The Daily Signal - The Decline of America's Military, and Why It Matters

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

None of us want to think about another attack on America. But nor do we want to be unprepared if such an attack occurs. Dakota Wood, the lead editor of The Heritage Foundation's Index of U.S. Military Strength, explains that right now the military's readiness status is "marginal." In other words, between aging equipment and other problems, we're far from ready to fight if have to wage war against two different enemies. "Near the end of the Cold War, we had 770,000 soldiers in the active-duty Army. Today, we have less than 480,000. We had nearly 600 ships in the Navy; today we have 290 and most of that stuff is very, very old," says Wood, a veteran himself. We also cover the following stories: President Trump reacts to the news that the whistleblower's lawyer had called for his impeachment in early 2017. Democrats have a new proposal to tax millionaires. Donald Trump Jr. spars with Joy Behar and Whoppi Goldberg on "The View." The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet,iTunes, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, November 8th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. The military is rebuilding, but it's still unprepared for a major war with China and Russia. That's a sobering takeaway from the Index of Military Strength, an annual report just released by the Heritage Foundation. Today, Heritage Defense expert Dakota Wood will join the podcast to unpack the findings of the report and what we can do to shore up our military strength. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes, and please encourage others to subscribe. Now, on to our top news.

President Trump wasn't happy when he heard the news that the attorney representing the whistleblower, Mark Zade, had tweeted shortly after his election. coup has started, and impeachment will follow ultimately. Fox News also reported that Zade tweeted in February of 2017, referring to a tweet from President Trump, another disgraceful and disrespectful posts that demeans our democratic system. Every day that goes by brings us closer to impeachment. Now, President Trump has tweeted, based on the information released last night about the fake whistleblower's attorney,

the impeachment hoax should be ended immediately. There is no case except against the other side. Well, as Democrats look to subpoena White House officials, House Republicans are preparing to subpoena the whistleblower. Congressman Jim Jordan said that Republicans want the whistleblower to testify on the record about what he or she saw regarding Trump's dealings with Ukraine. It's unlikely that subpoena will go through, however, Democrats retain veto power over Republican subpoenas. But Republicans maintain the president should be able to face his accuser on the record. Congressman Mark Meadows noted that the whistleblower statute doesn't require lawmakers to protect the whistleblower's identity. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, and Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, are now proposing a new tax on millionaires.

According to a press release from Van Hollen's office, their millionaire surtax would apply an additional 10-percentage point tax to incomes above 2 million for married couples or above $1,000. one million for individuals. It would apply equally to wages and salaries as well as to capital gains in other investment income. Buyer told reporters, per the Hill, this is a bill designed to address two major problems of public policy, the lack of revenue and inequality. The U.S. and China appear to have taken a first step to rein in the trade war. On Thursday, China's Commerce Ministry said that the two countries had reached an agreement to cancel out some existing tariffs on each other's exports. Gao Feng, a spokesperson for the Commerce Ministry, said it's important that both countries remove an equal amount of tariffs at the same time. It's a sign of progress in the nearly

two-year trade war between the world's two largest economies. President Trump recently has been putting pressure on China to reduce subsidies to state-owned enterprises and stop forcing American companies to hand over technology to Chinese firms per NBC. Popular Christian comedian John Christ has canceled 2019 tour dates after Charisma News published an article featuring five unnamed women accusing Chris of being inappropriate or engaging in sexual misconduct with them. John Chris said in a statement to Charisma News, over the past number of years, various women have accused me of behavior that has been hurtful to them. While I am not guilty of everything I've been accused of, I confess to being guilty of this.

I have treated relationships with women far too casually, in some cases even recklessly. My behavior has been destructive and sinful. I've sinned against God, against women, and the people who I love the most. I have violated my own Christian beliefs, convictions, and values, and have hurt many people in the process. Donald Trump Jr. went into the lion's den on Thursday, when he sat down with the cast of The View. When Joy Behar criticized the rhetoric of his father, Trump Jr. went on the offensive. We've all done things that we regret.

I mean, if we're talking about bringing a discourse down, Joy, you've worn blackface. Whoopey. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And don't. You said that Roman Polanski, it wasn't rape rape when he raped a child. So let's talk about serious things. So you want to bring this up?

The question came up. I did not go in black face, please. No, she was not in black face. Thank you. Sorry. Listen, being black, I recognize black face. This I can say. Okay?

I know what I'm going to back me up on that. So now that you, now that you've broken this piece of ice, because I guess this is the fight you wanted. It's not the fight of art. Yeah, it is. But if we're talking about character, if we're talking about these things. Are you questioning my character? I'm not going to ask you a character. I'm talking about your character.

I'm not. I'm sorry. I didn't question anybody. I simply said that when you're talking about your father's taking more heat than anybody else, that it's not so. Instead, and when, yes, as a president. It's ridiculous. Well, then Trump Jr. took to Twitter and shared a clip of Joy Behar back in 2016, admitting to wearing something like blackface. That is me.

It was a Halloween party. I went as a beautiful African woman. Oh, yes, he ain't black. But that's my hair. Yeah, but it is. So the whole is coming back. That is me. Did you have tanning lotion on?

A little makeup that was a little bit darker than my skin. So that's a little awkward. Next up, we'll feature my interview with Dakota Wood, where we go through worst case scenarios for other nations attacking the U.S. and how our military isn't prepared enough. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous.

Find out more at heritage.org. Joining me today is Dakota Wood, the Senior Research Fellow for Defense Programs at the Heritage Foundation, and also he served in the Marines for 20 years. Thanks for joining us today, Dakota. It's a real pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So you are the head editor of the Heritage Foundation's Index of U.S. military strength, which was just released. The index states, after extensive analysis, that, as currently postured, the U.S. military is only marginally able to meet the demands of defending America's vital national interests. So let's dig into how you and the defense researchers came to that conclusion. First off, you look at the international scene and what threats might be present.

What nations do you think the U.S. should be worried about right now and why? Yeah, there's only one reason to have a military. It's because you think there's somebody threatening your interest, right? So to your point, I mean, it's, you know, who constitutes a threat? And we've settled on kind of four major big states, and that would be China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. But why those four are not somebody else? So you have to kind of back up a bit and say, well, what are America's interests, right? a terror attack in a U.S. city is a bad day.

It doesn't mean the end of the United States. Russia with a very deep nuclear warhead bench, you know, and major forces could pose that sort of threat. And that's what we had to deal with in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. So we have this threshold that we use in looking at what nations or what groups rise to a level to really present a serious threat to a vital. U.S. interest, you know, direct threat to the homeland, like big missiles or bombers, something like that, sparking a big regional war that would be a serious concern to us. You know, if Europe is in flames or parts of Asia, what have you, you got trading partners, political instability, you know, so a big thing like that would be of concern. And then cutting us out of

significant parts of the world. So we have trading relationships. You wouldn't want, let's say, China becoming the hegemon, you know, the big actor and denying us access to the oceans and the air spaces and those sorts of things in that part of the region. So if you're going to deter somebody, okay, what do they have in terms of ability to challenge you and what do you have to have to have that kind of deterrent and sort of push back on them? So we look at these core interests. We look at the nature of these threats like a China, Russia, North Korea.

nuclear weapons for Iran, which causes mayhem in the Middle East. And those are the small set of bad actors that challenge our interests at that level. And then getting to how that relates to American power, we look at historical examples. You know, if you have to go to a big war, how much stuff does it take? But we can get into that, I'm sure. Okay. And then you also mentioned that terrorism coming from two regions is a particular concern. Tell me about that.

So Islamic State's been in the headlines a lot. ISIS, is it really a threat to the United States? I mean, I don't see ISIS battalions marching through New York City or, you know, Salina, Kansas, right? So what kind of threat do they pose? And the nature of the threat that like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Islamic State, al-Shabaab, these sorts of groups, is they destabilize regions. So they undermine the rule of law. They destabilize, you know, local and national governance structures. and it creates opportunity for a big actor like Russia or China to get involved or extension of Iranian influences.

And so this ripple effect causing refugees to leave that region and go other places like we've seen go up into Europe, you know, that's the reason why these terror groups really rise to a level of challenging a critical national interest, not because the terror group itself has a direct threat against the United States. I mean, they've got no navies, air forces, artillery or anything. like that. So it's kind of these second and third order effects, and that's why we include them in the index. So you've been mentioning what's in America's national interest and getting at this a bit, but let's spell it out a little bit further. So obviously defending the homeland. None of us want invasion by a foreign nation here. But you say that national interests go beyond that when it

comes to defense. Could you expand on that? So everybody wants to make money. You want to be able to provide for your family to have a job, start a business. If we're only buying, and selling amongst ourselves here in the United States. It's a fairly limited market. And where is the opportunity? So we have trade relationships with other countries and other parts of the world. So if you want to have a trading relationship with a country in Asia, but Asia is a wash in war where somebody is denied you access to that market, either the materials, your

raw materials or finish products that you bring in and assemble here in the United States, or being able to sell something that we make here in the United States to a partner, We would much rather have more partners on our team than aligning themselves with China, for example, or Russia. So if the United States is going to be viewed as a credible, stable, economically powerful partner, then we have to be able to reassure allies and trading partners. You have to deter the expansionist tendencies of these other large countries, you know, like China. You know, if I'm a small country in another part of the world, who am I going to pick? Which team am I going to be on, essentially?

Do I have a strong relationship with China or do I have a strong relationship with the United States? So, U.S. military power reassures friends. It deters competitors. It shows that the United States is serious about being a good neighbor in an important region of the world. And so it actually enhances diplomacy and economic relationships in ways that it just wouldn't be possible. if you didn't have a competent, credible military. So outside of terrorism, the last few decades have been relatively peaceful, at least for the United States. You know, when you're looking at these threats, obviously you can't predict the future.

But do you think that long term we are headed for a period of less or more stability or about the same as we've been the past few decades? Oh, we'll have a war. Oh, okay. Well, that's a great happy note. So it's a blessing and a curse in the last 25 years. So the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, 92 or so, we'll say about that. We have had the luxury in the 1990s of not having any major competitor that caused us concern. China wasn't an economic power yet.

North Korea didn't have nuclear weapons. These sorts of environmental conditions existed throughout the 1990s. And then we had the terror attacks of 2001. And now what the United States has been focused on is, counterterrorism operations, counterinsurgency operations like we've had to deal with in Iraq up to about 2011. And then just the general mayhem, again, that's in our newspapers, you know, news out of lines and websites and all that sort of thing. So for about 25 years, we have been able to focus on these kind of lesser events. And we've conducted operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, again, against enemies that don't have navies, they don't have air forces, no armor capability, no artillery.

You know, these are small unit sorts of actions. And so we've been able to deploy places around the world without any interruption at all. And we just go and do what we think we need to do without a problem. I mean, there's a hazard to the individuals on the ground. But in terms of national military power, uncontested. But if you look at history, since our founding, you know, in the late 18th century, I mean, a revolutionary war, you just go to Wikipedia or any kind of timeline of U.S. events. And we are involved in a major war relative to the size of the country in our population about every 15 years.

So we're a long overdue. Oh, my goodness. You know, so Spanish, I mean, you know, Revolutionary War of 1812. I mean, you kind of go up along to that, U.S. Civil War. We had stuff going on in the American West and with Mexico in the late 1800s. You get into the early 1900s, so thereabouts, you know, the Spanish-American War, late 1890s. And then you have World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm. In 1990, 91, you had Desert Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

And that's just our history. And then you look at, you know, military activities or crises that have affected other countries as well. So history doesn't give any indication, you know, of coming to an end. And you see the rise of China and how it's been very expansionist in the South China Sea and East China Sea and muscling other countries aside. You see Russia taking parts of Ukraine invading that country. Now involved in Syria, it's invaded Georgia previously. It's been very muscular in its military activities in the Baltic Sea region,

the North Atlantic and the Arctic. So these are other countries that aren't happy with the United States being the dominant power. They're going to push back. And in that world of kind of big actors, you know, shouldering each other back and forth, I can't tell you when or where, but just the patterns of history and the nature of human behavior is we will have another incident someplace and probably sooner than later. And so then the question is, is what kind of military capability do we want to have at hand when that crisis does occur? So to get into that, what kind of war do you think we need to be ready to fight? Our foreign correspondent here at the Daily Signal, Nolan Peterson, recently covered the U.S. military doing exercises.

in Germany with others and he said it was interesting. He himself fought in Iraq and he was saying that this is, they're looking at doing a traditional old school. That's a weird way of putting it. That's true, conventional, right? Yeah, conventional warfare like World War II or something, not terrorist hiding and the way many of our military now know how to fight. So is that a kind of war?

Conventional warfare you think we need to be ready for? Are there other kinds? What kind of, yeah, war does the U.S. need to expect at this point? So if you make a bet that you know what kind of war is going to happen, you're probably going to be wrong. Okay. And the history of warfare and, again, human interaction is new technologies always add to the pile of concerns. They never get rid of concerns. You are full of so much good news.

I mean, it's, you know, why do we have personal insurance? You know, I have insurance, car insurance. I can't tell you when I'm going to have an auto accident, but I've got an auto insurance policy. So I think our military is a national insurance policy as a guard against. hazard, which you know is going to come up. You can't plan for the deer running across or somebody that blows for a red light. You'd like to be able to or to predict that, but it's just not possible. And, you know, world affairs are the same way. So when we see new things come on, and this is what a lot of people in our business, my business, will talk about is, you know, cyber

robotics, unmanned or autonomous weapons platforms, the use of space-based assets, It's artificial intelligence, you know, making it possible to kind of understand what your opponent is doing and more artfully kind of grapple with them. So old stuff like tanks are so passe, that's so 20th century, you don't have to worry about it anymore. And it's just nonsense. So here we have the United States going into Afghanistan in 2001. We've got strategic bombers, satellites, you know, the rudimentary forms of cyber capabilities, magical weapon systems compared to what the Taliban have. And yet we had U.S. Special Operations Forces riding horses in league with the Northern Alliance. And the magical part to this is an American operator with a radio on his back

able to call in an advanced air strike, but you still have to operate in that environment. So horses, you know, mules, foot patrols going through towns to interact with shopkeepers and gather intelligence that way, to think that this is just kind of, you know, a standoff war, and it's all going to be robots and digits and directed energy, you know, laser beams and those sorts of things, those will be features. But my opponent is also developing those capabilities. So our colleague, J.V. Venable, has written about this in terms of advanced fighter aircraft, you know, the stealth technologies. It makes planes like the F-22 and the F-35, which is what the Air Force leading vehicles are right now. Very, very, very difficult, not impossible, but

difficult to see on a radar scope. So I have an advantage of closing with my enemy's Air Force. Well, if my enemy develops that same kind of capability, then the two planes cannot see each other at any meaningful distance. So the very fact that they have advanced capabilities and design characteristics will likely mean that they have to get within visual sight of each other. and you're actually returning back to a World War II or Korea War vintage dog fights where these planes are going to have to use guns and try to shoot each other out of the sky. So, you know, it's weird how history kind of circles back because technologies kind of cancel each other out. And what's left is who is most competent with the tools at hand to contest control of key terrain.

And so I think warfare just has a way of reminding us that it's ugly, it's brutal, it's very physical. We add new things to it, you know, like robots and directed energy. But it doesn't replace the things in the past. So, you know, potential war with China, if we wanted to imagine that, a lot of cyber going on, you know, there's a lot of advanced technology. And what does that mean when you say a lot of cyber going on? What does that look like completely? So, you know, you see things about ransomware attacks on the city of Atlanta, Georgia. So somebody used malware, some kind of a virus, to get into city's official records system.

And it locks down all the information. And then the perpetrator, the bad guy who got that stuff inserted in, usually a bad link or something, is going to charge you a lot of money to give you the key to unlock your records. So that's the use of cyber as a shorthand way of saying computer-based sorts of technologies. So if I know that my opponent has a sophisticated radar system, are there ways for me to use computer linkages to insert some kind of a virus or a surveillance type of program to either mess with him? You know, does he actually see something on his radar scope or are they false images that I projected? Am I able to just sit there and watch what he's watching? And then I know how better to deploy my forces, right?

So this use of malware, of computer viruses and these sorts of worms is another word for it, different type of software coding. You get inside the enemy's command and control system, their communication system, maybe you mess with their banking system, anything connected. You know, power grids, right, hospital types of mechanisms and all that, any way to mess with my opponent so that it distracts them and makes them less effective. I'm going to try to do that sort of thing. And they're going to try to do it to us as well. It seems like the practical impact would be civilians would be affected a lot more by a war. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, here in the United States, you think World War II, well, the war is over in Europe, right? Or it's, you know, across the Pacific. Not a lot went on back here in the continental United States. In future war, actually, it's occurring today, you can have hackers that might be in some office building outside of Moscow. or in North Korea or Iran or what have you. And as long as they've got a computer connection to the Internet, you can find your way through that World Wide Web, you know, through these connections through computers,

and you can start messing with the American Stock Exchange system, you know, out of New York, or it could be a power distribution plant located in Minnesota, or it could be traffic signals, you know, the directing traffic in downtown Dallas. So anything connected to the Internet, net is potentially exploitable by an adversary who has the right skill set and the right programming and knows how to use that.

So that will be a feature of future war. And we have seen instances where Russia has actually done that. They've brought down the power grid of other countries, like say in Ukraine. They've completely messed with all the government systems in, I believe it was Estonia some years ago. And so a lot of these countries that are closer to our major competitors have been. dealt firsthand with this sort of cyber warfare. And I think it's going to be, again, like I said, a feature of future warfare, but it doesn't get rid of the need to have things like submarines and

tanks and artillery and infantrymen. Okay. Well, now I want to move to a log cabin in the woods. You and me both, right? Speaking of submarines. So when the index looked at the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, you rated all four branches as marginal in terms of readiness. So can you explain to me, what does that mean? And how did you come to that rating? Yeah, so we chose the word intentionally to be a little bit alarming. If we said that it was okay, well, it's okay. I mean, what do I like to be better, but okay is okay. If you say that you're marginally able to do something, well, what does that mean, right? A little bit of an alarm there. And what we looked at was, again, the United States is a major power. We have interests all around the world. So you can't really say

I just want to focus on Europe and I'm going to forget about other places. You know, I'm just going to focus on China and not be concerned about Iran and their support to terrorism and those sorts of things in the Middle East. So as a global power, you have to be able to reassure partners and allies in many regions at the same time. And if you have a small military and let's say China tried to take Taiwan, which is a big island off the coast of China, and they view it as part of Mother China, we have a relationship with Taiwan that we're going to prevent the physical taking of that island. So to go 8,000 miles from the United States, it would take a lot of our capability to do that. Well, if we have a small military and you're using up 80 or 90 percent of it to respond to

one emergency, does Russia now have an opportunity, you know, to do things in Europe or do Iran have the opportunity to push through Iraq and Syria and attack Israel. So in our assessment on our scoring, we said that the United States, based on the historical use of force over 150 years, needs to have the ability to handle two major crises nearly simultaneously. And it's not that we think that we will be in two wars, but if all you have is the ability to handle one, you either don't allow yourself to get drawn in because then you would be exposed to other places. Or if you do have to commit, now that provides opportunity to exploit it.

So we look at the amount of military force that was needed for something like a Korea or a Vietnam or a desert storm, which was the big war against Iraq, the kick him out of Kuwait back in 1991. And we said, we need two baskets of that, be able to do something and then have enough left over where any other potential competitor would be deterred. Ooh, you know, the United States could respond if I tried to get crazy over here. And so now we look at the size of the current U.S. military, which is dramatically shrunk since the end of the Cold War. And we say that given what we've got, our current military is marginally able to protect

U.S. critical interests. But it would take everything we have to respond to one major war, and you just wouldn't have much left over. So we've got great people. They do a lot of work deploying all around the world and the service of the country. We just don't have enough. And a lot of our equipment is very old. And again, we've shrunk in size.

I mean, it used to be near the end of the Cold War, we had 770,000 soldiers in the active duty army. Today we have less than 480,000. We had nearly 600 chips in the Navy. Today we have 290. And most of that stuff is very, very old, and we can talk about some of those ages, if you'd like. So one question I'm curious about is why stop with two major threats? Like, isn't there a chance, let's go full worst case scenario here, China, Russia, and then Iran decides to join in the fund and start a third war.

How did you decide that two was enough? Yeah, so, you know, there is kind of practical realities. So, you know, we did not use a reference of World War II or World War I. If the entire war is at that level of, well, I mean, you're just, you've got to do everything you can. We don't anticipate on a daily basis we're going to maintain 10 or 12 million people, you know, in the U.S. military. So those are weird occurrences in history where all bets are off and the entire national economy has been toward waging war against a competitor who is doing the same thing. Nazi Germany just taken over the entirety of Europe, right? Japan taking over most of Asia.

So there is a scale that starts to – when it gets to that point, you can't really plan those sorts of numbers. But these – I want to say smaller wars, but think of Korea relative to World War II. It was a regionally contained sort of thing. And so again, when we look at the behavior of these potential enemies, we look at the size of their militaries and what can they do. There does seem to be a deterrent value in the U.S. being able to respond. to some kind of a major conflict like we're talking about here. And then other people say, wow, if they can do that there, they might be able to do that someplace else.

And it would be, I think, unreasonable for us to say, hey, America, you need to triple your defense budget. You know, it's just not going to happen, short of some kind of an existential threat. So it seemed to us that the two-war construct, which has been repeatedly visited by administrations since the end of the Cold War, every major defense panel that's been commissioned by Congress since 1992 or thereabouts, they keep coming back to the same basic number. So we think we've got history on our side. It's well justified or validated by other major studies. We're just not making this up. We think having a small military that can only do one thing is too risky because of all the things we've just talked about. And so that kind of that two-war sort of basket seems to be, you know, small and medium-large.

It's kind of in that nice, comfortable level in terms of manageable risk. Okay. So the Heritage Index of U.S. military strength also says that our nuclear capabilities are marginal. Could you expound on that? We haven't invested much in that. I mean, again, I keep referring to the Cold War, but that's when the country was serious in terms of the amount of money, the insurance policy that we wanted to have relative to a major competitor like the Soviet Union. So at that time, there were only a few powers with nuclear weapons.

Most of them were on our team, you know, like France and the UK and all, just a few, like Russia, later on China. But since that time, you've got now a nuclear arm, North Korea. You've got an aspirational nuclear power in Iran. And there's no telling where that might go if you see an Iranian breakout, does Saudi Arabia get them, Turkey has talked about having them and all that. So it seems that however much we might think that nuclear warfare is inconceivable, people keep investing in that capability. On the U.S. side, most of our stuff was developed in the 1960s and the 1970s. We have a self-imposed moratorium on what we call yield-producing experiments, meaning detonating a nuclear weapon, above ground, you know, messing up the air. We stopped that a long time ago, but we used to dig these very, very deep tunnels and we would do subterner.

Mediterranean sorts of explosions with lots of sensors. You know, I've designed something. Does it work as I think it should work? That's important because if I'm using my nuclear capabilities as a deterrent to tell somebody like Russia or China don't go that route, then I have to be able to show that my nuclear capability is actually valid, you know, that it's not just this kind of fictional paper sort of capability. So we stopped actually physically testing weapons in 1992.

Our nuclear assurance protocols are computer-based. So our models, when we test various components, says that the components work. If you extend that out into computer, the whole system should work. And so we're pretty confident, so we tell ourselves that that actually will work. So we haven't designed any new warheads. We haven't done any yield-producing experiments since probably the late 80s, early 1990s. I mean, that's almost 30 years ago, right? Where we have seen improvement is in the delivery systems.

So the airplanes that would deliver a nuclear bomb like the B-2 bomber or the B-21 Raider that's being developed by the Air Force are missiles, which are also getting very old, 1970s or 1980s, but at least there's attention being spent on them. Where the marginal problem comes in is that all the talent, you know, the humans involved in this are all old. There aren't many left in that whole system that have ever even seen a yield produced. producing experiments. A lot for a memo, it's a lot of theory and academic sorts of understanding. The national nuclear laboratories in places like Los Alamos and Sandia were also built in the 1950s and 1960s and they just haven't been maintained. So we have a capability. We've got people that are serious about making sure we can do what we say we have to do in our submarine force and those sorts of things. But we just haven't made the investments to make sure that it's

modernized. So what can be done to reverse the military to climate? Is it a matter of appropriating more money or is there other things as well that needs to be done? Yes, money is a controversial piece, but money is what allows me to pay salaries. If I need more people in the military, it allows me to replace old equipment. The average age of a fighter attack aircraft in the Air Force is 29 years old. We don't drive cars that are that old, right? Most of our tanker fleet, which is the aerial refuelers, refuelers, refuel other planes are in the mid-40s, about 46 years old. Well over half of our U.S. Navy, all the 290 ships I mentioned, something like 57% of those, are all older than 20 years old to include almost all the aircraft carriers, ballistic missile submarines, et cetera.

So when something finally wears out, however good its systems are, the plane itself just can't take the stresses of taking off and landing and pulling maneuvers and all that. You have to replace that. If we don't make the money available to replace the equipment, then we no longer have a viable military. So, as a percentage of federal budget, we're at historic lows. We used to spend between 20 and 25 percent throughout the Cold War on defense because government had a limited role. One of its constitutional responsibilities is protecting the country. Since that time, it's gotten involved in lots of other things.

And as a share of our budget, military spending has dropped from 25 to 20 and now it's only 15 percent. As a share of our gross domestic product, you know, how much stuff we produce here in the United States, it used to be around 5 or 6% of GDP, and today it's down to just a little over 3%. So if you were going on historical averages, in other words, the country was able to afford and thought it was important enough, we would actually be spending somewhere between 850 billion and 1 trillion. That is an eye-watering amount today, but if we were back in the 1980s, that would be normal, you know, adjusting for inflation or all.

So you have to have modern capabilities. You have to have a sufficient amount of those capabilities to actually conduct operations. You're going to take losses. People have to be able to train. You have to be able to more place it wants. So there is a budget component to this. And what's squeezed out defense spending is spending on things like expanded entitlement programs where Congress has gotten the country involved in things that really the federal government shouldn't be doing.

It could be better handled at the local and state levels. So we've been talking very abstractly about the military, this whole interview. But we are coming up on Veterans Day. You yourself are a veteran. Are you doing anything this weekend? And how do you think Americans, especially those of us who never served? What should we be thinking about this weekend? So, you know, it's a blessing and a curse, right?

In some ways. I mean, it's wonderful when somebody will come up and say thank you for your service, almost all the time it's very well intended, you know. I is an individual thing. And colleagues, friends of mine that I served with for, you know, 20 or more years, kind of think this way. it can kind of get too much almost, you know. So you don't want to be forgetful or dismissive. You know, people want to serve their country. I think that's a noble and honorable sort of thing.

We want to be appreciative of that in some way, just like we have, you know, frontline first responders and the law enforcement and in the fire departments and, you know, hospital, you know, personnel and all that. So all those are great services to the general public. And so I think, you know, being well-intentioned, you know, shaking a hand if you know somebody, what have you. But for the most of the military people I know, they kind of are quiet about it. You know, they'll exchange emails. Hey, you remember when we were in, you know, pick a country and an operation, you know, sometime back. And so, yeah, it might host a beer or something along those lines, you know, and salute those who, you know, who weren't with us that were lost in combat or what have you. But I think it's a Veterans Day as a moment of reflection for what it takes to have a safety.

and secure and prosperous America. It just doesn't happen magically. You know, there are other forces in the world that either want to, you know, take from us or carve us out of other regions or impose authoritarian regimes. And, you know, they can't be talked out of that. Usually you have to have a strong, you know, stance that prevents them or deters them from doing that. I think Veterans Day is an opportunity to think about what we have had to do in the past, to have the nature of the kind of country we have today.

And it should also call upon us to really think that we will need to continue to have those capabilities in the future, right? Okay. Well, if you've been interested in what we're talking about, please check out the index itself, the Heritage Foundation Index of U.S. military strength. Dakota has a copy in front of us, and it is a huge tone, but we also have it broken down on the website. So check it out. Dakota, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate. Thanks for having me on.

All right, I want to tell you about our favorite morning newsletter. It's called the Morning Bell, and it'll change the way you experience the news. Every weekday, we at the Daily Signal deliver the top news and commentary directly to your inbox, all for free. Morning Bell gives you quick access to the policy debates shaping Washington, analysis from experts at the Heritage Foundation, and commentary from top conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Michelle Malkin, Dennis Prager, and others. It's super easy to sign up. Just go to DailySignal.com and click the connect button in the top right corner. As soon as you sign up, expect the newsletter in your inbox the very next day.

That'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify, and please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us feedback. Rob and Virginia will be with you on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, the Leah Rampersad, and Mark Geinney. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.