WASHINGTON – According to the Heritage Foundation’s annual report card onUS military readiness, the armed forces just barely got a passing grade.The conservative think tank wants more units, and more modern equipment,across the board, in order to better prepare for a two-front war.
“The 2020 Index concludes that the current U.S. military force is likelycapable of meeting the demands of a single major regional conflict whilealso attending to various presence and engagement activities,” The HeritageFoundation said in its 2020 Index of US Military Strength, released onWednesday, noting the Pentagon would “be very hard-pressed to do more andcertainly would be ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous majorregional contingencies (MRC).”
According to the report, all branches of the US Armed Forces must continueto grow in order to meet the think tank’s standard of being able to wagetwo separate wars at once. The trend in government policy has been in thisdirection since US President Donald Trump took office in early 2017.
In the White House’s National Security StrategylinkfromDecember 2017, Russia and China were identified as “revisionist powers”seeking to upend the global order established at the end of the Cold War in1991, at which time the US became the unquestioned sole global superpower.As a consequence of their rejection of this unipolar world, the White Housewarned that “great power competition” had returned.
“Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primaryconcern in US national security,” the Pentagon’s February 2018 NationalDefense Strategylink concluded.
In fiscal year 2019, the Trump administration’s defense budgetlink totaled $693 billion; the proposed budget for FY2020 is an even bigger$738 billion. The country spent almost as muchlink on its military in 2018 as the next eight largest-spending countriescombined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute(SIPRI).
On the Heritage Foundation’s five-point index ranging from “very strong” to“very weak,” the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and nuclear forcesall registered “marginal,” the middle position – a C grade, essentially.
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Despite the Army’s overall rating of “marginal,” its readiness score was“very strong.” The branch scored low because it only has 35 brigade combatteams (BCTs), the Army’s most basic deployable unit, and the HeritageFoundation wants 50. Intended to be self-sufficient on the battlefield, theArmy cut back on its BCTs drastically after withdrawing from Iraq, where itbattled an insurgent movement opposed to US occupation through the 2000s.In 2017, the paring back begun in 2013link wascompleted, and the Army was reduced from 45 to 33 BCTs. The Army standspresently at 480,000 soldiers, but the Heritage Foundation wants it at500,000.
The Navy is in the process of a large expansion as it attempts to return toits late 20th century strength by growing from 290 to 355 ships. However,the Heritage Foundation goes still further, calling for a 400-ship fleet.The think tank also says the Navy needs 13 aircraft carriers, although itonly has 11 at the moment, and even a 12-carrier fleetlink is considered extreme by those holding the Navy’s purse strings. At anyrate, at least six of those carriers are undeployablelink at the moment.
The report found the US Marine Corps at only two-thirds of its desiredstrength of 36 battalions, also earning it a “marginal” grade.
The Air Force has only 971 of the 1,200 fighter and attack aircraft theHeritage Foundation thinks it should have and is facing a continuing pilotshortage, earning it a “marginal” grade as well. However, Business Insidernoted the previous report card gave the Air Force a “weak” grade.
While not a separate branch, US nuclear forces were judged separately fromthe other services. The aging Minuteman III and Trident nuclear missilesthat form the core of the land-based and sea-based arms of the US nucleartriadlinkalsogot the arsenal a “marginal” grade, despite the fact that the US has morenuclear weapons than any other nation. According to the Federation ofAmerican Scientistslink, theUS has a total of 6,185 nuclear weapons, although more than half of themare not immediately ready for use. This is marginally more than Russia, butwell ahead of the rest of the planet, Sputnik has reported.
