‘A Significantly Weaker America’: Major Study Warns of Eroding U.S. Military by Joe Gould and Aaron Mehta - Defense News
U.S. military capabilities continued to stand still or erode as world threats proliferated during 2017, a new study is warning.
Those are the findings of The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of U.S. Military Strength, which offers reviews of the past year’s defense issues.
The index, which will be released Oct. 5, may take on extra influence this year. While previous editions were well regarded, Heritage is the think tank with the closest ties to the Trump administration and is viewed as having a major influence on discussions within the White House and conservative members of Congress.
The report comes as several major policy reviews of the Trump Pentagon are pending, including a broader national security review, a missile defense review and a nuclear posture review.
Broadly speaking, the index covers two pots of information — a look at the global operating environment and an internal assessment of U.S. military strength. All topics are rated on a one-to-five scale with various descriptions, such as “very weak” or “marginal” attached.
Defense News was given an exclusive interview with Heritage expert Dakota Wood, who edited the over 400-page report, ahead of its formal release. The full report can be read here...
Comments
A lot of our readiness problems cut to the heart of fundamentals - namely training. There have been at least two articles by Dr. Leonard Wong of the Strategic Studies Institute addressing the problem. He was prescient as his article on <i>Stifled Innovation?</I> was published in early 2002. Unfortunately, we seem to have none in the GO or CSM ranks who are willing to take a stand and stop the madness. Protecting time, delineating and enforcing priorities of work, and eliminating non-training distractions can start to address some of our foundational issues. So much for "realizing mission command".
Absolutely laughable. This should be labelled "sponsored content brought to you by Lockheed, Boeing etal". For the record the US spends far more on defense than all of it's potential enemies combined and whatever "readiness" problems the US thinks it has pale in comparison with the problems the "threats" have.
Adopting the Heritage Foundations' wish list would actually weaken the US as tens of billions of additional dollars were poured down the DOD drain and hundreds of thousands more people were diverted from productive activities.