{"id":1923315,"date":"2023-05-03T05:58:12","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T09:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shrinking-u-s-military-capacity-now-for-capabilities-later-is-a-mistake\/"},"modified":"2023-05-03T06:03:21","modified_gmt":"2023-05-03T10:03:21","slug":"shrinking-u-s-military-capacity-now-for-capabilities-later-is-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shrinking-u-s-military-capacity-now-for-capabilities-later-is-a-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing US military now, for future capabilities, is a mistake."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fshrinking-u-s-military-capacity-now-for-capabilities-later-is-a-mistake%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1923315&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>The U.S. Military&#8217;s Shrinking Capacity and Capability<\/h2>\n<p>Year after year and bill after bill, Congress keeps telling the Pentagon to reduce near-term risk by maintaining capacity and to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shrinking-u-s-military-capacity-now-for-capabilities-later-is-a-mistake\/\" title=\"Reducing US military now, for future capabilities, is a mistake.\">meet global combatant commander requirements<\/a>. Yet one administration after the next continues to shrink and age the U.S. military. The result is now clear: The U.S. is left with fewer options to manage global events and keep simmering crises from bursting into full-blown conflicts.<\/p>\n<h3>Capacity Shortages Lead to Risk Acceptance<\/h3>\n<p>Marines stuck on-base in Japan for lack of available ships were forced to skip a recent training exercise. After February\u2019s devastating earthquake in Turkey, the commandant of the Marine Corps said he could not send help to a key NATO ally. Gen. David Berger had the Marines, the equipment, and the proper training for units. What the Marines didn\u2019t have in the region was a ship, specifically an amphibious vehicle, for crisis response. The result, according to the commandant, is that combatant commanders \u201cstart to accept risk. Where they can\u2019t get to something, they can\u2019t deter something.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Divest to Invest: A Wasteful Gospel<\/h3>\n<p>Yet the gospel of \u201cdivest to invest\u201d reigns supreme at the Pentagon. This year, the president\u2019s defense budget seeks to let go of eight ships, including three amphibs, before the end of their service lives. Congress should reject this waste outright.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Plenty of so<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/u-s-military-is-entering-window-of-maximum-danger\/\" title=\"U.S. Military Is Entering \u201cWindow of Maximum Danger\u201d\">-called legacy systems<\/a> are needed for competition and deterrence on a daily basis.<\/li>\n<li>Traditional ISR still provides the bulk of our intel collection.<\/li>\n<li>There is a \u201cbalance between ISR in competition and ISR in conflict.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But the U.S. military is now so small that it is foreclosing options that are cheaper \u2014 namely, prevention \u2014 for outcomes that are avoidable, ugly, and costlier.<\/p>\n<h3>Time to Act Now<\/h3>\n<p>Enemies are not scared of ghost fleets and expanding bone yards. What does send a message is multiple cranking production lines across the services \u2014 everything from ships and drones to munitions and aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>These hot production lines \u201cby themselves, are a deterrent, and we need to put much more focus on that across the board,\u201d Undersecretary of Defense William LaPlante told Congress last month.<\/p>\n<p>But this Pentagon leadership team has proposed the permanent shuttering of too many production lines \u2014 from the LPD-17 amphib and the HH-60W rescue helicopter, to the CH-47 Chinook helicopter and the V-22 Osprey.<\/p>\n<p>Promises hold no sway. Only good old fashioned \u201cconsistent upward and adequately funded demand signals\u201d will help better balance capacity and capability to compete and deter now, as well as win the war later. Pentagon leaders have repeatedly shown their bias to pass the problem to the next administration. Congress must now act to bridge the yawning military capability gaps.<\/p>\n<h3>About the Author<\/h3>\n<p>Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness. She is also a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-america-needs-the-b-21-raider-stealth-bomber\/\" title=\"Why America Needs the B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber\">regular guest lecturer<\/a> at universities, a member of the board of advisers of the Alexander Hamilton Society, and a member of the steering committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Year after year and bill after bill, Congress keeps telling the Pentagon to reduce near-term risk by maintaining capacity and to meet global combatant commander requirements. Yet one administration after the next continues to shrink and age the U.S. military. The result is now clear: The U.S. is left with fewer options to manage global<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1923316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[9986,3899,4505,4953,6878,14332],"class_list":["post-1923315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-capabilities","tag-future","tag-military","tag-mistake","tag-now","tag-reducing"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1923316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}