Military Readiness: DOD Should Take Further Actions to Address Challenges Across the Air, Sea, Ground, and Space Domains

What GAO Found

To maintain its reputation as the dominant military force worldwide, the Department of Defense (DOD) must balance efforts to improve the readiness of its forces with meeting ongoing demands, modernizing its capabilities, and addressing priorities identified in the 2026 National Defense Strategy. GAO's body of work has shown that U.S. military readiness has been degraded over the last 2 decades due to a variety of challenges, including maintaining existing systems while acquiring new capabilities. Implementing GAO's open recommendations-such as those shown in the figure below-will help DOD address these challenges and enhance readiness.

Selected Open GAO Recommendations to Address Persistent Military Readiness Challenges

Why GAO Did This Study

DOD's efforts to improve military readiness require the department to make difficult decisions on how best to address ongoing operational demands, adapt to shifting priorities, and prepare for future challenges. DOD has taken steps to address persistent readiness challenges, but significant work remains to make a range of needed improvements that GAO has identified.

This statement provides information on readiness challenges across the air, sea, ground, and space warfighting domains.

This statement is primarily based on published GAO reports since 2022 that have examined aspects of military readiness, operations, and sustainment in the air, sea, ground, and space domains. This statement also includes information on related work ongoing during fiscal year 2026. To perform all this work, GAO analyzed Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force readiness, maintenance, personnel, and training information and interviewed cognizant officials.