What You Need to Know: The U.S. military is grappling with a significant manpower crisis, as recruiting barely meets lowered standards, retention remains challenging, and shortages persist in key roles like pilots. Shipyards and industries critical to military production face similar issues, compounded by an aging workforce and waning interest from younger generations.

-Meanwhile, America’s declining birthrate signals long-term demographic challenges, as Gen-Z’s reluctance to start families could exacerbate population decline. Autonomous systems may provide a solution, with digital natives excelling in remote warfare.

-However, America’s rivals, including China, face similar demographic struggles, suggesting a future where unmanned systems dominate warfare rather than human soldiers.

The United States Navy is the smallest it has been since the First World War, and as recent crises have shown, it is stretched thin maintaining a constant presence in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. The situation with the United States Air Force isn't really much better. It operates a total of just 157 bombers, with the majority being Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers last built in the 1960s, while the loss of a single Northrop B-2 Spirit cut the fleet down by five percent.

In addition, Air Force officials are uncertain if the service can afford the highly-touted next-generation fighter, and paused the program in July, while the Navy continues to face production delays with nearly all of its upcoming warships.

Those are serious problems, but the truth is that they can be overcome. The shipbuilding industry is looking at speeding up production, and while it doesn't sound like an "America First" strategy, the sea service has been exploring options with how its fleet of warships could be maintained at overseas facilities in Japan and South Korea. There have even been talks about foreign shipyards building the next-generation American warships.

That could change with the incoming Trump administration, which has promised to Make America Great Again (again), as the optics of future warships built in Japan might not play well in the heartland.

Yet, the fact........

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