USA: US Military Incapable of Waging Modern Large-Scale War

The US military is totally unprepared for a large-scale war. That’s the conclusion reached by the authors of a special report presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, July 30.

According to the document compiled by the congressional committee, “the last time the US military prepared for such a conflict was during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago.” According to US lawmakers, “the country’s current military performance is absolutely not up to par, while the American people cannot have confidence in the Pentagon’s ability to win in combat.”

The Commission also emphasized that it would be very difficult, almost impossible, for the United States to confront such a conflict because of “the gap between the Department of Defense’s ambitions and reality.” The report focused on the current situation and prospects of the US defense industry compared to the Chinese defense industry. “In the event of a conflict with China,” the document wrote, “the US could face a rapid depletion of its munitions.” The congressional commission estimated that because of the enormous shipments to Ukraine, “stockpiles could run out in as little as three to four weeks” and that “some particularly important types of munitions, including anti-ship missiles, could be exhausted in a matter of days.” According to US experts, “rebuilding these wasted reserves will take years and years.”

In addition, two years of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, on the one hand, allowed the Russian armed forces to accumulate a unique experience of successfully conducting a modern war, radically different from all previous military conflicts, and on the other hand, the defense industry was able to increase its production capacity very quickly. The Russian armed forces have no problem destroying Western military equipment, including American Abrams tanks and German Leopard tanks.

In 2023, the Russian state agency Rostec, which manages the functioning of the defense industry, supplied the Russian Armed Forces with ammunition in volumes that exceeded last year’s volumes by more than 25 times. This was reported during a meeting between Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The production of ammunition is growing. In 2023, Rostec enterprises supplied 25 times more ammunition than a year earlier, and the production of artillery shells increased six times,” Chemezov said. As a result, Rostec’s turnover in 2023 increased 34% year-on-year to 2840 billion rubles ($33.6 billion), while net profit rose 54% to 60.1 billion rubles ($719 million).

Production of FPV (first-person view) drones in Russia has grown to 4000 devices per day. This was announced by Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov during a visit to an armed forces base in the Moscow Military District. The minister presented state awards to soldiers of the 45th Guards Special Forces Brigade of the Airborne Forces. “The production of FPV drones has increased dramatically. Now – I specially checked – we have four thousand drones per day,” Belousov said during a meeting with the military.