World
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.
“Masters of the Universe” might not know who its audience is. Sure, yes, perhaps “everyone” is the goal. Modern blockbusters are usually aiming for those golden four quadrants that might justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie about an old toy. But as far as beautiful, blond Mattel products go, He-Man is not and was never going to be Barbie.
It’s a character and aesthetic — bodybuilder muscles, pageboy haircuts and all — that is about as rooted in the 1980s as you can be. The toy launched in 1982, apparently an attempt to compete with Star Wars products. The animated series came the next year, and in 1987, a movie was released with Dolph Lundgren. It was a critical and box office flop, and that was around the height of its popularity.
Yes, some have reclaimed that “Masters of the Universe” as a campy cult classic, and there have been some animated series in the last few decades, but culturally speaking, He-Man seems to have stayed in that decade. It’s a relic that went the way of Saturday morning cartoons — aside from that meme set to “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes, which is referenced in the new movie. But even that’s a little long in the tooth: It was made in 2005.
This “Masters of the Universe” was directed by Travis Knight, who did spin something charming off “Transformers” in “Bumblebee.” But this is a film that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. It’s, paradoxically, a big-budget B-movie. It’s cartoony and campy, which it is also constantly apologizing for. It’s also violent enough to probably rule out the under-10 crowd. It’s aiming for something in the vein of a Taika Waititi “Thor” or a “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but it doesn’t fully commit to the thing that the HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA video understood so well: He-Man is extremely silly. Not just the character. The whole thing: the look, the names, even the phrase “by the power of Greyskull, I have the power.”
The script and story, which is laboriously credited to so many people it’s probably not worth going into, attempt to turn much of this into a one-note joke. Here, they excuse cringey names like Fisto and Ram Man as the product of a young boy’s imagination. The film sets up a world where Prince Adam (played as a boy by Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) is sent away from Eternia for his protection as the kingdom fell to Skeletor (Jared Leto). And for 15 years he’s been stranded on Earth, working a dull job in human resources, living with a roommate and obsessively looking for the Power Sword that is his only hope of getting back home. He’s also grown into a hunk ( Nicholas Galitzine ), but an extremely awkward one who isn’t shy with his origin story. Naturally, everyone thinks he’s basically crazy.
Thankfully, our time with him on Earth is short (but perhaps not short enough in a movie that runs a bloated 142 minutes, including a Lundgren cameo) and, soon enough, he’s back on Eternia and trying to help return the kingdom to its former glory. Everyone is very dismissive of him, including his old friend Teela, who has grown into a model-y warrior (played with cool girl jadedness by Camila Mendes), until he figures out how to use the sword that instantly transforms him into a superhuman. It’s difficult to stress how not exciting or dramatic this quick fix is.
The large cast is doing the best they can. Galitzine is quite awkward and sweet, but his character is deeply underdeveloped. Idris Elba brings some goofy gravitas to a fallen warrior whose confidence was shaken. As Skeletor, Leto has gone full camp with a theatrical British accent that reminded me less of Bane and more of Paul F. Tompkins’ Andrew Lloyd Webber. This isn’t a bad thing — Leto and Alison Brie, as his abused henchwoman, seem to be having the most fun of all, like exiles from an episode of “Power Rangers” — but it does make you wonder why they didn’t just cast an English character actor in the first place. Others aren’t so lucky: Morena Baccarin is mostly there for vibes as The Sorceress, and Kristen Wiig is mostly forgettable as a warrior robot.
It also tries to weave in threads about expectations of masculinity and power, but even that is messy and confused and fails to incorporate the female characters into the dialogue.
The movie might have worked better if it had just gone full Saturday morning cartoon with fewer self-deprecating jokes. But that would have required more conviction about what everyone was making in the first place.
“Masters of the Universe,” an Amazon MGM Studios release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “sequences of violence and action, some suggestive material and language.” Running time: 142 minutes. Two stars out of four.
World
Fireworks reportedly trigger mass horse stampede through Rome streets, injuring several soldiers
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Fireworks set off without authorization in Rome reportedly triggered a mass stampede of frightened horses during a late-night rehearsal for Italy’s annual Republic Day parade, injuring multiple riders and animals.
The incident occurred late Friday near the ancient Baths of Caracalla as mounted units from Italy’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies were practicing for the June 2 national celebration, Reuters reported.
Roughly 35 horses bolted through city streets following the unexpected fireworks, the outlet said. Video captured the chaotic scene, showing numerous horses galloping along Via Cristoforo Colombo as drivers recorded the scene.
The search and recovery effort reportedly continued until dawn the next day, with the last horse recovered roughly nine miles from the scene.
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A runaway horse bolts down a road during a late-night ceremonial rehearsal in Rome around May 29, 2026. (Lucio Virzi Fotografo/REUTERS)
According to Reuters, the sudden bangs began shortly before 11:30 p.m. and triggered panic among the ceremonial horses, many of which were being escorted by Italy’s Army, Carabinieri paramilitary police, and state police.
Some riders were mounted, while others were leading horses by hand when the startled animals broke free, the outlet said.
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During the chaos, a 22-year-old soldier reportedly suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung, though officials said his injuries were not life-threatening. At least 15 horses were also injured, though none required euthanasia, according to reports.
Italian outlet ANSA said the stampede injured three young soldiers from the Montebello Lancers and a 29-year-old policewoman.
Police and emergency crews station near a road as panicked horses flee down a Rome road on May 29, 2026. (Lucio Virzi Fotografo/via REUTERS)
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Officials are reviewing how the unauthorized fireworks were ignited near the rehearsal site.
The Rome Local Police Command said four traffic police officers were involved in the incident and were reportedly near the firecrackers when the explosion occurred, ANSA said.
Officials said one of the officers allegedly lit a battery of fireworks about 200 yards from the horses, the outlet reported. The officer was identified as a 50-year-old who joined the force after passing the most recent exam.
Video footage and witness statements suggest the explosions and the horses’ escape occurred simultaneously, according to the local report.
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The Italian Air Force acrobatic team “Frecce Tricolori” seen during Italy’s annual Republic Day on June 2, 2025. (Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Rome police commander Mario De Sclavis told Corriere della Sera that the incident “discredits the image of the Corps and its officers,” according to Reuters.
Sclavis added that the agency will take “necessary measures” to hold those responsible accountable, according to ANSA.
“Last night’s events hit us like a tsunami,” he said.
Published on
An oil tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” has arrived in the Bay of Douarnenez in western France on Tuesday under the escort of the French Navy.
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The Tagor was intercepted and boarded in international waters off the coast of Brittany on Sunday with support from the United Kingdom, the Elysée Palace confirmed.
French officials said the vessel had departed from the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk and was sailing under a false Cameroonian flag when it was intercepted.
Authorities said the ship’s Russian captain initially refused orders to stop, prompting a boarding operation that the Kremlin has described as an act of “international piracy”.
It is the fourth tanker linked to Russia’s shadow fleet to be detained by France since September 2024.
Shadow fleet vessels are typically characterised by opaque ownership structures, frequent changes of flag registration, ship-to-ship cargo transfers and limited insurance coverage.
Western governments say the network has become a critical tool for exporting Russian oil despite international restrictions.
According to French authorities, the Tagor was bound for the port of Limbe in Cameroon when it was stopped.
Flying a false or invalid flag is considered a serious maritime violation and is commonly associated with sanctions evasion.
Iranian shipping magnate linked to Russian oil exports
The vessel has attracted particular attention because databases have linked it to the wider shipping network of Iranian oil trader Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, one of the most prominent figures accused of facilitating both Russian and Iranian oil exports.
Shamkhani, the son of former Iranian national security chief Ali Shamkhani, has built a vast network of shipping and logistics companies operating primarily from the United Arab Emirates.
In July 2025, the European Union sanctioned Shamkhani and several companies linked to his business empire, including Admiral Group and Milavous Group, describing him as a central player in Russia’s shadow fleet.
The EU said his network had become an important facilitator of Russian crude oil exports and accused him of helping generate significant revenues for the Russian energy sector.
The United States subsequently expanded sanctions against what it described as Shamkhani’s “vast shipping empire”, targeting more than 100 entities, individuals and vessels connected to the network.
U.S. authorities said the structure had generated billions of dollars through the transportation and sale of Russian and Iranian oil, although French authorities have not publicly alleged that Shamkhani directly owns the Tagor.
Fourth vessel detained by France in recent times
France has intensified enforcement against shadow fleet vessels over the past year. Authorities detained the tankers Deyna and Grinch in the Mediterranean on similar grounds, although both vessels were later released after paying fines.
In a separate case, a French court sentenced the Chinese captain of the tanker Boracay in absentia to one year in prison and imposed a €150,000 fine after the vessel failed to comply with orders to stop off the Brittany coast in September 2024.
The French government announced in April that it would strengthen penalties for vessels operating without valid flag registrations or refusing maritime inspections, reflecting growing European concern over sanctions evasion and maritime safety risks associated with the shadow fleet.
According to the European Union, nearly 600 vessels linked to Russia are now subject to sanctions as governments seek to tighten restrictions on Moscow’s oil exports.
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