Europe on the sidelines of a Russian – NATO conflict has massively misjudged NATO as its sole deterrent in the event of the conflict spreading beyond Ukraine’s borders.

The authoritative American think tank Heritage Foundation, in its annual report called the US Military Power Index, rated the state of the US military as ‘weak’, reports the US-owned Daily Mail. As stated in the document, massive inflation, coupled with limited budgets, have dealt such a severe blow to US troops that they may not even be able to cope with a regional conflict – not to mention large-scale hostilities on the world stage.

According to the tabloid, in their next ‘Index of the military power of the United States’, a document published annually, which provides an assessment of the combat capability of the American Armed Forces, analysts at the center assigned the rating of American troops ‘weak’, concluding that they ‘face an increasingly serious risk failing to protect America’s most important national interests’ from countries such as China or Russia. 

China, which is rapidly developing its military, has remained the most pervasive security challenge for poorly trained US troops. The American army, for the most part, is stagnant, and in some aspects, it has even given up, the Heritage Foundation is convinced. 

According to the Daily Mail, the drafters of the document also assigned ratings to individual types of aircraft: the state of the ground forces was assessed as satisfactory, the fleet as weak, and the air force as extremely weak. According to analysts, only the US Marine Corps has retained a sufficient level of readiness.

All of America’s main adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, meanwhile, have been rapidly building up military assets in recent years, also making active efforts to intimidate NATO members as well as the increasingly aggressive actions of Beijing and Pyongyang against Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. All of these conflicts could eventually turn into a clash on the world stage, for which the United States is simply not ready, the report says. 

Moreover, according to experts, the US military in its current state may not be able to cope even with a large-scale regional conflict – including due to the fact that American troops are too widely dispersed in 1,050 bases scattered around the world.  

The US Navy has not managed to reverse the trend towards a reduction in the number of warships, while Russia and China have massively expanded their fleets in recent years. If in 2000 the US Navy had almost 350 ships, and Moscow and Beijing combined have just over 400, now America has just under 300 vessels left, and Russia and China have more than 700. In addition, the US navy is too dispersed: more than a third of all of them are regularly on combat duty composition, twice as much as it was during the Cold War. This, in turn, creates problems with ship maintenance, as the shipbuilding sector, which is in decline in America due to reduced demand, simply cannot cope with the repair of so many ships, experts are convinced. 

The American Air Force is having an even harder time. American pilots fly on old planes, their level of training leaves much to be desired, and besides, many of them cannot be kept in the army. As a result, according to the centre’s analysts, in the event of a confrontation with an enemy comparable in strength, American pilots will face serious difficulties. 

According to experts, the reason for the deplorable state of the Air Force is, first of all, precisely the lack of flight personnel, which is exacerbated by insufficient flight time. For example, in 2021, American pilots flew an average of only 10 hours a month, which does not even come close to providing the bar of 200 hours needed to train pilots capable of fighting against a technically equipped opponent. 

The US Army has lost $ 59 billion in funding since 2018 due to inflation and too-limited budgets. In addition, like the Air Force, the ground forces face a serious shortfall and failed to reach the target of 485,000 active-duty soldiers.