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US military is 'weak,' in danger of not being able to defend national interests: study
For the second consecutive year, a study has ranked the U.S. military as “weak” and warned that a lack of action could leave the armed forces incapable of defending vital American interests.
“The current U.S. military force is at significant risk of being unable to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,” reads the conclusion of the Heritage Foundation’s 10th annual Index of Military Strength, which was released Wednesday.
The report paints a dire picture of the state of the U.S. military, with its current posture being rated at “weak” by the index for the second consecutive year, calling into question America’s ability to meet security obligations and protect vital national interests around the globe.
The 664-page report addresses a wide range of issues, finding that almost no branch of the U.S. military is ready to face a major conflict. Those issues are most pronounced in the Air Force, which the index rated as “very weak” in 2023.
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The report rates each branch of service on its strength in capacity, capability and readiness, rating the branch power as either very weak, weak, marginal, strong or very strong. The Air Force rated as marginal in both capacity and capability while also rating weak for readiness. Overall, the report found that Air Force power currently rates as very weak, the lowest rating possible.
The Air Force was rated “very weak,” according to the Heritage Foundation Index. (Heritage Foundation)
But the issues weren’t just contained to the Air Force, with the Navy also coming in for ratings of very weak in capacity, marginal in capability and weak in readiness. That combined for an overall rating of weak, according to the index.
“For 10 years this index has monitored the U.S. Navy’s slow decline while China’s Navy has modernized and grown at a fast pace,” Robert Greenway, the director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. “Meanwhile, the Navy has had too little shipyard capacity to keep its fleet maintained, too few ships to pace the threats, and misguided leadership that has instigated a recruitment crisis. Advanced capabilities alone will not offset this, and action is needed to reverse the downward trends.”
The Navy’s current power was rated as “weak,” according to the Heritage Foundation. (Heritage Foundation)
The Army didn’t trend a lot better, the report found, coming in with weak capacity, marginal capability and very strong readiness, resulting in an overall rating of marginal, according to the index.
While the rating may seem better than the Air Force and Navy, problems loom on the horizon for the Army, including a shrinking force that Greenway called “unsustainable” in the long run.
Army paratroopers assigned to the 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade, prepare to breach an obstacle at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, on March 6, 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ryan Parr)
“In just two years, the active-duty Army has shrunk from 485,000 to only 452,000 troops,” Greenway said. “This directly impacts both readiness and effectiveness as the Army is unable to fully man its formations. The recruitment shortfalls caused the Army to cut ‘end strength’ by 12,000 in [fiscal] 2023. This is unsustainable.”
The Army’s power was rated as “marginal,” according to the Heritage Foundation. (Heritage Foundation)
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The U.S. military’s newest branch, the Space Force, had the same overall rating as the Army, coming in at marginal in all three categories and overall. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps recorded the only positive overall score in the index, rating as weak in capacity but strong in both capability and readiness, which resulted in an overall rating of strong.
The Marine Corps power was rated as “strong,” according to the Heritage Foundation. (Heritage Foundation)
A large chunk of the issue can be blamed on investment in the military, according to Heritage Foundation analyst for defense budgeting Wilson Beaver, who told Fox News Digital that U.S. spending on defense has continued to decline for “decades.”
“As a percentage of GDP, defense spending has been in decline for decades. This while the military is being tasked by the president and the Congress to do just as much as it did when it was being funded at 6 to 10% of GDP,” Beaver said.
Making matters worse is a recruiting crisis that has plagued the military in recent years, something Beaver argues has gone unaddressed by the current administration.
“The present recruiting crisis resulted in a shortfall of 41,000 in 2023 and is the worst in our nation’s history,” Beaver said. “If left unaddressed, it threatens the ability of the all-volunteer force to protect us. Rather than emphasizing merit and performance, President Biden and the senior leaders he has appointed choose to focus on the race and gender of candidates, attempting to use the military to promote their ideology.”
The Marine Corps recorded a positive overall score in the Heritage Foundation’s 10th annual Index of Military Strength. (U.S. Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Blake Gonter)
A White House National Security Council spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the U.S. has “has the most powerful military in the world” and that “President Biden and his Administration are committed to ensuring the U.S. military remains capable of prevailing against any adversary.”
“President Biden and his administration are supporting our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Guardsmen, Marines, and Guardians in a multitude of ways: increasing military pay for a second year in a row, pursuing new economic opportunities for military families, expanding and modernizing the U.S. defense industrial base, and ensuring that U.S. forces have the capabilities they need to fight and win wars,” the spokesperson said. “The strongest, most professional, and most capable fighting force in the world requires support across the entirety of the U.S. Government. We again urge Congress to act quickly on the President’s supplemental funding request that will advance our national security and directly support and strengthen our military.”
When it comes to recruiting, the spokesperson added that the Defense Department is “taking several steps to meet Americans where they are and talk about the value of service. They are best positioned to talk about their ongoing efforts.”
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But the problem is not unique to just one administration, according to Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Dakota Wood, who told Fox News Digital the trend of a weakened U.S. military has been ongoing for years.
“Our people are great, but they are poorly served with old equipment, too little of it, and dangerously low levels of training … all of which are essential to protecting our country, the very reason [we] call upon them to serve,” Wood said. “And this isn’t a recent phenomenon; it is the result of years of bad defense policies, badly managed programs, and troubled funding across many years and a series of administrations. If our government is truly serious about the security of our country and in serving America in ways no one else can, it must get its act together in adequately funding defense, ensuring those tax dollars are wisely spent, and when it deploys our military, it is given missions that are achievable and are squarely in America’s interests.”
Air Force trainees are shown at graduation. (U.S. Air Force)
Those problems have extended to U.S. nuclear power, the report notes, which came in with an overall rating of marginal thanks to low marks in multiple categories.
“Our nuclear arsenal is rotting in place, and we are not moving with a sense of urgency to replace/modernize it,” Robert Peters, a research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at Heritage’s Allison Center for National Security, told Fox News Digital.
U.S. military nuclear power was rated as “marginal,” according to the Heritage Foundation. (Heritage Foundation)
The military’s weak rating comes at possibly the worst time in recent memory, with the U.S. facing multiple crises across the globe, including Russia’s continued war against Ukraine, the fight against global terrorism, and increasingly hostile postures by Iran, North Korea and China.
According to the report, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and non-state actors such as terrorist organizations all pose a high threat to vital U.S. interests. The report rates China and Iran as aggressive threats, and Russia comes in at the highest rank of hostile. Meanwhile, both Russia and China are assessed as having “formidable” capabilities.
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That threat is especially true when it comes to China’s nuclear power, Peters said, telling Fox News Digital that the country is the “fastest growing nuclear power on the planet.”
China and Russia both represent “formidable” threats to U.S. interests, according to the Heritage Foundation. (Heritage Foundation)
“We are now on year 14 of the U.S. nuclear modernization program. In that time we have built zero nuclear weapons,” Peters said. “According to the Government Accountability Office, we won’t be able to produce plutonium pits en masse before 2030. The newest nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal is 30 years old — some running on vacuum tubes and floppy disks.”
That sentiment was echoed by Jeff M. Smith, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, who told Fox News Digital that China is the top threat to American interests.
New recruits of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army attend a send-off ceremony in Ganzhou on March 16, 2023. (China Daily via Reuters )
“China presents the United States with its most comprehensive and daunting national security challenge … [Beijing] is challenging the U.S. and its allies at sea, in the air and in cyberspace,” Smith said.
The new Heritage report, meanwhile, shows the U.S. may not be ready to meet that challenge.
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“Unfortunately, the index also makes it clear that our military is woefully unprepared to tackle the growing threat from China and win the new Cold War. Major changes are needed, and they are needed now,” Smith said.
Reached for comment by Fox News Digital, a Pentagon spokesperson argued that the “U.S. military is the strongest fighting force the world has ever known.”
“We have not reviewed the report and do not have a comment to provide on the index,” the spokesperson said. “Every day around the globe, the men and women of our Armed Forces safeguard vital U.S. national interests by backstopping diplomacy, confronting aggression, deterring conflict, projecting strength, and protecting the American people.”
Meanwhile, an administration official took aim at the Heritage Foundation, arguing that the organization was at least partly responsible for holding up officer promotions amid multiple unfolding crises.
BANGKOK (AP) — Vietnam is increasingly using broadly written laws to arrest activists, dissidents and others that authorities consider a threat to the Communist Party’s rule, according to a new analysis released Monday by a human rights group.
The 88 Project, which focuses on rights issues in Vietnam, documented 56 such arrests in 2025, the third consecutive year of increases and double the number in 2022. The report includes only arrests where the defendant could be identified by name and the case tracked, and the actual numbers are believed to be much higher, said Ben Swanton, co-director of the group.
The report says the country under leader To Lam “routinely weaponizes criminal law” to quash dissent. To Lam, the country’s former top security official who has served as general secretary of the Communist Party since 2024, was also elected president earlier this year.
The arrests are largely driven by fears of an uprising against the leadership in a so-called “color revolution,” like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines, according to the report.
It is a fear shared by the Communist Party in neighboring China, which has been accused of using similar tactics to stifle critics. Though competing maritime claims have led to confrontations between the two countries and a tense diplomatic relationship at times, China and Vietnam were able to agree earlier this year to together “prioritize political security and enhance efforts to prevent and resist color revolutions,” the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
“With the ascendancy of To Lam, the country has become a literal police state that tolerates no dissent,” Swanton said.
“This represents a serious regression from the period of relative openness in the 2010s when some dissent was tolerated and civil society groups were able to engage in policy activism.”
Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the findings of the report.
The report found that authorities are relying increasingly on Article 331 of Vietnam’s penal code, which makes it a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison to “abuse democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state.”
Previously little used, “authorities have enlarged the scope and application of Article 331 so that it reaches further into society, beyond human rights and democracy dissidents … to all those who voice any grievance with state or local Communist Party and government officials,” New York-based Human Rights Watch wrote in a report last year.
“The Vietnamese authorities’ increased use of Article 331 is a little known facet of the government’s expanding crackdown on ordinary people who are seeking to use social media and other peaceful means to publicly raise important social issues, including religious freedom, land rights, rights of Indigenous people, and government and Communist Party corruption,” Human Rights Watch wrote.
Among those arrested under Article 331 last year were three men behind the YouTube channel “Nguoi Da Tin’ — The Messenger — on allegations that videos they uploaded were ”distorted content” that violated the statute, The 88 Project reported.
The report provides details of every arrest identified as politically related in 2025.
Those also included an activist for the minority Montagnard group who was arrested in Thailand and extradited to Vietnam, a dissident writer accused of spreading “propaganda against the state,” and a man who helped residents of Ha Tinh province file complaints demanding fair compensation for land expropriated for a new highway.
“The Vietnamese government has dealt alarmingly severe punishments to longstanding targets like journalists and human rights activists, while displaying an increasing willingness to attack groups previously thought safe, such as political exiles and legal petitioners,” the report said.
Ceasefire between US and Iran being tested
Fox News anchor Shannon Bream covers the escalating conflict in the Middle East as Trey Yingst reports from Tel Aviv. The U.S. carried out strikes against Iranian missile and drone storage locations after Iran targeted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, Iran launched drones toward Kuwait and Bahrain, while Israel conducted strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. These events coincide with a diplomatic framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon.
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A “new normal” of heightened risk and uncertain regulation is impacting the Strait of Hormuz, shipping firm Hapag-Lloyd warned Sunday, as military strikes escalated and conflicting routing directives plunged the waterway into operational chaos.
The remarks from the German shipping giant also came as Tehran “simultaneously” began moving millions of barrels of crude oil from Kharg Island for the first time in days, according to maritime intelligence firm Windward AI.
“At Kharg, the T-Jetty and Western Terminal loaded simultaneously for the first time in days; the East Waiting Area holds 28 tankers, 27 dark, signaling the Iranian crude export cycle restarting,” Windward AI said in a post on X.
The outbound cargo consists of an estimated 4.12 million barrels of wet cargo, including crude oil and other liquid hydrocarbons. Of that total, about 3.91 million barrels are crude oil, analytics firm Vortexa said.
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Commercial cargo vessels and crude oil tankers are anchored in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Muscat, Oman, as they prepare to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global trade corridor. (Shady Alassar/Anadolu)
“We have to acknowledge that this is for some months the new normal in the Persian Gulf region,” Hapag-Lloyd AG spokesperson Hanja Maria Richter told Fox News Digital.
“The situation has been fluid for us since the beginning of the conflict,” she said before adding that constant vigilance has become essential to operating in the region.
“We have been making and still make regular risk and situation assessments with our security partners, all relevant authorities and our people on shore and, of course, on the vessels,” Richter said.
“It is a region in conflict, so we consider this with every single ship we move in the region and assess the risks for every vessel and its crew individually.”
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USS George H.W. Bush transits the Arabian Sea as U.S. forces enforce a naval blockade against Iran and support Project Freedom in the Strait of Hormuz, according to U.S. Central Command. (CENTCOM)
Richter’s remarks came as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) launched airstrikes against Iranian targets, including Qeshm Island on June 26 after a vessel was struck in the strait.
This prompted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to retaliate by targeting U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain.
Adding to the strike risk is a tug-of-war over control of the transit lanes.
Lloyd’s List described the fracturing of the waterway as a “confused, two-tier system now operating in the strait, which remains split between the Iran-controlled northern route and a U.S.-protected southern ‘highway,’ with the pre-war routes rendered unusable because of the risk of mines, separating them.”
Iran is responsible for managing and fully reopening maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz under recent understandings, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday, according to Iran International.
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Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought to Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Iranian state television said that passage through the Strait of Hormuz demands coordination with the IRGC.
Hapag-Lloyd pushed back against any future attempts to weaponize or monetize passage through the critical global chokepoint.
“It would be fundamentally wrong to impose fees for passage through international waters,” Richter said.
“Fees for infrastructure such as the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal are a different matter, as they reflect major infrastructure investments. That is not the case with the Strait of Hormuz.”
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While thousands of crew members remain caught by conflicting naval directives, Hapag-Lloyd said it had successfully navigated the initial bottleneck.
“Good news is that we were able to have all Hapag-Lloyd vessels that were affected by the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz and had been waiting in the Persian Gulf depart safely from the Gulf,” Richter noted before adding that “the safety of our crews is our highest priority.”
Thousands of guests, including diplomats, politicians and military personnel, attended an event organised by the US Embassy to Belgium in Brussels on Sunday to celebrate the 250th anniversary of US independence.
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“The US Embassy in Belgium will host an invitation-only celebration to celebrate this historic milestone: 250 Years of Independence: Building Our Future Together.
The lavish celebration took place at Parc du Cinquantenaire, an iconic park in the Belgian capital near the European Union institutions. Guests tried their hand at baseball, rode a mechanical bull and participated in a linedance.
The festivities also featured music, performances, a ceremonial flyover and will conclude with a drone and firework show.
US Ambassador to Belgium Bill White opened the ceremony. Among those attending were Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and European Parliament president Roberta Metsola.
In a post on X, Metsola honoured 250 years of the transatlantic partnership that has weathered both triumphs and challenges alike.
Many US military personnel based in the Belgian capital were also in attendance.
Asked about funding, the US ambassador said he had raised more than five million dollars from over 220 donors, Belgian media report.
Both American and Belgian companies, as well as private individuals contributed, according to White. Sponsors include American multinationals such as Meta, Microsoft, Nike and McDonald’s, alongside Belgian names such as Leonidas, Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Sabena, Van Moer Logistics and Sibelco.
Criticism: the privatisation of a public space
The event, however, drew widespread criticism from local residents and numerous organisations.
On Sunday morning, Greenpeace unrolled a massive banner in the historic Grand Place square in the Belgian capital.
“The 600-square-metre banner read ‘War. Greed. Energy Crisis. What’s there to celebrate?‘ condemning using the occasion to promote Trump’s political and corporate agenda,” Greenpeace wrote in a statement.
“The celebration in Brussels takes place against a backdrop of intensifying global instability driven by the White House,” the statement added.
Outside of the security perimetre of the park, several activist groups, including Extinction Rebellion, Indivisible Belgium and Rise for Climate denounced the event, protesting against the privatisation of the public park.
Local residents also expressed their discontent, unhappy with the lack of communication surrounding the event, but also with the multi-day closure of one of the city’s largest public parks amid an ongoing heatwave that has swept across Europe the past week.
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