The non-profit Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington D.C., said Wednesday in its latest assessment of American military power that the U.S. armed forces are “very weak” and in a “downward spiral” toward not being able to defend American interests.
“The current U.S. military force is at significant risk of being unable to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,” concludes the Heritage Foundation’s report for its 10th annual Index of U.S. Military Strength assessment.
Can America’s military protect its interests and ensure the world remains a place that favors America’s prosperity, safety, and security interests? Heritage’s 2024 Index Of U.S. Military Strength has the answer. Join us LIVE as we unveil our findings 👉 https://t.co/sl1YTXiySN pic.twitter.com/5VkikbABwv
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) January 24, 2024
“For 10 years this index has monitored the U.S. Navy’s slow decline while China’s Navy has modernized and grown at a fast pace,” said Robert Greenway, the Heritage Foundation’s director of the Allison Center for National Security, in statements to Fox News Digital.
“Meanwhile, the Navy has had too little shipyard capacity to keep its fleet maintained, too few ships to pace the threats, and misguided leadership that has instigated a recruitment crisis. Advanced capabilities alone will not offset this, and action is needed to reverse the downward trends,” Greenway averred.
The picture for the U.S. Army is bleak as well. “In just two years, the active-duty Army has shrunk from 485,000 to only 452,000 troops,” Greenway said. “This directly impacts both readiness and effectiveness as the Army is unable to fully man its formations [ … ] This is unsustainable.” The Army saw a record drop in White enlistment over the past five years.
Here's the video the US Army wants to pretend doesn't exist, and doesn't want you to watch.
The US Army has removed or delisted this LGBTQ+ recruitment video from its social media platforms. According to military dot com, the Army is having a lot of trouble finding new recruits… pic.twitter.com/gsIFoyRRF4
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) January 18, 2024
The Heritage assessment says U.S. Air Force readiness is “very weak” and “continuing to spiral downward.” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall agrees. In September, Kendall said, “If we were asked tomorrow to go to war against a great power, either Russia or China, would we be really ready to do that? I think the answer is not as much as we could be, by a significant margin.”
Dakota Wood, the Heritage Foundation’s senior research fellow for defense programs, told the Daily Caller, “When we say that the U.S. military is weak, it’s not an indictment of the individuals. If you had to go up against Russia or China or Iran or some other actor in the world, you’re just not going to have a sufficient amount of military power to go out.”
