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US falling behind in defence systems? Commission calls for major military revamp to counter China, Russia

According to the commission, the US needs to invest more resources to defence as the scale of challenges the country faces is huge

A bipartisan commission, looking into the national defence strategy of the US, highlighted the importance of the country increasing defence spending at an unprecedented levels to counter threats emanating from China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.

Former Congresswoman Jane Harman, who chaired the commission, said the US is facing extremely challenging threats since World War II and added that the country is not prepared to face such threats.

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She said during the efforts, the commission realized that the US is "...at the risk of having our authoritarian adversaries outpace us and that we really run the risk of … a global conflict because of the incredibly dangerous international situation that we face."

According to the commission, the US needs to invest more resources to defence as the scale of challenges the country faces is huge.

The commission observed the need for reviewing the systems in the US inventory to make them "agile, interoperable and survivable" with the intention of using them in the battlefield.

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According to a Department of Defence report, the commission also highlighted the need for rebuilding the defense industrial base that has been wasted away since the end of the Cold War.

"It is expensive to defend the United States of America, but what we're talking about in this report is restoring our ability to deter conflict, and failure to deter conflict is always more expensive than spending the money that's necessary to deter and defend," Edelman was quoted as saying.

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