Insufficient investment in infrastructure maintenance all the year round, and a large number of US military bases are "disintegrating"?

　　[Global Times Comprehensive Report] According to a report on the US "Business Insider" website on the 25th, the Pentagon, in the name of "responding to major Chinese and Russian rivals," has been aggressively developing and purchasing new combat platforms, but deliberately or unintentionally ignored the maintenance of US military bases distributed around the world. .

These bases built decades ago generally have problems such as poor facilities, irrational layout, and mismatch with modern weapons, which have seriously affected the combat effectiveness of the US military.

　　According to reports, the US military looks glamorous, but the military bases it relies on are "disintegrating."

Due to inadequate investment in infrastructure construction and maintenance of these bases throughout the year, many bases have been very dilapidated.

For example, the US Air Force’s backlog of base maintenance project funding has reached 30 billion U.S. dollars.

The leaders of the U.S. Air Force acknowledged that although the infrastructure is dilapidated and in short supply, when other priority needs arise, infrastructure improvement and construction are often the easiest to be overlooked.

US Air Force officials warned that in the past 20 years, insufficient investment in base infrastructure construction has eroded the US military’s projection capabilities.

　　The U.S. Navy is also facing the same problem. Requests for improvement and upgrading of shipyards and other infrastructure have been delayed, leading to serious degradation of many naval base facilities, even to the point that it is not worth continuing to preserve and use.

The Secretary of Naval Operations recently admitted that the dry docks used to maintain U.S. Navy ships are an average of 100 years old and that they have been ignored for a long time.

To make matters worse, these dry docks are very old, but still in short supply, leading to long delays in the maintenance of US warships and affecting the combat readiness of the entire fleet.

At present, the US Navy has only one dry dock sufficient to accommodate the latest "Ford" class aircraft carrier.

In the next few years, more than 50 warships will need to be decommissioned, partly because the US Navy cannot provide adequate maintenance services.

　　According to a report issued by the Office of Government Accountability of the American Congress, one-third of the US Navy’s aviation base was established in the 1940s. repair service".

At the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia, the Safety Investigation Committee found that "the damaged hangar door could not be opened or closed sometimes, which caused a Super Hornet fighter jet to be damaged during maintenance."

The committee also found that the fire-fighting system in the base was unable to operate normally. Only two of the eight repair and maintenance workshops were equipped with working power sources. The maintenance personnel had to spend several hours to tow the fighter aircraft from one workshop to another.

A naval carrier-based aircraft wing commander complained that maintenance personnel towed fighters more than 1,000 miles a year.

　　According to reports, the US military’s current “debts” in defense infrastructure have reached $135 billion.

But for many years, the US government has not paid attention to this issue.

For example, during the Trump administration, the US$8 billion originally used to build military infrastructure was embezzled to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.

The 1 trillion infrastructure investment bill passed by the United States not long ago excludes defense infrastructure.

"The later you start, the more maintenance projects will be backlogged, and the higher the cost will be, which will cause fatal damage to the U.S. military capabilities."

(Zhang Yifan)