The U.S. military is not able to fully realize the demands of the National Defense Strategy due to years of force cuts and a failure to modernize its arsenal, according to experts.
“There’s a huge gap between what the national defense strategy requires that the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, and the Marine Corps [provide], and what they can actually provide today,” said Mark Gunzinger, director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
“That’s the product of three decades worth of force cuts and delayed modernization.”
To make up for that fact, and to prepare for a possible conflict with China, the United States may need to consider increasing its use of cheaper, unmanned systems, in an effort to augment its more expensive assets, Gunzinger said. Particularly so given that U.S. officials have warned that China’s communist regime could launch an invasion of Taiwan by 2027….