The primary responsibility of a national government is to provide for the common defense, but U.S. lawmakers are failing. Facing growing threats from China and other hostile nations, Congress and President-elect Donald Trump must spend whatever it takes to bolster weapons supplies and recruitment of personnel to wield those weapons.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday that the United States might not have enough munitions if a “full-scale war” broke out with China. Sullivan said the nation should be “stockpiling both the vital munitions we know we’ll need in sufficient quantities and the components needed to produce them on short notice.” China’s “single biggest advantage” was its “sheer scope and scale of production.” Adm. Samuel Paparo last month warned that military aid to Israel and Ukraine is “eating into our stocks” significantly.
Other reports this week show that China is rapidly increasing its usable numbers of J-20 stealth fighters even as U.S. contracting for F-35 stealth fighters is suffering unanticipated delays and as Defense Department officials say still more testing is needed to determine if automatic cannons on F-35s can actually shoot straight. The War Zone reports “historically low readiness rates” for all variants of the F-35 that could undermine combat operations.
Meanwhile, recruitment for the armed services lagged for a full decade, with Army enlistments down from 58,000 in 2013 to 37,000 in 2023, and all services combined reporting a shortfall of 41,000 recruits in 2023. The services, except for the Navy, barely met their targets in 2024, but, in some cases, only by lowering standards. With a decrease in the number of children entering adulthood because of the “birth dearth,” recruitment challenges could grow, especially as young people look increasingly unfavorably on the military.
Those aren’t the only challenges to the Pentagon’s ability to fight wars, even though, on paper, the U.S. continues to enjoy technological advantages. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the Navy is racing to implement new ways to reload cruise missiles and other weaponry onto ships deployed half a world away. The challenge is daunting. In heavy fighting, big warships could run short of “vital ammunition within days, or maybe hours.” Yet some of the sophisticated weaponry has been reloadable only in port, not at sea, meaning each ship could need two months of travel to and from a facility with reloading capability.
Seth Cropsey, a former deputy undersecretary of the Navy who now is president of the Yorktown Institute think tank, wrote in 2023 that China alone, without other adversaries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, and various jihadist groups, confronts the U.S. with “the world’s largest navy by ship numbers, an increasingly competent ground army, and an air force capable of offensive operations.” It aims to dominate the Far East. If it succeeds, its control of Pacific shipping lanes could devastate the U.S. economy.
Alas, Cropsey notes that America’s submarine fleet, which would bear the brunt of operations in a Pacific war, “is in disrepair,” even as it loses size, one sub a year with net attrition. U.S. missiles “are in short supply,” and production “will not be at full scale until the late 2020s.”
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All this means the U.S. should start spending massively on recruiting, retention, and equipment. This doesn’t mean the net defense spending should simply grow. The Pentagon is notorious for procurement waste and inefficiency, so cost-saving procurement reforms should occur simultaneously with the buildup of weaponry and manpower.
The best way to ensure peace is to be strong enough that, from the start, foreign warmongers will be deterred from aggression.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
