AGING The U.S. military is getting older — the average age of our fighter jets is 30 years.
The Aftermath: UKRAINE WAR China can now put 350 combatants
in her home waters, and we barely scratch 300 for a defense of Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, not to men- tion our other global commitments. We must be able to flood the Pacific
with attack submarines, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, the maintenance required on our existing submarine fleet alone would occupy the resources of all our ship- yards for the next 30 years. Our Navy has jettisoned its long-
With the return of Carter-era infla-
tion, Biden defense spending will dip below 3% of GDP for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union. To put that in perspective, under President Lyndon Johnson the Penta- gon accounted for 9.1% of GDP; even under Carter, 4.5% was considered the minimum for force sustainability. When laser focus is required to
deter China and Russia, billions are being siphoned off the Pentagon’s top line “to mitigate the impacts of cli- mate change” — no doubt pleasing “Fleet Admiral” Greta Thunberg, but not meaningful to Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. There is a ferocious, great power competition ahead without the resources to match the threat. The war tocsin is sounding. Chinese generals are openly threat-
ening Japan with nuclear extinction, all the while claiming that destiny points them toward a future free of American power and influence. We see what Putin is doing, and the aya- tollahs continue to destabilize the entire Middle East. The Heritage Foundation’s 2022
Index of U.S. Military Strength has laid open the looming threat: “In the aggregate, the United States’
military posture is rated ‘marginal.’” The 2022 Index concludes that the
current U.S. military force is likely capable of meeting the demands of a single major regional conflict while
also attending to various presence and engagement activities, but that it would be very hard-pressed to do more, and certainly would be ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts — a situation that is made more difficult by the generally weak condition of key military allies in Europe and the Pacific. The U.S. military is getting older
faster than it is getting modern. As currently postured, “the U.S. military continues to be only marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.” The Air Force is leading the decline. We are facing China’s arriving fifth-generation fighters with aged F-15s and F-16s not sustainable in a high-end conflict. The average age of American fighter planes is now 30 years. We have 2,000 planes down from 4,000 under President George H.W. Bush. We need 386 squadrons of mixed capabilities, including bombers and tankers capable of overcoming the vast distances of the Pacific. We currently have 300 such squadrons, some com- posed of B-52s piloted by the grand- sons of those who first flew the planes 60 years ago (the last model came off the line in the Kennedy administra- tion) and only 20 B-2 stealth bombers in the inventory. The crisis for the Navy is most evi-
dent in the Pacific. China has 110 ship- yards, and we have 20.
range carrier strike forces and has not prepared for what would be the first fleet on fleet engagement since the battle off Okinawa in 1945. A crash procurement of long-range
anti-ship and air-to-surface missiles is needed by the Navy now to deter the growing threat across the Taiwan Straits. We must have a fighting fleet, not just a troop carrier for the Marine Corps.
Army funding is down 11% under
Biden. Training and procurement are underfunded. Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr estimates that under current restraints, the Army could run out of ammunition in a high-end con- flict in a few short weeks. The Biden administration has also embarked on a mindless “divest to invest” agenda that devastates current readiness to develop weapons for the second half of the century. We do not have that time; the threats
are here and now. We are stretched and burdened by a counterterrorism mindset that does nothing to prepare for a peer-on-peer confrontation. We must ramp up production of hypersonic missiles and cyber warfare capabilities now. There is precedent. Reagan took
Carter’s defense budget of 4.5% of GDP and raised it to 6%, bringing the sclerotic Soviet Empire to its knees. We must do the same.
Robert Wilkie was U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Trump administration and, before that, an undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
MAY 2022 | NEWSMAX 15
TECH. SGT. MATTHEW LOTZ©AIR FORCE
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