The U.S. military is struggling to keep up with global competitors, according to a congressional commission’s report. The Commission on the National Defense Strategy has found that insufficient industry, readiness, innovation, and funding are hampering the military’s ability to prevail in conflict. Key experts believe collaboration between countries like Russia and China is increasing the likelihood of multi-front conflicts, and that the U.S. would struggle to sustain such a fight.
For more than a year, the Commission, made up of former lawmakers, military leaders, and policy experts, has been studying how well the U.S. military is executing the 2022 national defense strategy. The group released their report on Monday, which will be presented to the Senate Armed Services committee on Tuesday.
The Commission found significant gaps between the Defense Department’s ambitions of deterring or prevailing in a major conflict and current capabilities. One reason for this conclusion is the state of the U.S. defense industrial base compared to China’s. Unclassified public wargames suggest that, in a conflict with China, the United States would likely exhaust its munitions inventories in as few as three to four weeks, with some important munitions lasting only a few days. Replacing these munitions would take years.
The growing collaboration between autocratic powers makes it nearly inevitable that China and Russia would coordinate against the United States in the event of an armed conflict with one or the other. The Commission states that if the U.S. enters a direct conflict involving Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, the opposing country will likely receive economic and military aid from the others. This partnership increases the likelihood that a conflict with one would expand to multiple fronts, causing simultaneous demands on U.S. and allied resources.
The commission’s report includes several recommendations for improving the U.S. military’s capabilities, many of which are similar to efforts already being pursued by the Pentagon. These include reaching out more aggressively to the private sector, particularly new information-technology focused startups, to establish a new industrial base, and reevaluating counterproductive regulatory impediments to buying and selling defense technology.
Other recommendations call for abandoning outdated “programs of record” in order to procure key pieces of equipment, as well as loosening ship maintenance rules, allowing more maintenance in foreign ports, and being more willing to buy weapons and supplies from other countries.
However, the commission’s report paints a picture of a situation years in the making that cannot be quickly resolved. The group states that “Today, the United States has a DIB with too few people, too few companies, declining and unstable financial support, and insufficient production capacity to meet the needs of the Joint Force in both peacetime and wartime.