The Center for National Defense has published the 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength. 

Each year, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength employs a standardized, consistent set of criteria, accessible both to government officials and to the American public, to gauge the U.S. military’s ability to perform its missions in today’s world. The inaugural 2015 edition established a baseline assessment on which each annual edition builds, one that both assesses the state of affairs for its respective year and measures how key factors have changed during the preceding year.

The Index is not an assessment of what might be, although the trends that it captures may well imply both concerns and opportunities that can guide decisions that are germane to America’s security. Rather, the Index should be seen as a report card for how well or poorly conditions, countries, and the U.S. military have evolved during the assessed year.

You can read the Executive Summary here. 

You can find the entire Index, available for PDF download or online reading, at www.heritage.org/military.

Just want to look at pictures? All charts, figures, maps and tables used in the Index can be easily accessed here.

Assessing the Global Operating Environment

The United States is a global power with global security interests, and threats to those interests can emerge from any region. Consequently, the U.S. military must be ready to operate in any region when called upon to do so and must account for the range of conditions that it might encounter when planning for potential military operations. This informs its decisions about the type and amount of equipment it purchases (especially to transport and sustain the force); the location or locations from which it might operate; and how easily it can or cannot project and sustain combat power when engaged with the enemy. The Index assesses and scores three key regions: Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Read our findings here.

Assessing Threats to U.S. Vital Interests

America faces challenges to its security at home and interests abroad from countries and organizations with:

• Interests that conflict with those of the United States;
• Sometimes hostile intentions toward the U.S.; and
• In some cases, growing military capabilities that are leveraged to impose an adversary’s will by coercion or intimidation of neighboring countries, thereby creating regional instabilities.

Because this Index focuses on the military component of national power, its assessment of threats is correspondingly an assessment of the military or physical threat posed by each entity addressed in this section. Compiling the assessments of these threat sources, the 2022 Index again rates the overall global threat environment as “aggressive” and “gathering” in the areas of threat actor behavior and material ability to harm U.S. security interests, respectively, leading to an aggregated threat score of “high.”

Read our full analysis here.

An Assessment of U.S. Military Power

Because America is a global power with global interests, its military is tasked first and foremost with defending the country from attack. Beyond that, it must be capable of protecting Americans abroad, America’s allies, and the freedom to use international sea, air, space, and cyberspace while retaining the ability to engage in more than one major contingency at a time. America must be able not only to defend itself and its interests, but also to deter enemies and opportunists from taking action that would challenge U.S. interests—a capability that includes both preventing the destabilization of a region and guarding against threats to the peace and security of America’s friends.

The Active Component of the U.S. military is two-thirds the size it should be, operates equipment that is older than it should be, and is burdened by readiness levels that are more problematic than they should be. Some progress has been made, but it has been made at the expense of both capacity and modernization. The Index assesses the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, and U.S. nuclear capability in detail. 

Read our assessments here.

Topical Essays

The 2022 Index includes four essays on the theme of "risk". 

• "Managing Risk in Force Planning" by David A. Deptula, Lieutenant General, USAF (Ret.)
• "Understanding Risk in the Great Competition with China" by Sarah Kirchberger, PhD
  
• "What We Risk If We Fail to Fully Modernize the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent" by Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
  
• "How Prioritizing Climate Change Could Weaken America’s Military" by Rebecca Grant, PhD
  

Read the topical essays here.

Further Reading from the Center for National Defense:

• Improving America’s Long-Term Military Recruiting Outlook by Thomas Spoehr describes the efforts needed to ensure our armed forces have sufficient manpower today and in the future. 

• What Experts and Senior Officials Have Said About Adopting a No-First-Use or Sole-Purpose Nuclear Declaratory Policy by Patty-Jane Geller overviews policymakers' positions on "no first use". 

• Iran’s Nuclear Humpty Dumpty: The JCPOA Should Not Be Put Back Together Again by Peter Brookes and James Phillips argues against any nuclear deal with Iran which fails to support U.S. national security interests. 

• AUKUS: U.S. Navy Nuclear-Powered Forward Presence Key to Australian Nuclear Submarine and China Deterrence by Brent Sadler explains the potential value and pitfalls of the new agreement with Australia.