The US National Defense Center spoke about the risks of reducing the US military budget
June 14 is celebrated annually in the United States as the "Birthday of the army." On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress decided to create a regular army based on militia units. For the "birthday", the US National Defense Center at the Heritage Foundation has prepared a report on the current state of the American armed forces. "Newspaper.Ru" studied it together with Russian military experts.
As follows from the report of the director of the US National Defense Center at the Heritage Foundation, retired Lieutenant General Thomas Sper, the US Army is experiencing a lack of funding, which "causes serious damage to almost all aspects of the country's combat power."
"The budgets of almost all military programs do not keep pace even with inflation, which forces the army to lower training standards, reduce active strength, as well as reduce the pace of military construction to a historic minimum and cut funding for many projects to develop new weapons," the report says.
Sper separately noted that the total financial losses of the army since 2020 amounted to about $ 46 billion, while an increase in the defense budget for 2023 is not planned even despite the situation around Ukraine.
Indeed, as follows from the document "Assessment of the National Defense Budget", published on May 3, 2022, signed by the Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Defense Michael McCord, in 2020 the US military budget increased by $0.38 billion, in 2021 decreased by $9.76 billion, in 2022 decreased by another $17.08 billion, in A reduction of $19.84 billion is planned for 2023. Total - a total reduction of 46.3 billion.
- the report says.
Not everything is simple with the personnel issue. The army's budget request for fiscal year 2023 plans to recruit 63700 soldiers, which is 8,300 more than in fiscal year 2022 (55,400 people). At the same time, the army's budget application for recruitment for the 2023 fiscal year, amounting to $ 691 million, does not keep pace with inflation compared to the requests of the previous year. This will mean that the training of recruits will be reduced, and the standards of this training will be lowered," says Sper.
The general also criticizes the policy of military procurement. "Most of the military equipment in the United States is outdated and needs to be replaced. The proposed army procurement budget for fiscal year 2023 is $21.3 billion, which is $1.5 billion less than in 2022 (a decrease of 7%), and 12% less than for purchases approved in fiscal year 2021," the report emphasizes.
As an example, Sper cites the purchase of UH-60M Black Hawk, AH-64E Apach and CH-47F Chinook helicopters. For the fiscal year 2023, the army proposes to purchase 6 CH-47, 25 UH-60M and 35 AH-64, which is significantly less than in previous years. For example, in fiscal year 2022, the army bought 9 CH-47, 73 UH-60M and 48 AH-64E. "At the same time, the need for these helicopters will not be closed, this is recognized by the Ministry of Defense itself," Sper notes in the report.
"Newspaper.Ru" asked to comment on the report of Russian military experts.
"The power of the American army should not be underestimated, although it is not in the best shape right now. This is still more than a million people of the regular army and the National Guard, plus about 300 thousand more civilian personnel. More than 4 thousand fighter, army and transport aircraft, and other weapons, tanks and artillery are quite a sufficient number. This is a very serious opponent for any country in the world," he told the newspaper.Ru" military analyst Alexander Zimovsky.
At the same time, Zimovsky noted that the United States, convinced of its hegemony through the development of the armed forces, "began to rest on their laurels and reduced defense spending." "There are only a few new developments, China and Russia have become leaders here, which have recently been updating their combat fleet. They overtook the Americans in hypersonic weapons and multiple launch rocket systems," Zimovsky believes.
Military expert Vladislav Shurygin is also sure that the US army has not paid due attention to work on new types of weapons in recent years.
"With an astronomical defense budget, and in recent years it has amounted to about $ 700-750 billion, the Americans, in fact, have not created anything new in the field of modern weapons.
And Russia, for example, has already tested "Sarmat" this year. The American army has something to think about," Shurygin summed up.
Victor Sokirko
