US military has grown increasingly week over the years and is considered at risk of not being able to win a war against burgeoning threats overseas, a new report has found.
The worrisome trend was aired Tuesday by The Heritage Foundation, a think tank that analyzes the strength of the armed forces and potential threats to the US
In its Foundation’s Index of US Military Strength, Heritage rated America’s military as ‘weak’ and ‘at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests’ from growing powers such as China and Russia.
The weak rating, down from ‘marginal’ recorded by the Washington-based agency last year, is the first in the index’s nine-year history.
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It further found that rapidly advancing China remained the most ‘comprehensive security challenge’ to an ill-prepared US force, with the foundation citing Beijing’s recent bolstering of their land, sea, and air outfits.
Conversely, US forces, the study found, remained largely stagnant – and have actually regressed to a point where pilots have been left without crafts to fly and enlisters have had difficulty recruiting citizens to field a legitimate fighting force.
Aside from the overall ‘weak’ rating garnered by the military, Heritage provided each of the military branches with their own individual rankings based on capability, capacity, and readiness, especially in the event of a two-pronged conflict.
The Army scored ‘marginal,’ while the Air Force was ranked ‘very weak’ and the Navy ‘weak.’ The Marine Corps, meanwhile, fared the best, receiving a ‘strong’ rating – an improvement from the ‘marginal’ it received in 2021.
The reports release comes as the military ‘faces a full-blown recruitment crisis,’ according to Heritage – spurred by two straight years where the Biden administration submitted defense budget requests that were below the rate of inflation.
‘For the first time, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength finds that as currently postured, the U.S. military is rated ‘weak’ and at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while attending to various presence and engagement activities,’ the report began.
It added that ‘the military has seen a general erosion of capacity, capability, and readiness’ that ‘have become so significant’ that the military’s ability to fulfill its primary objective is in jeopardy.
The org asserted that those concerns were particularly prevalent when it comes to the Air Force and Navy, citing ‘readiness and capacity issues across the force(s).’
Compounding those concerns, according to the report, are inflation and budget cuts, which account for a loss of $59 billion in funding between 2018 and 2023.
That, Heritage wrote, has been further worsened by ‘the limited assistance’ that American allies such as the UK and South Korea can contribute in the event of a global conflict, given conflicting security interests.
In contrast, America’s key adversaries – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – have all rapidly advanced their military capabilities in recent years, and have ramped up efforts to intimidate our overseas affiliates, the think tank added.
To that point, Heritage cited Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and both China and North Korea’s increasing intimidation of neighboring Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea – all disputes the agency said could eventually boil over into a conflict on the world stage.
Heritage went as far to claim that the US military, in its current state, may not even be able to handle ‘a single major regional conflict’ due to its forces being spread increasingly thin amongst the various branches stations overseas
‘The 2023 Index concludes that the current US military force is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,’ the report read.
‘It most likely would not be able to do more and is certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts.’