises.
“As currently postured, the U.S. military is at significant risk of not being able to defend America’s vital national interests,” the introduction to the index reads. The U.S. military received a ‘weak’ rating for the second year in a row ‘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,’” the report said.
Overall, every branch of the armed forces, as well as the nation’s nuclear and missile defense systems, are grappling with issues related to aging equipment, inadequacies, and a lack of readiness. These concerns were conveyed by Wood, a senior research fellow for defense programs at Heritage, during a briefing prior to the official release of the report to the DC.
Heritage identified several factors contributing to the decline in U.S. military strength. They include prolonged deployments of forces beyond initial plans, inadequate funding, deficiencies in the development and acquisition of weapon systems, and frequent shifts in priorities and policies within the Pentagon.
“When we say that the U.S. military is weak, it’s not an indictment of the individuals,” the men and women in service, Wood clarified. “If you had to go up against Russia or China or Iran or some other actor in the world, you’re just not going to have a sufficient amount of military power to go out.”
“If we now get super real, this is not just about recognizing the threat,” Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, noted at a Heritage panel Wednesday. “We have to reevaluate like a business that’s about to go bankrupt.”
The Daily Caller added:
Heritage rated the Army as “marginal,” the Navy as “weak” and the Air Force as “very weak.” Only the Marine Corps came out as strong, thanks to its monumental modernization efforts focused on a worst-case-scenario fight with China, according to Wood, but it remains too small to accomplish the missions the Pentagon tasked it with in the previous year.
The Air Force fared worst of all, receiving a “very weak” rating. Besotted with a pilot shortage, it operates just 75% of the ready fighter aircraft needed to devote to two major conflicts at once, according to the report. Pilots also aren’t getting enough hours in the cockpit — less than 130 each year on average, which in the Cold War era would have rendered them combat ineffective, Wood told the DCNF.
“There is not a fighter squadron in the Air Force that holds the readiness levels, competence, and confidence levels that are required to square off against a peer competitor,” the report said.
