Our Unprepared Military

Congressman Rob Wittman of Virginia was a guest on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney yesterday. Wittman is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee.

When Gaffney asked Wittman to describe our military’s current state of readiness, Wittman offered a very discouraging response:

“Our readiness within every branch of our military is well behind where it needs to be just to meet the national security strategy. That concerns me and whether it’s lacking the number of ships necessary to carry out those missions, whether it’s lacking the equipment that’s properly maintained so it’s ready to go when called upon, whether it’s soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen that are lacking the training necessary, whether it’s lacking the number of Air Force maintainers for the aircraft that we have, whether it’s ships not getting to the yard to be repaired so that they’re ready to go to sea. I could go down the list and it is long and it’s alarming as to where the current state of our military affairs rests.”

As disturbing as that statement is, Wittman went on to suggest that it will take years to restore the military to where it should be. He lays most of the blame on the sequester but also faults congress and the current administration.

Gaffney then turned their focus to the issue of women serving in combat roles and asked Wittman if he believed that will have a future impact.

Wittman said that if women are qualified to serve in combat roles he sees no problem but insisted that the requirements for serving in such capacities cannot be compromised. He also warned of a danger in placing women in these roles as some sort of quota system:

“We cannot allow situations to say, well, there aren’t enough women in those units, therefore we’re going to change standards in order to meet a certain number of women. That’s the point that I think becomes very problematic and becomes dangerous for those units and for the women that could serve there.”

Finally, Gaffney pointed out that this is all happening as China is becoming ever more aggressive and asked Wittman to comment on what could happen if that continues.

Wittman said that Japan and South Korea are alarmed by China’s aggression as well, particularly with regard to islands in the South China Sea.

“The reasons you harden those islands is to put military facilities there and as you know, we have been very aggressive in putting these freedom of navigation operations in there to make sure that we push the limit as far as saying you cannot limit navigational operations of military ships outside of twelve miles of those islands.”

Wittman went on to say that his greatest concern is that because of all this, a miscalculation by a Chinese naval officer or pilot could inadvertently cause a conflict.