U.S. military strength has improved but is insufficient for a major war with China without further funding, according to a new report from The Heritage Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation published a 2026 Index of U.S. Military Strength assessing the current condition of the U.S. military relative to global threats and America’s vital national interests, and held a webinar on Wednesday to discuss the results.
The biggest concerns, Heritage says, are a munitions shortage and defense funding is not enough to increase production and sustain war efforts if long-term war breaks out.
“We are in desperate need of more hardware and firepower,” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said. “This is unacceptable and demands radical and urgent change. That’s exactly why the index is important and what it’s calling for.”
Speakers at the webinar argued that decades of underfunding, prolonged deployments, inconsistent appropriations or undisciplined program execution from previous Democratic presidential administrations made the U.S. military unable to respond effectively to the range of growing threats.
“We’re paying for eight years of an Obama administration,” Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, said. “We’re paying for four years of a Biden administration that was just completely detrimental to our service in all aspects.”
“We’ve never spent less on our defense as a percentage of our GDP since World War II. Simultaneously, we are $38 trillion in debt. That means we can’t do everything. We have to pick and choose,” Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-NC said.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to strengthen the U.S. military, with $150 billion in military investments and a proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget goal, were credited as helpful but insufficient for long-term success, according to the index. However, the congressional speakers at the webinar held the U.S. military strength in high regard.
“President Trump has done a phenomenal job in executing peace through strength, and it was the absolute right call,” Rep. Matt Van Epps R-Tenn said. “The president and secretary are doing the exact right thing to focus on our war fight, and we’re seeing that now.”
“President Trump has demonstrated in Venezuela and now in Iran, and we’ll come to the support and assistance of our partners and allies, and that becomes a little bit clearer in circumstances like these, and neither Russia or China are willing or able to do either,” Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security, said. “The reality is that no one’s capable of doing what we’re doing right now, and Russia and China, I think, are victims of it, and rightly so.”
“We’re now using the military the way that it’s actually designed to be used,” Harrigan said. “As we continue to pick off China’s and Russia’s allies around the world, they’re going to find themselves very isolated and with significantly limited options on how to move forward, because they cannot defeat a 50 nation ally base from the west.”