US Army Too Undermanned for Potential Conflict With China, Russia: Report
The US Army does not have a sufficient number of soldiers to take on near-peer adversaries China and Russia in a potential armed conflict, a recent Congressional review has found.
The Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which was formed to review the country’s 2022 defense doctrine, said the service is understaffed for fights that could possibly expand across several geographic regions.
It noted the importance of building a force that is sufficiently large to operate in various places simultaneously because it is “very hard to imagine a conflict in the Indo-Pacific that doesn’t become global very quickly.”
The army finished fiscal year 2023 with 452,000 active-duty soldiers — its smallest number since World War II.
The latest Pentagon budget proposal would further reduce the service’s strength to 443,000, far below its 556,000 soldiers in 2010.
Recruitment woes are a large part of the problem, as the US Army has been consistently falling short of its goals for years.
‘Outpaced by China’
According to the 132-page report, the US Department of Defense has been “under-financed” and “inadequately structured” to keep pace with modern warfare.
This could lead to a US defeat in a future conflict “unless significant changes are made to the national defense strategy.”
The review noted that Washington is now being outpaced by Beijing, with the Asian military superpower investing $711 billion annually on defense to meet the US’ nearly $900 billion in spending.
“China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the US military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment,” the report stated.
“Without significant change by the US, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor.”
A ‘Wake-Up Call’
The commission argued that the US defense department has failed to recognize the evolving global threats as evident from its “lack of preparedness” to meet national security challenges.
They also said the report should serve as a wake-up call to the American people and its leaders, who remain “largely unaware of the dangers” the country is facing.
“The Commission believes the US needs a force-planning approach that is both global and prioritized,” the report reads.
“An exclusive focus on a single adversary or single region … is a fundamentally flawed response to the global nature of challenges posed by such adversaries as China and Russia and to the growing cooperation between adversaries across regions.”
