Headline Roundup • October 20th, 2022
US Military Strength Rated "Weak" By Conservative Think Tank
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The Heritage Foundation released its annual assessment of the United States military’s operational strength this past week. The overall rating was “weak,” the lowest ever given by the foundation. The published assessment deemed the Military was at risk of vulnerability and ill-equipped to respond to potential national threats, citing budget cuts, inflation, and recruitment shortfalls as evidence of a decline in overall strength.
Key Quotes: The Heritage Foundation describes its rating metric as a “comprehensive, authoritative assessment of America’s military power, the operating environments around the world relevant to America’s vital national interests, and the threats posed to the United States by our adversaries.” Heritage Foundation President Keith Roberts blamed the Biden Administration for this low rating, stating “Biden’s reckless, naive foreign policy continues to embolden our adversaries, while his domestic agenda undermines the strength of our military.”
For Context: The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank founded in 1973. The report rated each branch of the military individually. The Military’s Marine Corps and nuclear capabilities both rated “strong,” but all other branches received “marginal” or lower ratings, bringing down the overall score.
How the Media Covered it: The report was widely covered by outlets on the right, but received no coverage from left-rated outlets.
Good News: The suicide rate among active duty U.S. military service members decreased over the past 18 months, breaking a rising trend.
Featured Coverage of this Story
UNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. military in 2022, under the leadership of President Joe Biden, received its lowest ever rating this week in a newly released exhaustive analysis from the Heritage Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength assessed a wide range of areas, including threats to the U.S., the condition of the U.S. military, U.S. alliances, and more.
The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board noted that the assessment’s “weak” rating of the U.S. military was the first time it has ever received the score in the index’s nine-year history.
While...
For the first time, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength finds that as currently postured, the U.S. military is rated “weak” and at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while attending to various presence and engagement activities.
Heritage released the 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength on Tuesday. The release comes as the military faces a full-blown recruitment crisis and two successive years where the Biden administration submitted defense budget requests below the rate of inflation.
The military...
AFP / Fayez Nureldine
The U.S. military is "weak" and "at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America's vital national interests," says the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank in its latest report titled: 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength.
Considering the possibility of a competitor taking advantage of the U.S. being pre-occupied with another challenge, the current military force is at significant risk of being unable to tackle a single major regional conflict, which means it is "certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous" major...
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