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♪ ♪ ♪ KATKO: On this episode of “Balancing Act”, Modern Warfare.

How ready is America?

In the center ring, Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery will assess America's combat readiness.

On the trapeze, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, and former Navy captain Brent Sadler take aim at two different strategies -- more military capacity, or a smarter, more restrained force?

Plus, I'll give you My Take.

And in Did You Know, a different breed of veteran?

First, let's walk the tighttrope.

♪ For much of U.S.

history, our military has faced a central familiar question.

How ready do we need to be for war we hope never comes?

In his first annual address to Congress in 1790, George Washington put it this way, To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace.

But as history shows, we haven't always been ready.

There's an old military warning about preparing to fight the last war, using lessons and weapons that worked before, only to discover that the next battlefield has changed dramatically.

World War I offers an early example.

The British introduced the first tanks in combat in 1916, months before America even entered the war.

By the time U.S.

tank units fought in 1918, they were using French and British tanks.

No American-built tank ever reached combat in World War I. What we learned, and before World War II, mobilization was already well underway.

The difference was, we had time.

Our industrial machine kicked into high gear, turning out ships, planes, tanks, and ammunition on a massive scale.

But after the war, America drew down yet again.

When the Korean War erupted just five years later, U.S.

forces were in Japan, under strength, short of armor, using old World War II equipment, and not fully combat ready.

After rebuilding following Vietnam, the U.S.

entered the 1991 Gulf War with what the army later described as the highest level of readiness and training in its history.

But in the same way, General Patton's World War II tactics General Schwarzkopf's Gulf War methods wouldn't have worked in Afghanistan.

So, where are we today?

First, America is not technologically standing still.

The Pentagon is investing in autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, cyber, space, and New long range weapons because the next war could look nothing like the current Ukraine or Iran wars.

We could see large numbers of autonomous drones working together, electronic warfare and jamming.

Long-range precision missiles, artificial intelligence locating targets, and cyber attacks against the infrastructure that keep America running.

And that could include the power grid, communications, and transportation systems.

The same systems the military itself depends on, to mobilize and move forces.

That changes the old equation, just as regional strikes, closing the Straits of Hormuz, has changed the current war strategy.

A 2026 government accountability office review found that U.S.

military readiness has degraded over the past two decades and reports today warn that the U.S.

has depleted its arsenal as a result of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

GAO says a major new capability now takes, on average, Are you ready for this -- more than 12 years to deliver.

So, does America need to spend more to build bigger or spend smarter to modernize faster?

With modern warfare moving at digital speed, can we adapt fast enough?

How ready is America?

Let's find out, as we ready ourselves in the Center Ring.

♪ With me now is Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Foundation for Democracies Center on Cyber Technology Innovation.

Welcome, Admiral, and let's get right into it.

If war broke out tomorrow, a major global war, how ready is the United States?

MONTGOMERY: We weren't ready, really, before the war in Iran, and now, in several important areas, we're even less ready.

I'll break it up into two broad areas.

One, do we have the right capabilities?

That's the number of ships, number of aircraft, number of, special forces units, things like that.

And we were short the number of ships we needed, aircraft we needed, for a high intensity campaign with China, before the war started, and probably even for one with Russia, and say the Baltics.

And then if you thought about it as a simultaneity problem, in other words, one moves when the other moves, we were definitely in a tough position, which is why President Trump was pushing so hard for increased defense budgets.

He was asking for 25 and 30% increases year over year between fiscal year 25, 26, and 27.

And if I can point out one other area of munitions, we started to understand that we had taken a munitions holiday from about 2004 to 2022, where we just didn't buy enough.

It came clear to us at the start of the war between, you know, trying to support Ukraine, the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, and we were handling it, but it had kind of a baby steps way in 2022, 2023, 2024.

President Trump put that on steroids in 2025, but then the burn break of weapon usage in Iran has put us back down again.

So we're really going to have to work that hard over the next two to three years.

KATKO: Admiral, I just want to take one quick example of what you just said, and that is a subset is a Patriot missiles just as an example to highlight, How many Patriot missiles were produced last year for the military?

MONTGOMERY: I think between 600 and 700 total, and that included a little bit of foreign military sales.

KATKO: So that is after the Ukraine war has been going on for years, and then we were looking at Iran as a major problem.

So that does highlight it, does it not?

MONTGOMERY: It does.

Now, I'm going to give Congress a shout out here.

Last November, they understood they had this problem, and in the National Defense Authorization Act, the once a year bill that authorizes the Department of Defense, they actually argued for multi-year contracts and, and helping the companies increase their rate of production.

Then the president's 2027 budget, which dropped in March of this year 2026, just before the war -- or in February, just before the war, actually reflected those kind of taking advantage of those authorities, and very recently, the department just authorized, tripling the production of Patriots from 700 to 2000.

But you're absolutely right.

This was not driven by Russia, Ukraine, where you could see the problem for 3 and a half years.

It was driven by the experience in Iran, that tripling.

KATKO: So, we know we're not spending what we should on munitions, or I think that's a pretty conventional mindset.

But what about the American military's ability or inability to adjust to modern warfare?

I mean, if the next war broke out, how different would it be a major war compared to what we experienced in Afghanistan or in the Gulf War?

MONTGOMERY: Very different, very different than we kind of imagined, just two or three years ago, for China or Russia, because what we're learning between Russia and Ukraine and between us and Iran, is the effect of low-cost munitions when used by the adversary.

As you know, I spent a lot of time in Ukraine about two months a year in different training opportunities.

So I see up front exactly how the Russians and Ukrainians are adapting war fighting, the technology, the processes, and the people, extremely rapidly.

In other words, about every three months, there's a new generational change, and in one-way attack drones, or the counter drone drones, or the jamming that counters drones.

And that's happening, and the United States is not present.

Normally -- in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, we had thousands of U.S.

troops studying how our weapons were being used by either ourselves or our allies or partners.

There's none of that in this war.

We're missing out on that, and that became brutally clear when Iran used Shahed drones to destroy U.S.

military bases, and the critical infrastructure of our air partners very aggressively during the 40-day war, and a lot of us think that's one of the major reasons we ceased major combat operations after 40 days.

KATKO: So, going forward, one of the questions I have is, you know, there's always this peace dividend, which is almost like a hangover after war ends where we spend down the military, and then we have to play catch up again, and it seems twice as expensive to do that.

But going forward, I'm just wondering, what do we have to do better as a military for our planning and anticipation standpoint?

MONTGOMERY: So I'll back it all the way up to the strategic level, and one of them is how much of your GDP do you spend on defense?

Throughout the whole Cold War, it was spent 5.5%.

We took that big peace dividend in that, in 1992, 93 under President Clinton, and dropped it down to about 3.8%.

And then under Obama, it eventually dropped down to 3%.

And President Trump bumped it back up a tiny bit.

President Biden took it back down, and it got as low as 2.9%.

So while we were criticizing our European partners, we actually weren't there.

The second part of it is, you don't want to fight the war the last war.

And I think we're pretty slow sometimes to be looking out for what's the next technological breakthrough that's coming?

And again, we totally missed that with drones.

We totally missed out with counter drones.

Remember, President Zelensky actually came to President Trump and said last summer in 2025, You need my counter drones.

The president kind of famously said, you don't have cards and turn down that offer.

If you could go back in time right now, I do that.

You have to keep thinking about adapting and making your uh, your plans and policies more agile and forward thinking.

KATKO: You know, I'm just thinking when you were saying all that, looking forward, I remember sitting in a secure briefing three or four days after the Ukraine war broke out, and looking at Zelensky, we all thought he wouldn't survive a week or two.

And here we are, all these years later, they changed modern warfare dramatically out of necessity, right?

And so how do we anticipate things like that going forward?

How do we better anticipate those types of things going forward?

What can we do?

MONTGOMERY: I wouldn't fire your constructive critics.

In other words, in the military, there are a percentage of officers, there are always kind of like providing good constructive criticism.

Thinking out of the box.

Very famously, Billy Mitchell, recognized the value of air power in the 1930s.

so he court-martialed him, right?

I mean, you've got to entertain and understand your innovative thinkers as they first emerge.

We're not great at that in the military.

I think the special forces operators are a little better at that than the conventional operators, but still all of us could benefit from having an open mind about this.

That's number one.

Number 2 is, more and more of our of our war fighting is done by software upgrades instead of hardware upgrades.

The military has always been fascinated by the next plane, the next ship, the next missile.

When in reality, you can get greatly improved effects through software.

The private sector specializes in this.

They don't have the money to constantly improve their infrastructure and their hardware.

We're seeing slivers of that work in some of the Navy's ages weapon systems where they're going with just software improvements.

But we need to hold that writ large across all the services.

KATKO: So we have a few seconds left, and it's almost like yes or no answer: So, do we spend enormous amounts of money on defense, and just say the solution is more money, or is it spending it smarter, or is it both?

MONTGOMERY: We're going to need to spend it smarter.

More money is not the answer.

Smarter money's the answer, and, you know, we're going to have to buy lower cost.

We're going to have to get that mixed.

We're on a high, high mix.

We like high technology systems with high cost munitions.

I don't mind the high technology systems.

It keeps our pilots and our operators alive.

But we need to start developing more and more low cost munitions that can be employed from those high cost systems and save us the taxpayers some money so that we can continue to invest in the military.

KATKO: That seems just like what Ukraine is doing now.

Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, thank you so much for your analysis.

Spot on as always.

Good to see you again, my friend.

♪ ♪ KATKO: On July 2026, economist Yugao Paul found 30% of Americans favor a major increase in defense spending from $891 billion to $1.14 trillion, while 55% oppose it.

Here to discuss that and more in the trapeze is a true Army Navy matchup.

Joining us is Lieutenant Colonel Dan Davis, senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, and retired Navy Captain Brent Sadler, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Welcome to you both, gentlemen, and let's get right to it.

Mr.

Sadler, if we start with you -- spending for military, should it increase, or should we just spend smarter, or should we do both?

SADLER: Both, actually.

And thanks for the chance to weigh in on it.

If you just simply did the math, from 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, and you froze the defense budgets and let it go at actual inflation, you could actually quantify what the peace dividend was.

And for the Navy, it was $1.5 trillion is what the Navy's contribution in that Peace dividend was.

And that actually resulted in reduction, not just in fat, in other words, savings, of being smarter, acquisition, smarter performance, and operations.

performance, and operations but but it started eating into muscle, and most importantly, it took away infrastructure, like ports and shipyards.

Now we're having a problem building ships on time and on cost and maintaining the fleet that we have because we've cut too far.

So the peace dividends, time is up, and unfortunately, the bill is coming due, and it's not a small one.

And I think it's, given the threat, we need to have defense budgets that are threat informed, not budget necessarily informed, first and foremost.

KATKO: Mr.

Davis, your take.

DAVIS: You know, I think that more than looking at what the bottom line number needs to be, we need to look at what our strategy is.

And I think that these wars that we've been supporting in Ukraine and Russia for the last four yand a half ears and onewe've been fighting against Iran for most of this year and supporting, even back into 2025, show that we need a dramatic change of strategy.

Because what we've been doing, we've been trying to basically just continue on with the Cold War into the forward world, but the nature of war has changed so much, and we've got to change along with it.

We cannot afford, at any price, to just keep doing what we've been doing, having these 700 bases sprung throughout the world, and to continue trying to go down a strategy that won't work.

And this one in Iran has been the biggest exposure, because it shows that having this string of bases all over the place makes us more vulnerable.

It does not increase our capabilities to influence events by having these four bases.

We didn't protect ourselves, we need to protect our allies.

We didn't stop the war, and we haven't been able to win the war because of it.

We need to retrench back and focus more on national security, on defending our borders and defending our interests around the world.

But that does not mean keeping everybody forward deployed on bases that can't be defended.

Concurrent with that, we've also seen that the way we defend ourselves, especially with these PAC 3s and the TAD systems, it's going to have to change, because they have not been anywhere near as effective as they need to be, and to just spend more money on those same missiles that didn't work is going to set us up for more disaster in the future.

KATKO: So, Mr.

Sadler, he brings up a point that I wanted to drill down on a little bit more.

I think Ukraine showed that modern warfare has changed dramatically, so, yes, you can spend more money and do more things, but what's amazing to me is, we have a shortage of patriot missiles, and we're spending almost a trillion dollars on our defense budget now.

So what do we have to do to spend smarter, even if we do increase budgets, in your opinion?

SADLER: Well, some things haven't changed either.

The importance of morale and patriotism, and that's one of the reasons why the Ukrainians are still in the fight.

I mean, Putin thought they'd be over with the fight in a few days and so that's the human element hasn't changed.

But what is most important for the United States is avoiding a major war, one that would be visited upon our shores and in our cities.

And I'm not talking in cyber.

talking in kinetic as well.

The Chinese have the type of weapons, conventional, as well as nuclear, to reach us at where we live, not only just in Guam and Hawaii, but here in the Mainland United States.

So, I would think a more, you know, a proactive strategy that goes forward.

Bridge Colby talks about denial.

I'm not so sure we're still in the window where strategy denial is good enough when you're dealing with a foe like China that's not satisfied with the status quo and is actively changing it.

So when you have your presence overseas, it has to be informed in our long-term strategic interest.

How do we do it in a way we don't break the bank, which means we have to be smart about it, We take a gradualist approach where we can, and to change the status quo to American advantage.

But at other places where it's important to stand up and very forcefully demonstrate that there's a consequence of crossing American interest, or holding at risk American lives, that we act with force and clarity.

So, trying to go to fortress America is not going to work, but at the same time, if we're too aggressive and trying to pursue the other extreme, which our hubris has led us to nation building and boots on the ground where we shouldn't be, we could find ourselves stretched thin and putting too much blood in the fight that's not really worth it.

But I think right now in Asia, deterring China is job number one.

KATKO: So, Mr.

Davis, getting back to that, how do we better anticipate things?

Because it seems like we didn't really anticipate what was going to happen r Strait of Hormuz, and we've kind of empowered Iran in a way that I don't think anyone anticipated, because of the control of the Strait.

How do we better from a strategy standpoint?

Once you figure out the budget, let's just say you figure out the budget, how do we better anticipate going forward what the true nature and quality of the threat is?

Because it seems like there's a peace dividend problem, but there's also a strategic problem that needs to be fixed.

DAVIS: Well, there definitely is, and fortunately, that's not one that you can have to worry about budget.

That's the one you have to worry about your brain.

Because look, we took on a fight here that definitely did not need to be fought here.

There is no chance that we can claim that Iran was 2 weeks away from having a nuclear weapon here when President Trump's own words and claims repeatedly is that we obliterated all that the previous year, and it's still underneath the pile of rubble, as he himself clarified, and said, We have satellites watching, et cetera.

So, don't take on a fight that you don't need to, and we can go into all the reasons why, and certainly it was in Israelis' interest to do so, but that's not in America's interest to do so.

So stop going down paths that don't benefit us at all.

We're no safer than today than we were before, and in fact, we have spent so much in blood and treasure, lost aircraft, lost bases, from which we may never recover in the Middle East there, and it was all avoidable.

And if we had paid the least attention to the nature of our enemy, to the nature of the geography of the task that was set before us, that we could not bomb our way to success in a country that was as big as most of Western Europe, with all of these mountains, and the underground missile cities, et cetera.

So don't try to take on something that hubris says, I want, but I don't have the military capacity to get.

We could go a long way and just not fighting wars that don't need to be fought.

KATKO: Okay, we got so much of a lightning around here, about a minute left, and I'm going to ask you both the same question, and Mr.

Sadler I will ask first.

If you can make one major change to better prepare America for modern warfare, what would it be?

SADLER: Yes, we have to reorganize for this new Cold War that we're in with the Chinese, and it really is an ideological one as well as an industrial competition.

So we need to reorganize a new national security act like we did in 1947 for the last Cold War.

It's not going to be a repeat, and we have to adapt to it.

KATKO: Okay, Mr.

Davis?

DAVIS: Yeah, we don't need a fortress in America and just, you know, pull into our borders, definitely not talking about that, but we need to have a new national security strategy that doesn't go searching for enemies to fight, and that prioritizes our defense, and in ways that we can afford, and using modern technology in ways that the new war is going to impose upon us.

Lt.

Col.

Dan Davis and Captain Brent Sadler, thank you both for a great conversation.

We very much appreciate it.

And thank you very much for your Service, and I will say, my son is in the Army, so, sorry, Mr.

Sadler, go Army.

♪ ♪ KATKO: There is no question that George Washington's theory that a strong military will almost always help keep the peace remains true today.

That strength demands, especially modern times, that we constantly reevaluate our military capabilities and priorities.

Letting our guard down, as we tend to do in peacetime, almost always leads to frantic catching up that can be both costly and dangerous especially with increasing belligerents from adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

It is thus critically important that we ensure only the best and brightest populate the upper echelons of our nation's defense apparatus.

And that we steer clear of those who seem not up to the task.

Our future peace unquestionably depends on our ability to project lethal power against those who wish to do us harm.

We can only do that when we have our A game going all the time, and that's my take.

♪ ♪ Did you know that during World War II, thousands of American families actually donated their pet dogs to the military?

About 18,000 dogs were sent to training centers, where they were evaluated for military service.

And after the war, many surviving dogs were retrained for civilian life and returned to their original owners.

Faithful to family and country.

Good dog.

And now, you do know.

♪ ♪ That's all for this week, folks.

To send in your comments for the show, or to see “Balancing Act”, extras and exclusives, follow us on social media, or go to BalancingActWithJohnKatko.com Thank you for joining us, and remember, in the circus that is politics, there is always a “Balancing Act”.

I'm John Katko.

We'll see you next week, America.

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Since 2006, our markers have helped people celebrate community history.

Marker grant program information available at wgpfoundation.org.

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