Trump Takes the First Step in Restoring the U.S. Military
By Thomas Spoehr
January 29, 2017
On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an exceptionally important executive order initiating both the beginning of the rebuilding of the U.S. armed forces and the fulfillment of a campaign promise.
Because he signed this order on the same day as he signed the order on immigration it hasn’t yet gotten the attention it deserves. That’s a shame.
The order, titled “Rebuilding the U.S. Armed Forces,” has not yet been officially posted to the White House website. But a draft of the order, accompanied by news reports, gives us enough details to be able to assess it.
The order directs Secretary of Defense James Mattis to conduct a 30-day review of the readiness of the armed forces to assess their ability to conduct the fight against the Islamic State or ISIS, and other forms of radical Islamic terrorism, as well as near peer competitors and regional adversaries.
This review is critically needed. The Heritage Foundation has been vocal in calling for such a review based on our independent assessment of the U.S. military. The Heritage 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength assessed our overall military capability as “marginal, trending towards weak” because of many years of budget cuts and overuse. Our assessment found that the U.S. Army today is the smallest it has been since the start of World War II; the Navy is the smallest it has been since World War I; and the Air Force suffers from crippling shortages of pilots and maintenance personnel. For example, the average age of the Air Force’s planes is 27 years old.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/01/29/trump_takes_the_first_step_in_restoring_the_us_military_110708.html
