Today on “Mornings with Maria,” Retired General Jack Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, explained why military readiness is impacted and why it‘s important for congress to pass this year’s budget instead of the Continuing Resolutions.

“What we are doing is digging ourselves out of a big hole due to budget cuts, wars, and sequestration.” Ret. Gen. Jack Keane

Readiness is the ability of a service unit to do the job that is required of it at any given time. A unit’s readiness can be affected by lack of any of the following: repair parts, training, fuel, or trained mechanics. Any or all can feed into this distractor.

According to the latest Heritage Foundation report, the Army can only certify 29 of its 50 required brigades that combat ready. Currently a US Army Brigade is roughly 5,000 Soldiers capable of being independently deployed with the help of all the US Air Forces operational level aircraft; that’s all 120 C-130s, if they can fly. The Army’s Stryker, medium armored vehicle brigades require a modified C-130J. The C-17 can carry three Strykers but that means they have to be pulled out of other critical duties.

The caveat here for a newly deployed brigade is they can only feed themselves and provision fuel and ammunition for a few days at a time.

Keane also said that the Marines have only 67 percent of their force combat ready instead of their goal of 90 percent. The Air Force has a critical shortage of pilots, among other readiness problems. He also mentioned that the Navy has 290 of the required 400 ships.