Contrary to optimistic claims, military has a readiness crisis

In a recent opinion, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and retired General David Petraeus, assert that the military readiness crisis is a myth. This may come as a surprise to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, who, when asked this spring if the military had “a significant readiness problem,” affirmed, without hesitation, “I do.” And it would surely surprise his colleagues on the joint staff; one military service chief after another has testified about the readiness crisis his service faces.

The evidence, too, contradicts their rosy claim. Among the most telling facts, two-thirds of the Army’s brigades are not trained for a large conventional war, and the Navy’s aircraft carrier and amphibious groups will not recover full readiness until well into the 2020s. With only half of its force ready for high-end conflicts, the Air Force, if called into a major war, would be unable to provide the forces demanded by its current plans. And the Marine Corps has turned to taking spare parts from home-stationed planes just to keep its deployed aircraft flying. As he approached retirement as Army Chief of Staff in January 2015, Gen. Raymond Odierno told the Senate that service readiness “has been degraded to its lowest level in 20 years.”  

{mosads}How did we get here? By underfunding and overemploying a military that is too small to handle all the tasks that’s it been given.

The fact that the current topline for defense spending is, with inflation factored in, equal to or more than the Cold War average spent on the Pentagon means a lot less than it first seems. Unlike the draft-era military, current budgets must support an all-volunteer force and every year has to pay more in maintenance costs to keep old and constantly-used equipment from the Reagan-era buildup in the field. And what new weapons the Pentagon does buy are far more complex, far superior, and thus more expensive, than those bought in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is a testament to the Reagan buildup—and the long hours put in by maintenance crews cannibalizing spare parts from one system to prepare another—that the platforms of the 1980s are still in service at all. But they no longer provide the technological edge they did when introduced; for example, legacy fighters cannot penetrate modern air defenses without extensive and expensive support and even the heretofore invincible M-1 Abrams tank is vulnerable to Russian anti-armor missiles. Operational “readiness” without operational capability is meaningless—in fact, it is dangerous.

Nor is it particularly comforting to compare the Pentagon’s budget with the “announced” military budgets of countries such as Russia and China. Yes, the US military’s budget is larger but so too are its responsibilities. American forces have global security requirements that those regional powers don’t. The measure is what we want our forces to do, not an “apples and oranges” comparison of defense spending.

The “sequestration” provision of the 2011 Budget Control Act, which has introduced both additional cuts and imbecilic turbulence to defense plans, receives most of the blame for the current situation, but the wounds have been inflicted for over two decades. The BCA was enacted on top of the $400 billion in cuts made during the early years of the Obama administration. And the increases of the Bush years, often used to justify those cuts, were more than consumed by the costs of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. This is a train wreck that’s been a generation in the making, originating in the drawdown that began with the “peace dividend” initially taken by the first Bush White House and the “procurement holiday” of the Clinton administrations. 

All that said, the key question remains, is the US military up to the next challenge, is it ready to carry out its mission in support of the nation’s security needs? The answer, of course, depends on what the next challenge is. But it’s useful to remember that even with the Bush administration’s temporary build-up of Army and Marine end-strength, America lacked the forces necessary to properly conduct campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. Given conflicts and crises in Europe, across the Middle East, and in the western Pacific, the American military is being asked to fight and deter in three unique theaters, despite being formally sized for one major conflict.

In sum, the most important readiness question is: ready for what? Today’s force is running at a breakneck pace to sustain the deployments of an unquiet peace. But it is unprepared for a major conflict, let alone two wars at once. Striking a what-me-worry pose may reassure politicians and pundits, but it does nothing to undo the very real, extensive readiness crisis.

Gary Schmitt is co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.