US adversaries have not sequestered their military ground forces

Washington Free Beacon:
The U.S. Army’s ground combat systems risk being surpassed by those being developed by foreign countries such as Russia and China, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The Army is currently using main battle tanks, tracked infantry fighting vehicles, tracked self-propelled artillery, and multiple launch rocket systems developed during the Soviet era. Billion-dollar plans to modernize the force’s ground combat systems have been cancelled over the last decade.

Meanwhile, potential adversaries have prioritized funding new weapons systems and technologies for their forces, raising concerns among American experts about the shrinking capability gap between the United States and other nations.

“Countries such as Russia and China are not only upgrading existing ground combat systems with new and effective survivability and lethality features but are also developing entirely new ground combat systems for domestic use and possible export,” the Congressional Research Service wrote in a report published this month.

“Given the U.S. has ‘no new ground combat vehicles under development’ and new systems are a ‘multi-decade effort’ due largely to resource constraints and DOD’s Acquisition process, there is a possibility one or more upgraded or newly developed foreign ground combat systems could emerge and surpass its U.S. counterpart,” the report states.

Military leaders from across the armed services have highlighted how defense spending reductions put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011 have forced them to fund current readiness at the expense of other priorities, including modernization.
...
There is more.

The military suffered because Obama had other priorities and was not willing to compromise on them to stay within any reasonable framework of a budget.  Republicans went along with it in an attempt to reduce overall spending.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains