Despite a rash of fatal accidents across the services, the U.S. military’s top enlisted leaders said Monday that Washington’s talk of a readiness crisis was overblown.
The top enlisted leaders have the job of making sure top brass aren't surprised by trends bubbling way below their pay grades in the enlisted ranks. So their pulse of the military is not to be dismissed because they aren't officers.
My impression from my figurative basement in my figurative pajamas is that the military doesn't have the resources to train, sustain, and maintain more than the forces directly engaged in the relatively small combat and support missions overseas, while the forces at home receive inadequate resources until their turn in the overseas rotation comes up.
So we'd have a problem reacting rapidly with the best forces we are capable of fielding in a short period and sustaining that larger force in combat.
That's a problem even if it isn't a crisis in a narrow and perhaps reasonable definition of the problem.
As I've mentioned before, our potential enemies certainly have worse problems than we do.
UPDATE: Of course, our European allies are less ready than Russia.
And American power is far away.
