>Since Russia invaded Ukraine, senior Pentagon leaders have wrestled with how to maintain U.S. military “readiness” — essentially, its ability to fight right now — while supporting allies abroad.
>The conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, happening as they are at the same time, have brought that tension into stark relief.
>The relative scarcity of U.S.-made ATACMS is one reason President Biden has said no to Ukraine’s requests to use the weapon to strike deep inside Russia. Pentagon officials say they simply cannot supply more of them to Ukraine without dipping into stockpiles reserved for American troops to use in possible conflicts in the Middle East and Asia.
>Other air defense systems, like the Patriot, are in high demand in Ukraine to help knock down Russian missile barrages against the electrical grid as another winter approaches.
>But that comes at a price on the American end, as constant deployments threaten to wear down the crews that operate the systems and prevent the Army from bringing them home for periodic overhauls to upgrade their technology, Ms. Wormuth said this week.
>[…]
>Most significantly, Defense Department officials are worried that the Middle East conflict — and Ukraine, to a lesser extent — will draw resources away from the Pacific region, where the military is trying to shift more of its attention, in the event that China invades Taiwan or a dispute over territory in the South China Sea leads to something bigger.
>[…]
>Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the commander of U.S. Army Pacific, said in an interview on Wednesday that the military has to figure out how to prioritize Asia.
>“We’ve got a limited regional war going on Europe,” he said. “We’ve got another limited regional war going on in the Middle East. It’s like, this strategy of exhaustion that’s going on.”
>Successive U.S. administrations have tried to extricate the American military from the Middle East and “pivot” — as the Obama administration put it — to Asia for more than a decade.
>“We remain focused on the Indo-Pacific,” Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday, using the bureaucratic term for Asia.
>But the rest of the news conference largely focused on weapons and troop deployments to the Middle East.
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Archived version: [https://archive.fo/w3eZb](https://archive.fo/w3eZb).
Summary:
>Since Russia invaded Ukraine, senior Pentagon leaders have wrestled with how to maintain U.S. military “readiness” — essentially, its ability to fight right now — while supporting allies abroad.
>The conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, happening as they are at the same time, have brought that tension into stark relief.
>The relative scarcity of U.S.-made ATACMS is one reason President Biden has said no to Ukraine’s requests to use the weapon to strike deep inside Russia. Pentagon officials say they simply cannot supply more of them to Ukraine without dipping into stockpiles reserved for American troops to use in possible conflicts in the Middle East and Asia.
>Other air defense systems, like the Patriot, are in high demand in Ukraine to help knock down Russian missile barrages against the electrical grid as another winter approaches.
>But that comes at a price on the American end, as constant deployments threaten to wear down the crews that operate the systems and prevent the Army from bringing them home for periodic overhauls to upgrade their technology, Ms. Wormuth said this week.
>[…]
>Most significantly, Defense Department officials are worried that the Middle East conflict — and Ukraine, to a lesser extent — will draw resources away from the Pacific region, where the military is trying to shift more of its attention, in the event that China invades Taiwan or a dispute over territory in the South China Sea leads to something bigger.
>[…]
>Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the commander of U.S. Army Pacific, said in an interview on Wednesday that the military has to figure out how to prioritize Asia.
>“We’ve got a limited regional war going on Europe,” he said. “We’ve got another limited regional war going on in the Middle East. It’s like, this strategy of exhaustion that’s going on.”
>Successive U.S. administrations have tried to extricate the American military from the Middle East and “pivot” — as the Obama administration put it — to Asia for more than a decade.
>“We remain focused on the Indo-Pacific,” Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday, using the bureaucratic term for Asia.
>But the rest of the news conference largely focused on weapons and troop deployments to the Middle East.
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