{"id":33625,"date":"2024-02-01T22:47:30","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T22:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2024\/02\/01\/marine-corps-strong-while-us-military-overall-is-weak-report-says\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T21:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T21:03:15","slug":"marine-corps-strong-while-us-military-overall-is-weak-report-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/off-duty\/military-culture\/2024\/02\/01\/marine-corps-strong-while-us-military-overall-is-weak-report-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Corps rated \u2018strong,\u2019 US military overall \u2018weak,\u2019 report says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Heritage Foundation this week released its annual report on the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/military-strength\/executive-summary\" target=\"_blank\">Index of U.S. Military Strength<\/a>,\u201d which the conservative Washington think tank suggested to be a less-than-ideal time for today\u2019s troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The report\u2019s findings, which, in essence, rank end-strength against national security threats, paint a picture of an aging and understaffed military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe Active Component of the U.S. military is two-thirds the size it should be, operates equipment that is older than it should be, and is burdened by readiness levels that are more problematic than they should be,\u201d the report reads. \u201cTo the extent that progress has been made, it has been at the expense of both capacity and modernization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To narrow scope and provide accuracy, the report focused specifically on hard power \u2014 namely, the military\u2019s dominating influence on the world stage. Overall, the study was designed to illustrate whether or not the military in its capacity in 2024 would be able to defend the country and pursue its strategic goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The researchers ultimately settled on three criteria for measuring hard power: Capability, capacity, and readiness. The criteria were then analyzed through a lens of the U.S. military\u2019s ability to sustain itself through two major, ongoing regional conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs currently postured, the U.S. military is at significant risk of not being able to defend America\u2019s vital national interests with assurance,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The report\u2019s rankings for each military branch and the force in total, meanwhile, spanned five levels: Very strong, strong, marginal, weak, and very weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of the branches, the Marine Corps was found to be the sole service rated as \u201cstrong.\u201d Army and Space Force were considered \u201cmarginal,\u201d while the Navy and Air Force were rated as \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cvery weak,\u201d respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the Marine Corps was considered to have the best outlook, data may be stilted due to the fact that, unlike the other branches, the service \u201cis measured against a one-war requirement rather than the two-war requirement to which the other services are held,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe 2024 Index concludes that the current U.S. military force is at significant risk of being unable to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,\u201d the report noted. \u201cThe force would probably not be able to do more and is certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous MRCs \u2014 a situation that is made more difficult by the generally weak condition of key military allies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a result, the report rated the overall end-strength of U.S. forces as \u201cweak.\u201d The report also notes that things have gotten progressively worse over the last two-to-three years, in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is the inevitable result 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,\u201d the report concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Update: A previous version of this article reflected older branch rankings but has since been updated.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The report paints a picture of an aging and understaffed military.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":64996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":68,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,23,89,68,12,26,13,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3271],"class_list":["post-33625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-middle-column","category-military-culture","category-news","category-newsletters","category-off-duty","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"FR6RWDVYS5BLXHP6P62PNYDNLM","arc_canonical_url":"\/off-duty\/military-culture\/2024\/02\/01\/marine-corps-strong-while-us-military-overall-is-weak-report-says\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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