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2 August 2024

National Defense Commission: Pentagon has ‘insufficient’ forces ‘inadequate’ to face China, Russia

Lee Ferran

The Pentagon’s current National Defense Strategy is out of date, America’s military is inappropriately structured and the US industrial base is “grossly inadequate” to confront the dual threats of Russia and China, according to a new, high-powered formal review.

“The U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare” for a global conflict, reads an early page from the final report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, published today. “A bipartisan ‘call to arms’ is urgently needed so that the United States can make the major changes and significant investments now rather than wait for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The support and resolve of the American public are indispensable.”

The Commission was created by the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to review that year’s NDS. Chaired by former Rep. Jane Harman, a previous ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, the bipartisan committee’s report will likely be wielded — perhaps literally, as former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Jim Inhofe regularly held up the 2018 version of the commission’s report at hearings — by supporters on the Hill who seek increased defense spending.

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