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US military 'weak,' unable to win a single war: American think tank

Wednesday, 19 October 2022 1:15 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 19 October 2022 1:21 AM ]

File photo of American military personnel

An American think tank rates the US military's current level of capability as "weak," saying the force is incapable of winning a single war against archrivals China and Russia, let alone two concurrent ones.

The New York Post daily published excerpts of the report prepared by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation on Tuesday.

The foundation's assessment only appraised the Marine Corps as “strong,” while giving the Army a “marginal” rating, evaluating the Space Force and Navy as “weak,” and finding the Air Force to be “very weak.”

"[T]he current US military force is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict,” the report lamented, adding, "The force...is certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous [major conflicts]."

The right-wing foundation blamed, what it called, years of underfunding and “poorly defined priorities” for the military's becoming “weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on the global stage."

As many as "20 years of operations" had taken its toll on the force, the report said, referring to the United States' invasions across the world, especially in the West Asia region, over the past decades.

It referred to the country's inflation as another major factor that was costing the military dearly. "At present, the [US President Joe Biden] administration’s proposed defense budget for [fiscal year] 2023 falls far short of what the services need to regain readiness and to replace aged equipment,” the report said, “and Congress’s intention to increase the proposed budget by 5[%] accounts for barely half of the current rate of inflation, which is nearing 10[%]."

Amid the already dire situation, the possibility of two-front fighting had increased, the think tank said, citing Russia's February-present military operation in Ukraine and, what it called, China's becoming "increasingly aggressive" in the Pacific.