The Army doesn’t have enough soldiers, the Navy’s fleet is half the size it was during the Cold War, and Air Force pilots aren’t getting the flight time needed to maintain their edge.
That is the stark conclusion of the latest ranking of U.S. military strength from The Heritage Foundation. The think tank says a “decade of decline” has left U.S. armed forces with a “weak” rating for the second consecutive year despite a congressional allocation of more than $800 billion last year on national defense.
The state of the military and its growing challenges in Europe, Asia and the Middle East will likely be key topics of discussion and debate in a presidential election year. The conservative Heritage Foundation has emerged as an influential force in the campaign of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, with its Project 2025 initiative created to, in the think tank’s words, “build now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training.”
The dismal ratings result from years of prolonged deployments, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, and a “profound lack of seriousness” across the national security establishment while threats to U.S. interests surge, Heritage officials said in releasing the latest ranking Wednesday.
“The military is too small, it’s too old in terms of the equipment it uses and it’s too unready,” said retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and editor of the military strength index. “All the equipment was bought with 1980s money and fielded in the 1990s. Just about all the primary end items are 30 years old or older.”
Sen. Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee and the likely chairman if Republicans win control of the Senate in November, said the Heritage report’s title, “A Decade of Decline,” was “absolutely appropriate.”
“We are now living in the most dangerous moment since World War II. We need to be reminded of that,” said Mr. Wicker, who spoke at the event releasing the report.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, part of a Heritage panel Wednesday outlining the findings, said the parlous state of the U.S. military should be a central part of the discussion in the presidential campaign, which looks to be on track to pit Mr. Trump in a rematch with President Biden. The top national security issues affecting the country are the U.S.-Mexico border, the state of the military and regional threats in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, he said.
“The Democrat, Biden, is ignoring all five. It’s almost like he’s spitting into the wind,” Gen. Kellogg said.
Joe Kent, a retired Army Special Forces officer running for Congress in Washington state, said the porous U.S.-Mexico border is a national security priority for many Americans.
Images of the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan also resonate with voters, he said.
“That really did remind a lot of people who said, ‘What happened with this great military that was accomplishing all those great things — we thought — and what was it all for?’” Mr. Kent said. “Didn’t we just fight a war for 20-plus years in the Middle East? Now we’re being told we have to go secure shipping lanes? I think this will become a major campaign issue.”
Strong, marginal and weak
Of the Pentagon’s various service branches, the Heritage report rated only the Marine Corps as “strong.” The Space Force, America’s newest military service, received a “marginal” rating. The Army also was listed as “marginal,” and the Navy was rated as “weak.” The Air Force ranked as “very weak” because of low readiness and proficiency levels owing to a lack of flight hours, available pilots and funding for fuel and maintenance, the Heritage analysts said.
Since 2017, the Air Force has fielded only 32 active fighter squadrons. During the Cold War, it maintained 29 squadrons in Europe alone, The Heritage Foundation said.
The Heritage analysts said the Navy has a severe capacity problem. About 290 ships are in the fleet, down from nearly 600 during the Cold War. Navy leadership, however, keeps roughly the same number deployed at any one time, doubling the workload on ships, people and supporting maintenance yards, Heritage analysts said.
Ship maintenance in the Navy is consistently delayed in part because the number of service yards has been cut in half since the end of the Cold War to just four, according to the Heritage report.
China’s shipbuilding capacity is 230 times larger than that of the U.S., Mr. Wicker said, and Beijing last year launched 30 ships, including a new aircraft carrier.
The senator said U.S. forces are being stressed at a time when adversaries are probing for weaknesses.
“Then there’s Russia. The good thing coming out of Ukraine is that it has awakened NATO,” Mr. Wicker said. “Strengthening NATO and making sure that they understand they need to pay their way is a good thing.”
Although defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product is “far lower” than it was throughout the Cold War, the military isn’t being asked to do less. Budget increases during the Biden administration haven’t kept up with inflation, meaning a loss in real buying power, Heritage officials said.
“There’s bloat and waste within the defense budget that is sucking up funding that would be better spent on military capability,” Heritage said in its report. “Our spending priorities do not reflect the immediacy of the challenges we face. We should be focusing spending on lethality — ships, planes, and munitions.”
Struggling allies
Although the Biden administration and the Pentagon frequently cite U.S. allies as force multipliers, the militaries of nations such as Germany, France and Britain are also far short of their Cold War predecessors, according to the Heritage Foundation report.
Germany’s defense minister said last year that Berlin’s armed forces weren’t capable of defending the country. Germany won’t be able to field a fully equipped and ready division until 2025, and a second won’t be ready before 2028.
France has just over 220 tanks, down from more than 1,300 during the Cold War, about 250 jet fighters, down from a high of 686, and 19 large surface warships, down from 41. A “senior defense leader” has questioned whether the French military could operate longer than four days in high-intensity combat, Heritage said.
The British have the smallest army since 1710 and would be hard-pressed to field a single combat-ready division. Only 157 of its top-of-the-line Challenger II tanks could be made ready for operations in 30 days.
“The total UK military force is smaller than the U.S. Marine Corps: 160,000 vs. 174,000,” Heritage said.
Meanwhile, China is fielding modern aircraft, ships, submarines and missiles at an alarming rate, made possible by double-digit increases in defense spending for the past decade. It has more than 360 warships and will likely have more than 400 by 2030, according to the report.
Russia, amid a bloody war in Ukraine, is nevertheless producing more tanks and missiles than before the invasion. Heritage said it typically fires as much artillery ammunition in two or three days as found in the entire British inventory.
“They really stumbled out of the gate when they moved into Ukraine, but they’ve learned a lot,” Col. Wood said. “Russia is not out of this game. They haven’t used their bombers and still have a very capable submarine fleet — even if their surface fleet is pretty much junked out at this time.”
Mr. Wicker said the report’s findings strongly suggest that Mr. Biden’s budgets haven’t been sufficient to address U.S. defense shortcomings.
“I think we are going to have to go big,” Mr. Wicker said. “Increasing our defense budget by 3 to 5%, I do not think is enough.”