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Key Points
Military readiness has deteriorated in the last year. The services are not able to meet their day-to-day requirements and still lack the operational depth required to respond to a major crisis.
The Army is integrating active and reserve component forces and increasing reserve deployments to try to make up the readiness gap. It is further away from recovering full readiness than it was at this time last year.
The Marine Corps and Navy, worn thin by high rates of deployment and deteriorating equipment, could not keep up with the pace of global deployments.
The Air Force has sacrificed its ability to conduct a large-scale campaign with anywhere near the size and speed desired and continues to train pilots for only mission-specific needs.
“Do you agree that we have a significant readiness problem across the services, especially for the wide variety of contingencies that we’ve got to face?”—Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee speaking at a March 16 hearing
“Chairman, I do, and I think those are accurate reflections of the force as a whole.”—General Joseph F. Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff[1]
In March 2015, the military’s senior commanders and civilian leaders painted a somber picture of military readiness in a series of congressional hearings. Reflecting on the preceding years, they described, in the language of the Pentagon, a military driven to the “ragged edge” of readiness.[2] What they meant was that the military could meet the demands of the day but would not be able to handle a major crisis quickly and decisively, as detailed in volume one of this series.[3]
A year later, despite Congress providing hope of budgetary stability through the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the military has stumbled past the ragged edge of readiness; it is not even able to meet its day-to-day requirements in full.[4] Moreover, the Navy and Army are further from full readiness now than they were a year ago.
When the Washington Times warned in March, “U.S. Military’s Ability to Fight Major Overseas War in Doubt,” it accurately captured the message the senior command had conveyed.[5] But in some ways, the equally troubling message— notable for how it differs from the previous year’s—lies in how each service is struggling just to meet the requirements of current day-to-day operations.
The Army made a major change to its operating structure—integrating reserve component units into active duty ones—in order to come closer to providing the forces and capabilities that the combatant commanders requested. But “closer” means the Army still falls short of meeting all the requirements.[6]
The Navy and Marine Corps too, in some cases, simply could not keep up with the pace of global deployments. The Air Force, although able to match requests, has sacrificed its ability to conduct a large-scale campaign with anywhere near the size and speed desired. It has lost the ability to “shock and awe.” In sum, each service continues to have no bench—no operational reserves or depth of force—and each has taken steps to alleviate the current readiness crisis, without being in a position to address the longer- term challenge.
Overall Army readiness has not improved in the past year, and the force was not able to keep up with the pace of operational demands. As was the case last year, one-third of the Army is ready to go to war against a powerful conventional foe, short of the target of having two-thirds of the force ready, as defined by Army training and operational plans.[7]
Moreover, if the country were to face a major crisis, “the Army would likely deploy all uncommitted forces—from all components—into combat on very short notice.”[8] That is, the Army would employ all active duty, reserve, and National Guard soldiers to respond to a single challenge. It would not be able to respond to two simultaneous conflicts.
Already, the Army has turned to reserve component forces to make up the readiness gap. It plans to rotate more than 10,000 soldiers from the Army Reserve and Guard to Europe in the years ahead and has formed 37 multicomponent units—comprised of active duty, reserve, and Guard soldiers.[9] It also intends to increase training rates for Guard and reserve soldiers.
In 2015, the Army conducted 19 Combat Training Center rotations, of which 15 trained active duty Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) in conventional, combined-arms operations. Two provided that same training to National Guard brigades. The remaining two rotations focused on training a pair of brigades for overseas deployments. The Army will continue the same pace of training through 2016 and 2017, although it hopes to increase the rate of National Guard rotations to four annually.[10]
However, while training remains steady, the end- strength drawdown continues apace. As a result, as the Army cuts troops and restructures brigades, it loses total readiness. Last year, 23 BCTs were considered ready; now only 20 are. And 11 of those are already in use, leaving only 9 brigades on the bench.[11]
The personnel cuts also damaged the force’s experience. More than half of the soldiers released during the last round of cuts had two or more combat deployments under their belts.[12] Not only has the Army’s inventory of ready soldiers shrunk in the last year, but its human capital, accrued over 15 years of war, has diminished as well.
The result is an Army struggling to keep up with its day-to-day requirements. Since 2012, while the Army shrunk, the global demand for Army forces, as defined by the combatant commanders, grew by 23 percent.[13] Last year, the Army provided 91 percent of what the regional combatant commanders requested of it, but the remaining 9 percent went unanswered. In short, the Army did not meet its day-to-day requirements, despite drawing heavily from its already slim surge capacity and further risking its ability to handle a major contingency.[14]
Over the past year, the Navy has seen some incremental improvements, but by and large, its readiness has worsened. First, the good news: Navy ships will, under current plans, return to 7- month deployments by the end of 2016, an improvement over the 8-to-10-month deployments endured for several years.[15] This change should strengthen quality of life for sailors and their families.
The bad news is that, by all other meaningful metrics, the Navy remains in dire straits.
Equipment and infrastructure maintenance continue to experience shortfalls. Navy budget plans support ship maintenance, chipping away at existing backlogs, but a full 30 percent of that funding comes from Overseas Contingency Operations funds instead of the base budget.[16]
Aviation maintenance and infrastructure support are less robust. Aviation depot maintenance, the primary mechanism for long-term naval aircraft care, is underfunded by 15 percent, and many aviation units are even forced to scavenge spare parts from other units or aircraft.[17]
Meanwhile, maintenance funding for Navy facilities, such as its shipyards and air stations, was cut in half in the coming year’s budget request.[18] The Navy is having difficulty making up the maintenance backlog incurred with sequestration and expects that the facilities shortfalls will continue to grow.[19]
Only one Carrier Strike Group is ready to deploy abroad within 30 days; Navy standards call for three ready carriers at home.[20] With the military still relying on carrier-based aircraft for operations in the Middle East, this shortfall is reflected in the continued lack of a meaningful carrier presence in the Western Pacific.[21] And, according to Admiral Michelle Howard, vice chief of naval operations, the “Navy continues to provide maximum sustainable global presence.”[22]
Regrettably, the Navy’s maximum presence is not enough. Last year, the Navy managed to answer only a third of the combatant commanders’ requests for attack submarines.[23] In the Pacific, where there is perhaps the highest demand for undersea forces, Admiral Harry Harris, the regional commander, has stated he has only 62 percent of the submarines he needs.[24]
As the nation’s expeditionary force, the US Marine Corps (USMC) bears a special readiness burden, what the service calls a “fight tonight” responsibility. As such, it places immense attention on maintaining the ability to deploy to conflict regions around the globe at a moment’s notice. However, as explained in the Marine Corps Posture Statement, it “is no longer in a position to generate current readiness” while sustaining the force for future conflicts.[25]
When they deploy, all Marine Corps units are fully trained and ready for the missions assigned to them, but outside of those deployed units, there is a dearth of proper training and equipment.[26] Half of the nondeployed units are not fully ready because of “personnel, equipment, or training shortfalls.”[27] The Corps has prioritized mission-specific training, such as for counterinsurgency operations, at the expense of training for large-scale warfare.
Marine Corps “aviation units are currently unable to meet [their] training and mission requirements” due to aircraft shortfalls.[28] For example, Fox News recently aired a special on Marine Corps aviation units and their equipment shortages. One interviewed squadron reported an 18-month wait to receive the spare parts it needed to maintain its F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets, aircraft bound for the Middle East to conduct airstrikes against the Islamic State.[29] This is a common issue across the force; Marines are “flying the wings literally off the F/A-18s right now.”[30]
Units readying to deploy, needing a full inventory of spare parts before shipping out, will cannibalize parts from aircraft left stateside, and the home-stationed squadrons are then left with a fleet of inoperable planes. The accumulated result is that 80 percent of USMC aviation units do not have a full complement of aircraft for training, and only about 30 percent of the 276 Marine Corps F/A-18s are ready to fly.[31] Over a 30-day period this winter, Hornet pilots were intended to receive, on average, 15.7 hours in the cockpit.
Instead they spent only 8.8 hours training.[32] Moreover, aviation units continue to have a deployment-to-dwell ratio of less than 1:2, compared to a sustainable target of at least 1:3.[33]
The problems are not limited to F/A-18s either. The MV-22 Osprey (a tilt-rotor aircraft used for personnel and cargo transportation) units are at 60 percent readiness, and about 29 percent of the CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter units, which transport Marines and equipment, are fully trained.[34]
Specialized support battalions have experienced analogous readiness issues. Every intelligence and communications battalion and all but one of the signals intelligence battalions are not ready for a large conflict.[35] Just as deploying aviation squadrons take spares from other planes, so too will these intelligence and communications units and specialists get pulled away for unanticipated deployments or missions. Their departures leave their parent units depleted and unready, without, for example, sufficient intelligence-gathering capacity to deploy to a conflict zone.[36]
Similar to the Navy’s submarine shortage, the USMC lacks a sufficient number of amphibious assault ships (amphibs). It currently operates 30 amphibs. For the Corps to answer all of the combatant commander requests, it would need 50.[37] Instead, the Marine Corps now flies most of its deployed aircraft from land, a break from traditional modes of operation.
These accumulated readiness shortfalls have pushed the Marine Corps to scale back its forward presence. It has decreased the size of its aviation squadrons: F/A-18 squadrons went from 12 to 10 planes; CH-53E Sea Stallions from 17 to 12; and AV-8 Harriers from 16 to 14.[38] In at least one case, the Corps even asked a combatant commander to “reduce” requests for aviation units.[39] This request was driven not by strategic choices but by necessity.
Generally speaking, Air Force readiness remains in a similar state to where it was last year. Fewer than half of the combat units are ready for a major conflict against a modern air force.[40] Meanwhile, as the service’s posture statement explains, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, “adversaries are boldly challenging America’s freedom of maneuver in air, space, and cyberspace in contested regions and near our Allies’ borders” and are “closing the technology gap.”[41]
For the past two years, the Air Force has focused on responding to global events and has not rebuilt readiness for high-end conflicts.[42] As a result, overall readiness has not improved. In the event of a war or major crisis, Air Force operational plans call for 80 percent of combat units to deploy abroad within 120 days.[43] With only 50 percent ready, the service would be able to provide less than two-thirds of what it would want to bring to bear.
Training for high-end conflicts, in which US pilots would go up against advanced, modern enemy aircraft and air defenses, continues to be a challenge for the force. Fewer than half the pilots receive full-spectrum training. Part of the challenge is the cost; practicing to fly an F-22 Raptor, the world’s most advanced fighter, to its maximum potential requires a pilot to spend hours in the cockpit training against another world-class fighter. With fewer than 200 Raptors in the fleet, flying them that often is expensive.
Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) units continue to operate at surge capacity. About 74 percent of all Air Force ISR forces support ongoing combat operations, leaving too little time for training and recovery.[44] Additionally, although the number of combat air patrols by unmanned aircraft has decreased to 60 per day, the high operations tempo still strains the pilots. Every year, the Air Force trains about 150 unmanned aircraft pilots, but 250 leave.[45]
Delays to equipment and infrastructure maintenance are also taking a toll. The F-15C and E model fighters—both in high demand for day- to-day operations, such as air patrols over the Baltics and training missions with European allies—are experiencing serious structural wear and tear.[46] All nuclear weapons storage areas also fall short of maintenance standards, having been extended well beyond their intended 20-year life.[47]
A year ago, the services testified that they could sustain a minimum level of acceptable readiness to meet current operations. Although strained, they could meet the selection of missions assigned to them, but anything beyond that would overextend their limited surge capacities.[48]
Now the services are no longer able to meet all their current requirements, and officials are expressing even more concern about their readiness for a major conflict. Moreover, the timetable for recovery shifted in the past year. While the Army and Navy expected last year to recover full readiness in 2020, the Army now says it will not recover until 2023, and the Navy’s recovery will extend even further into the decade.[49]
The Army, still only one-third ready and with fewer BCTs than last year, turned to integrating active and reserve component forces and increasing reserve deployments to try to make up the readiness gap. The Marine Corps and Navy, worn thin by high rates of deployment and deteriorating equipment, could not keep up with the demand for their people and equipment. And the Air Force continues to train pilots not for modern aerial operations but for mission-specific needs, even as its rival air forces challenge American air superiority. None of the four is recovering readiness at a meaningful pace. The situation, if anything, gets worse each year.
A great deal of attention has been paid, rightfully, to the military’s concerns about future readiness, about its ability to fight and win wars. But its struggle to keep abreast of basic operational requirements, even as the government has defined down its strategic goals and staved off the bitter cuts of sequestration, should not be overlooked. Regardless of whether a major conflict arises in the coming years, the military is not on a sustainable readiness path.
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James Cunningham is a research associate in the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
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