The U.S. military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat,” in the judgment of a congressional commission whose new report finds that collaboration between Russia, China, and other autocratic states is increasing the chance of a multi-front conflict—and that the U.S. would have trouble sustaining such a fight.
For more than a year, the former lawmakers, military leaders, and policy experts on the Commission on the National Defense Strategy have studied how well the U.S. military is executing the 2022 national defense strategy. The group released their report on Monday and will present its findings to the Senate Armed Services committee on Tuesday.
The group found big gaps between the Defense Department’s ambitions of deterring or prevailing in a major conflict and reality. One of the reasons they came to that conclusion is the current state of the U.S. defense industrial base compared to China’s.
“Unclassified public wargames suggest that, in a conflict with China, the United States would largely exhaust its munitions inventories in as few as three to four weeks, with some important munitions (e.g., anti-ship missiles) lasting only a few days. Once expended, replacing these munitions would take years,” the report states.
Furthermore, the growing collaboration between autocratic powers make it nearly inevitable that China and Russia would coordinate against the United States in the event of an armed conflict with one or the other.
“The United States should assume that if it enters a direct conflict involving Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, that country will benefit from economic and military aid from the others. We also believe that this partnership increases the likelihood that a conflict with one would expand to multiple fronts, causing simultaneous demands on U.S. and allied resources,” the report states.
Of the commission’s many recommendations, most are similar to efforts the Pentagon is already undertaking, including reaching out more aggressively to the private sector, particularly new information-technology focused startups, to establish a new industrial base, and reevaluating counterproductive regulatory impediments to buying and selling defense technology.
Other recommendations are more pointed, such as abandoning outdated “programs of record” in order to procure key pieces of equipment, and loosening ship maintenance rules, allowing more maintenance in foreign ports, and being more willing to buy weapons and supplies from other countries.
But for the most part, the commission’s report paints a picture of a situation years in the making that can’t be righted quickly.
“Today, the United States has a DIB with too few people, too few companies, declining and unstable financial support, and insufficient production capacity to meet the needs of the Joint Force in both peacetime and wartime,” the group said.
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