The US Army Chief of Staff warned the enemies of the United States that “we will beat you harder than you’ve ever been beaten before.” The list of rivals and foes is predictably Russia, Iran and China. He also admitted that the US Army’s readiness to fight had been eroded recently.

The US Army Chief of Staff, Mark Milley delivered his remarks before the army’s annual meeting on Tuesday in Washington, DC, and said it was the military’s aim “to deter war but if deterrents fail we as an army, we as a nation must be prepared to fight.”

General Milley said deterrents were expensive but more expensive was fighting a war, and then fighting and winning a war but most expensive is fighting and losing a war.

“Our readiness to fight a war against a high-end, near peer adversary has eroded in the last 15 years as we fought and continue to fight against terrorists and guerillas in Afghanistan Iraq and elsewhere,” said Gen. Milley. “We were highly successful in ripping apart Saddam’s military in 1991, ejecting him from Kuwait and we shattered his army in 2003. Similarly, we destroyed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in very short order.”

The general admitted they had problems consolidating gains and adapting to an insurgent fight, and that the army’s future was being jeopardized by budget cuts.

“Other countries - Russia, China, Iran, North Korea – went to school on us. They closely watched how we fought in ’91 and ’03. They studied our doctrine, our tactics, our equipment, our organization and our training and our leadership and in turn they revised their own doctrines and they are rapidly modernizing their military today to avoid our strengths and hopes of defeating us at some point in the future,” said General Millay.

Too fat to serve: US army gives tons of overweight soldiers the boot https://t.co/NxqXngHVXA — Donald W. Swenson (@Donld1959) October 3, 2016

Gen. Millay said the military had taken a number of steps over the last year to increase “our readiness in the total army,” with training and combat readiness.

“I want to be clear to those around the world who want to destroy our way of life, and that of our allies and friends,” said Gen. Millay. “The United States military, despite all our challenges, despite our off-tempo, despite everything we have been doing, will stop you, and we will beat you harder than you’ve ever been beaten before. Make no mistake about that.”