Barry Blechman is quoted in the Associated Press on US military readiness

WASHINGTON – Warnings from defense officials and some experts are
mounting and becoming more dire: The nation’s military is being hobbled
by budget cuts.

“You’d better hope we never have a war again,” the House Armed
Services Committee chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., said
of the decline in what the military calls its readiness.

So should Americans be worried?

-snip-

Analysts say a decade of massive spending increases have built a strong
force superior to anything else out there. “We could certainly fight
another war on the order of the first Gulf War (1991) without any
problems; the Air Force could do air strikes in Syria,” said Barry M.
Blechman of the Stimson Center think tank. “We wouldn’t want to get
involved in another protracted war (like Iraq and Afghanistan), but in
terms of the types of military operations we typically get involved in,
we’re prepared for that.”

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