“Our country has largely taken for granted the peace and prosperity won through generations of investment and sacrifice, and we risk learning the hard way that continued superiority is not assured. Retaining a military advantage – particularly under the current pace of technological development – requires an enduring commitment to consistent investment in our country’s security…The greatest threat to U.S. military strength is the misconception that America can no longer afford military superiority.” — Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation.
My wife, Patricia, and I just attended the annual President’s Club gathering of the Heritage Foundation in Washington. One of the topics presented by their policy experts is our waning military strength in the face of significant growing challenges. I walked away with their 474-page book entitled, “2019 Index of U.S. Military Strength.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the details, but simply present an overview that we citizens need to be aware of.
Let me first present Heritage’s assessment of U. S. military overall power, and then tell you how that strength matches up against our global challenges:
U.S. Army – Marginal
U.S. Navy – Marginal
U.S. Air Force – Marginal
U.S. Marine Corps – Weak
U.S. military nuclear power – Marginal
Now, we ask ourselves, what tests do we face for which we must be strong? In addition to the conventional challenges, we now face significant military challenges brought on by rapid developments in technology. This is addressed in an Oct. 12, 2018 piece by Mark Helprin of the Claremont Institute, entitled “Defining Defense Down – Across the spectrum of military technologies; the U.S. is losing our edge as competitors gain ground.” I quote:
“Our military deficiencies remain largely unaddressed,…In the nuclear realm: China is now a major, destabilizing power. … American nuclear modernization…fails to match, among other things, the relatively invulnerable mobile missiles possessed by Russia, China and even North Korea, as U.S. land-based missiles remain at risk…(Further, the) ”military persists in packing the safest part of the nuclear deterrent in fewer and fewer submarines—14 as opposed to 41 four decades ago. All the above serve to institutionalize nuclear instability, as do deficiencies in conventional weapons.
“China and Russia variously are ahead in quantum communications, antisatellite weapons, directed energy, and hypersonics. Whereas the U.S. is entirely dependent upon electronics and satellites, the American military cannot jam quantum communications, protect its satellite net, or defend against hypersonics. The Navy’s already diminished fleet may soon be vulnerable to missiles flying so fast that the only way to stop them is with directed-energy weapons that even the latest class of ships has neither the electrical capacity to support nor the hull size for retrofitting.”
“As Michael Griffin, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering, succinctly warns, if the U.S. fails to shape up in regard to, for example, defense against hypersonics alone, China and Russia will ’hold at risk our carrier battle groups…our entire surface fleet…our forward-deployed forces and land-based forces,’ with the only choice ’either to let them have their way or go nuclear.’…Save for the near miracles of ingenuity that have in the past served the U.S. so well, the only way to prevent this is with a massive, properly directed, long-overdue infusion of funds….”
This same article quoted Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.) who sounds as though he’s throwing up his hands, saying: “We are not in a position to have the defense budget that a lot of people envision when they start spelling out these nightmare scenarios.” To that I say, All well and good. Is what the Pentagon and the military hawks are saying simply scare tactics to build a military force larger than needed, or are these threats real? For my money, we can’t stick our heads in the sand and hope for the best. We must study the threats, and prepare accordingly, because “Hope is not a winning strategy.”
We have kept ourselves safe because we have kept ourselves strong. Maybe we have spent more money on defense than we needed to have spent, but in my book, the protection we bought was worth the price.
Townsend's Inlet – I am 100% surprised that Townsend's Inlet has it's own designation for select town. Way to go!
