We Are Not Getting Our Money's Worth From The Military

From the Blaze: "US military is 'weak' according to damning new assessment." An excerpt:

    The Heritage Foundation released its annual assessment of U.S. military strength this week, and the results are damning. The "2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength" indicates the country's overall military posture "must be rated 'weak.'"

    "This is the inevitable result of years of prolonged deployments, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged," said the assessment.

    The first and only other time the military has received a "weak" rating was last year.

    While this weakness has been years in the making, significant American strength has been sapped in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas' terror attacks on Israel.

    For its assessment, Heritage measured American military power in terms of its capacity for operations, its capability for modernity, and its readiness to handle assigned missions. Scrutineers also factored in the capabilities and behavior of America's adversaries; existing alliances; regional political stability; the condition of key infrastructure; and the presence of U.S. forces.

    Heritage rated the Air Force's capacity and capability "marginal," while noting its readiness was "very weak."

    To manage more than a single major conflict, the assessment suggested the Air Force would need 1,200 active-duty, combat-coded fighter aircraft. Presently, the branch reportedly only has 897 at the ready and 64% of what would otherwise be an optimal inventory of bombers.

    The Government Accountability Office published a "Weapon System Sustainment" report in late 2022 revealing that only a handful of Air Force aircraft associated with American air superiority "met their annual mission capable goal" in a majority of the years from 2011 through 2021.

    In addition to a questionable fleet, the assessment indicated there is a shortage of pilots.

    "There is not a fighter squadron in the Air Force that holds the readiness levels, competence, and confidence levels required to square off against a peer competitor, and readiness continues to spiral downward," said the report.

    The Army alternatively had a readiness rating of "very strong" but was rated "weak" on capacity and "marginal" on capability. It is supposedly aging faster than it can modernize and continuing to struggle with recruitment.

    The Navy was rated "very weak" on capacity, "marginal" on capability," and "weak" on readiness. It reportedly needs a battle force of 400 manned ships to satisfy expectations, but in actuality only floats a battle force fleet of 297 ships. Making matters worse, its former technological edge has been blunted both by age and by advances made by competitors such as China and Russia.

    Space Force received a "marginal" rating across the board.

    America's nuclear capability, treated separately, received an overall "marginal" rating.

    While the Marine Corps received an overall rating of "strong," Heritage indicated it remains a "one-war force" on account of its capacity, adding that its strength would not be enough the compensate for the other branches.

I'm beginning to wonder why we even have a military. The primary purpose of any military is to protect against invasion and yet we are currently facing the greatest invasion in the history of the world across our southern border and the military brass are either silent or cheering it on in the name of diversity.