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The newly released 2026 Index of U.S. Military Strength finds that threats to U.S. vital interests are “high,” but America’s military power to counter the threats is only “marginal.”

The threat facing America today is greater than that which the Soviet Union posed in the 1980s, according to Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation.

The United States faces an “emerging and rapidly expanding nuclear and conventional arsenal in China, and certainly an aggressive Russia,” Greenway told media during a press conference Tuesday, adding, “we have faced threats before, [but] not like this.”

“This year’s Index of U.S. Military Strength paints a sobering picture: after years of underinvestment and overuse, the U.S. military risks being unable to deter—or defeat—near-peer adversaries in a protracted conflict,” Greenway said.

For 11 years, The Heritage Foundation has assessed U.S. military strength and released its findings in a lengthy annual report, meant to inform members of Congress and the Pentagon.

For the first time since the think tank began the annual assessment, researchers have found “an arrest of decline” in U.S. military might, according to Greenway, who credits the Trump administration’s investment with the change.

Yet, the “scope and pace of military buildups by our adversaries mean that restoring readiness, capacity, and resilience remains an urgent challenge,” Greenway said.

In January, President Donald Trump proposed increasing the U.S. defense budget by about 50% to $1.5 trillion in 2027. The information in the report is meant to be a helpful tool to Congress and the administration as they determine the best way to utilize resources and strengthen America’s military.

“The People’s Republic of China represents the greatest military threat facing the United States today,” the index states.

The release of the index comes on the heels of a Heritage Foundation report which used AI to simulate a protracted conflict with China. It found that, in a conflict with China, critical U.S. munitions would begin to be exhausted after about a week and would be completely spent after 35–40 days in most cases.

In light of the recent attack on Iran, Greenway believes that if it greatly diminishes Iran’s threat to the U.S. and her allies, that will allow America to “focus our resources on other areas, including the Indo-Pacific.”

“The surge [in Iran] represents and exposes the weaknesses in our projection or munitions stock, but at the same time, it’s a step in the right direction for eliminating a threat substantively, not just sort of maintaining a threat … but rather getting it to the point where our partners are now able to deal with it without U.S. support assistance, which is enormously important,” Greenway said.

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