The Heritage Foundation has announced a committee designed to conduct a thorough examination of the state of the military.
The conservative think tank announced on Thursday the “National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness,” which will be chaired by Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), who currently serves as the ranking member of the Readiness Subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee.
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“I am honored to serve on this panel as its leader and look forward to helping devise solutions to such issues as the politicization of the military, the decline in confidence in the military by the American people, and the challenges with recruiting,” Waltz said in a statement.
The committee will investigate the “unprecedented threats from the increasingly provocative China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” while hitting military recruitment goals has been a struggle for each branch, according to a press release.
H.R. McMaster, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, and Morgan Ortagus, a Naval reservist who attempted to run for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District as a conservative but was disqualified, are two of the other members of the panel, according to a spokesperson. Ortagus previously served as a State Department spokeswoman and a former U.S. Treasury intelligence attache to Saudi Arabia.
The panel will ultimately release recommendations that it says will “improve the readiness of the military, determine the causes of the current crisis in military recruiting, and offer solutions that restore readiness and encourage more Americans to serve in the armed forces.”
Thomas Spoehr, the director of the Center for National Defense at the Heritage Foundation, will serve as the executive secretary of the panel.
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Heritage’s announcement comes amid a long-standing debate about whether the military should emphasize diversity and inclusion or focus exclusively on warfighting capabilities and such preparations. Conservatives have frequently promoted the latter and lamented the Biden administration’s push to further these directives.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said earlier this week that she isn’t “sure what ‘woke’ means” but added, “If ‘woke’ means we are not focused on warfighting (or) we are not focused on readiness, that doesn’t reflect what I see at installations all around the country or overseas when I go and visit.”
Her comments prompted disagreements from conservatives.
