REPORT: Trump administration wanted redactions on military readiness report

If you are a regular reader, you know we have been warning about the state of our military for some time. With the aid we are providing to Ukraine and Israel, as well as troops deployed, including the recent uptick in our presence near Venezuela, we are stretched quite thin.

This is not a new problem for the United States, and a recent military readiness report apparently showed just how much of a problem this is, which is likely why the Trump administration wanted the report redacted.

Stretched Too Thin

This problem is nothing new for the United States. In fact, “Stretched Too Thin” is the exact title of a report from The Heritage Foundation in 2003.

The report focused on how we had troops stretched all over the world, leaving the homefront susceptible to an attack.

The report, in part, stated, “This is unsustainable -- and it can't be fixed until we focus our military resources on missions that are vital to the nation.

“Specifically, we must field a force able to 1) fight the war on terrorism, which often means fighting with little or no warning in unexpected places, 2) deter aggression against U.S. interests and allies and 3) bolster homeland defense. Non-vital missions such as Liberia must wait.”

Stockpiles Getting Low

Two decades later, and we are reading about the same problems, only due to different reasons.

If you read my reports regularly, you know I already believe that, in part, Russia has prolonged the war with Ukraine to try to drain our military resources.

And as far as I can tell, it worked. If you recall, not so long ago, we were forced to delay a shipment of arms to Ukraine because our stockpiles were getting too low.

When a shipment of Patriot missiles was held up, Trump stated, “They’re very hard to get. We need them. We were supplying them to Israel.”

Black It Out

Once again, The Heritage Foundation has run a report called TIDALWAVE, which ran AI simulations of what would happen in a potential conflict with China if China made a move against Taiwan.

The results were not good, showing that within weeks, the United States would suffer catastrophic losses, sending a shockwave through the Pentagon and administration, to the point it requested redactions to the report rather than publish as is to allow China to see our weaknesses.

The report stated, "Redactions were made at the request of the U.S. government to prevent disclosure of information that could reasonably enable an adversary to (1) re mediate or ‘close’ critical vulnerabilities that the United States and its allies could otherwise exploit, or (2) identify or exploit U.S. and allied vulnerabilities in ways that could degrade operational endurance, resilience, or deterrence.”

Now, this is a third-party report, so the likelihood that the Pentagon would endorse the report is almost nonexistent. Regardless, this is not shocking to me, considering the state of our military right now. And it is likely why Trump is looking to double the usual budget and bring our military back up to snuff ASAP.