Heritage Foundation ranks U.S. military as ‘weak’ for first time

The 9th annual Heritage Foundation report has ranked the U.S. military as “weak.” This is the first time the report has given the military such a low ranking.

The report’s findings cautioned that the military is at a growing risk of “not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”

“It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were,” the Heritage Foundation said, according to the Washington Examiner.

“This is the logical consequence of years of sustained use, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged,” the report went on to say.

The Heritage Foundation assessed the military’s chances of securing victories in two major conflicts at once in different areas of the world.

The report concluded that the military force is at risk of being unable to “meet the demands of a single major regional conflict” and would be “ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous” conflicts.

The Heritage Foundation graded each of the military branches individually based on capability, capacity, and readiness, according to the report. The Marine Corps came up the best with a “strong” rating, which was an upgrade from the “marginal” rating it received last year. 

The Air Force propped up the table, receiving an overall “very weak” rating due to struggles with pilot production and retention, leaving “little doubt that it would struggle in war with a peer competitor.” The Navy and Space Force were rated as “weak,” and the Army was considered “marginal.”

The report also scrutinized the United States’ nuclear strength compared to other countries, rating U.S. nuclear weapons as “strong” but trending toward “marginal” or even “weak.”

“No matter how much America desires that the world be a simpler, less threatening place that is more inclined to beneficial economic interactions than violence-laden friction, the patterns of history show that competing powers consistently emerge and that the U.S. must be able to defend its interests in more than one region at a time,” the report said.