Page 6 - Mackenzie Eaglen News Today

The Navy has 31 amphibious ships — what the Corps considers the bare minimum it needs — but the Pentagon plans to shrink the fleet in fiscal 2024.

The Pentagon "is facing its most challenging recruitment environment in 50 years," according to the Government Accountability Office, the main federal watchdog, in a report that frames recruitment and retention as one of the critical "challenges to national security."

Recent Pentagon data indicates the Army and Navy have fallen well short of their recruitment goals this fiscal year, posing a threat to national security.

Experience shows that blended warfare will happen more often thanexpected in one conflict and that hybrid conflict will demand creative approaches to operational problems, including the need forad hoc, modular composite units. As Army leaders create an updatedmodernization plan, they will be wise not to think of modernizationin a vacuum, but to plan for a future force of legacy and modernplatforms.

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, addresses the challenging questions

Since the end of the Cold War, administrations of both political parties have underfunded the military, first harvesting a “peace dividend” by reducing the size of the force and then repeatedly postponing investments needed to replace worn out equipment and preserve the technological advantages that have been a traditional source of American strength. Now, just as this strain on the military—engaged in today’s persistent irregular wars, yet unable to prepare fully for the wars of the fut...

The budget cuts instituted under the Budget Control Act of 2011 are compelling the Administration and Congress to decrease the Department of Defense’s resources.

Congress should provide additional modernization funds to the U.S. Air Force.

Congress continues to allocate funds to produce weapons that the Pentagon itself says it doesn't need.

The war in Ukraine—combined with worker shortages, inflation, and other factors—has made it more difficult and more expensive to produce the most in-dem...