Host a conversation on military readiness and the threat we face. Od, served two decades in the marine corps. Assessing military strength is a major undertaking. How does the Heritage Foundation try to do that . Gather all Public Information we can come across. Thecial testimonies from pentagon, acquisition reports on major programs. General news reporting from the community and our personal contacts in the services and pentagon. We gather all that all year long, go through analysis and writing processes, prepare last years information and this years and then issue a report card on the military. This year on a scale of one to five we would give it a marginal. We feel the u. S. Military at large is marginally able to meet the demands of National Security requirements. Meaning they can handle one major conflict in one part of the world, but not much more than that. We think it needs to be more than that because the u. S. Has global interests and responsibilities. Host the u. S. Military budget has increased under the trump administration. Has that made an impact . Guest it actually has and we have seen that in readiness. Things like building new ships and airplanes. These are multiyear references that take a wild to expand or grow. The same thing on manpower. The number of people you have as well, but readiness, where you get people you have with the equipment they have into the field to train and fly and shoot and drive and all those things, to be competent in what they are doing, that has really improved over the last 2 or 3 years. If we were going to pick one high point, it is increased readiness of the force we currently have. Host it is the 2021 index of u. S. Military strength. You can find it at heritage. Org. That is what we are talking about in this segment of the washington journal. If you would like to join the conversation with dakota wood, democrats can call 202 7488000, republicans 202 7488001, independents 202 7488002, active and retired members of the military we have a special line for you 202 7488003. Intoeport we want to dive is one of the key topics which is assessing the Global Operating environment. That is the threat we are facing in the world. Where are they coming from . Guest it is two parts you are talking about. Is it easy or difficult for the American Military to do what will be called upon to do . In that section look at friends and allies and where we have forces. Do they know how to work in a particular area . The threat section is to your point and we look at russia, korea, and, north the destabilizing influence of terrorism in key parts of the world. We assess the threat environment in general is high. Not the highest category, a four, but in the high category because the main competitors, like china and russia, have really made serious investments in the military capabilities. Expanding their reach, power projection, really improved the capability of their forces with longerrange guided munitions, a lot more attention to training for readiness, and combat competency. Iran has expanded its portfolio of missiles to 3000 ballistic missiles. You see in the News Headlines with china and what they have been doing in the South China Sea, so it is a worrisome environment for my threats perspective. From the ally perspective they have been making some progress, especially in the last year or two. Among nato members making more investments in their own defense, but they are still falling short. Host we encourage viewers to go to heritage. Org and open up this very easy to navigate index because you can follow along with some of the easytoread charts we are going to be going through for our visual learners. Ofare showing in capability the threats around the world. You talk about russia and china being rated as formidable threats. On the lower end of the threat scale are those that you consider to be capable threats. Middle east terrorism falls into that as well as afghanistan and pakistan terrorism. Explain why that is on the lower level of capability. Guest in those tables, we tried to use descriptive words. Language to convey a something you need to be concerned about or just generate urgency. When we look at threats it is a combination of intent and capability. You cannot really measure intent so you look at behavior. How has a country been behaving and as it has been behaving more or less aggressively what are the tools it has . When you look at terror groups and they do not possess submarines and combat aircraft fleets and large land forces ballistic missiles, but they do pose an immediate threat, especially in a politically destabilizing way. You can have a terror group like al qaeda or an Islamic State that is very aggressive in its rhetoric, but there capability is limited to small arms, manufactured bombs, may be smaller gauge rockets. We give them a lower score on the capability side even if their activity is very aggressive. Host here is the part of that report that those are calling in on active and retired lines will probably be most responsive to. It is talking about the capabilities, readiness and capacity of the military branches in this country. Just taking a look at the comparison between the army and navy, the army rated very high when it comes to readiness. Weak when it comes to capacity. You can see the comparison to the navy. Capacity,it comes to readiness on the marginal level. Explain the differences to that and why you chose those rankings. Guest the capacity is very important to understand our scoring. We think the u. S. Military needs to be able to handle 2 major problems. If you got tied up in the asiapacific region, some kind of conflict with china, it is not that you can leave the middle east or europe when you have iran and russia. You have to have a large capability that you can address u. S. Interests in multiple regions. That is why we think this two war capacity is critical. When we look at the navy and army they just do not have the numbers of units. It does not mean the individuals, soldiers are weak or not competent, we just do not have enough of them. The army has paid a lot of attention to the readiness of its forces. Sending combat teams to the National Training centers, really making the shift from counterterrorism focused operations to readying itself if it had to go into largescale conventional conflict against a major opponent like russia or china. Their readiness is almost off the charts. They spent a lot of time getting their units back up to speed where is navy has had problematic maintenance areas. Keeping ships out at sea, doing quick turns with shipyards, the backlog maintenance that occurred over many years. When you look at those scores the force we have today not the 15 years from now if called upon to go to war, the forces are too small for the task we think they would have. They need to do more focus on modernizing their equipment which is a lot of money from congress and spending time and attention to make those forces competent. That is kind of explaining the methodology. Host if you agree or disagree, you can take it up with dakota wood directly. He is Defense Programs Senior Research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. That line for active and retired military is 202 7488003. That is where we are going to start. Ed out of jacksonville, florida, retired military. Caller good morning. I was wondering if your report looked at those who served. Guest we addressed the criticality of reserved forces. There is so much complexity in the political establishment of our National Guard and our reserved forces. A lot of variability in different units across the country depending on what their particular focus might be and whether youre talking individual Ready Reserve over selector units. What we do is we look at the active components in the scores we use those active combat units as a bellwether. They are representative of components of the total force. Be firste units would thrown into the breach. We have to make sure they cannot do they cannot do anything over a sustained time without reserve forces. The ones we actually score in those tables are the active component elements. Host one of the top line conclusions from the report notes americas leadership remains in question and security interests are under significant pressure. Challenges continue to grow, longstanding allies are not what they once were, and the u. S. Is increasingly bedeviled by debt and constraints to sustain its forces with its interests. That was from the index of u. S. Military strength. Focus on longstanding allies not what they once were. Guest when you think about nato, members and the forces they used to have, at the end of the cold war west germany alone had 5000 main battle tanks, a sufficient navy, a competent air force. Today the combined germany, 20 or 30 years later, has fewer than 300 tanks. 5000 per west germany and 300 or fewer today. Two years ago they had no operationally deployable submarines. They had a contract civilian companies to get their military pilots sufficient time and helicopter cockpits to maintain certification. That is an example. The british military. The size of the british military, airpower, navy, Royal Marines and army, the total is smaller than the United States marine corps alone. They only have 17 surface ships in the navy. China added that number of ships to his navy in the last two years or so. When we look at the investments of our partners and friends they have really fallen short for about 20 to 25 years. We talk about the importance of allies. If you are going to go to war, you want people helping you out and be there to help people. But if they are not doing what they should be doing, it is a great burden on the United States which increased our costs and risks. Host chris in massachusetts is next, line for democrats. Caller quick question, unlike iran and russia the united without ann sillier invitation from the government. It is without the United NationsSecurity Council authorization. The United States is an Occupying Force and appears to be looking after the interests of the saudis and israelis. Do happen to comment on that . Thank you and have a nice day. Guest thank you. We are talking policy decision. Force isf military different than the condition of military force. The policy debate going on in washington, Congress Continues to fund the defense department. They have not for bid and the use of military forces. Almost by default we have the u. S. Congress, representative branch and american people, going along with his use of military power. When those forces were introduced in syria it was absolute chaos. You had a lot of civilians being massacred by the recognized government, the use of chlorine gas, it was mayhem. There was an international effort, at least by coalition partners, to try and introduce forces, keep back the warring parties, support the civilians there were under assault, and a lot of Freedom Fighters were called back that were representative form of government. Things of consolidated a bit in the last year or two, especially because russia and iran came to support the regime. But i do not think anybody is military arehat advocates of peace, stability, helping their own population. For my understanding of the role of u. S. Forces to combat Islamic States, trying to provide some peaceful enclave and facilitate the support of humanitarian that thee, things Syrian Government would not be supporting. There are sometimes situations in which if you cannot get consensus among the international community, the right thing to do is go in, use military force for the right reasons, and see how the situation falls. Host out of sarasota, florida this is stephen a republican. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. It seems like some of the news programs seem to be a form of propaganda that help other countries and while we do not see and have not heard much in the last several years, other than conservative channels i watch both liberal and conservative channels and i hear things like russians targeting americans. Sort of like propaganda. They do not talk about the good things that have been going on in our military and i was wondering why we would use to hurt ourselves . Networks that are almost antiamerican. It seems strange to me we are hurting ourselves. Guest i think the past year has pointed out the differences of opinion across the United States. We will see with the Electoral College decides on who the next president is. It does appear to be remaining in joe bidens favor on that, but even with that said 74 Million People voted for the current president. Obviously more voted for the contender. It is just an example that people hold very strongly held views. There are differences of opinion on the role of the United States and the world and how it executes that role. Is it primarily economic, military, is it a mixture of all those things . I think what we have seen in the news Media Establishment at large is really picking sides on that. There is a philosophy that pervades a lot of the reporting based on either the journalists involved or the Editorial Board or whoever is writing the checks for a particular news outlet. We see this preference for viewpoints coming through. I think the really educated consumer appears to be taking in multiple streams. Winging, the right web, looking at international reports. What are the brits, germans, japanese writing about . That is the way to get a holistic view and then you throw your voice and like you have done on this program. Host coming back to this issue of assessing military strength, writes, you seem to have a more negative position. Guest strength is a relative. Person per person, unit for unit, we would dominate on the battlefield. We have really good people, good leadership, kind of the american model where you put initiative in the lower ranks opposed to other models which are more authoritarian. They do not have that kind of free play were personal Initiative Comes up. Experience. Have the the last time china went to war with anybody was against vietnam in 1979i believe. They did not fare too well. That does not mean you recognize your shortfalls and improve your situation, which is what china is doing. Where we have a negative view on these things is if you had to go more than one place at one time, we do not have the capacity. The military skills we have are great, what we are using equipment that is 30 and 40 years old. The average age of a Fighter Aircraft we see flying around his 30 years old. More than half of the navy ships are greater than 20 years old. The marine corps uses amphibious vehicles that were purchased in the 1970s. It is a comparison thing. Where would you put a u. S. Force on a map against an opposing force if that is all they had to be concerned about . We are pretty sure they would win in that conflict. But it was more than that, if you had to be more than one place, old equipment and small capacity. Host we have a space force now. What about assessing the strength of the space force . Guest it was an easy move to take. Individuals in the air force that focused on space carved them out, but was still a 20,000 or more space oriented personnel in the army and navy that are not part of that space force. It is a great first step. We think it is needed because of the unique nature of space and Space Operations and the different platforms you can put up for various reasons. But it needs to continue to expand. That is just in the military services. You still have Intelligence Community that are huge consumers of space and space products that are not part of that space force. We think the initiative is good, very aggressive and trying to get their feet under them and develop an identity and culture, which will take time, but the effort needs to continue and be much more comprehensive. Host it is the index of u. S. Military strength we are talking about. Yearly index put out by the Heritage Foundation. Dakota wood is the Defense ProgramSenior Research fellow and served two decades in the marine corps, taking your phone calls this morning. Lynn is next out of virginia, independent. Caller thank you for taking my call. I have been trying to get hold of cspan for the last seven months. Host you are on now. What is your question or comment. Caller i have a comment. Civilianrdinary citizen. I just have a comment about our military system. I am so proud and impressed of what our President Trump has done for the last four years. Though i am an ordinary citizen, but i watch the correct news and you can feel it, you know it, that we are in much safer place in the last four years than for a long time. That is my simple comment. Host are we in a safer place . Guest i think we are more realistic. In that sense, yes, i think we are. Timeuring that period of the world does not stand still. You have a china that has dramatically expanded its capabilities, improved skill levels. They have gotten more serious about a power projection force to secure its commercial routes from china proper through the South China Sea into the indian ocean and middle east. It is a much different china. While we have gotten better in terms of our focus less counterterrorism and much more on the Great Power Competition the people talk about our adversaries, competitors, have also made improvements. The first step in dealing with any kind of problem is recognizing that