Leadership Quote by Ike Skelton

A line like this is less a status report than a political flare shot. Ike Skelton, speaking as a defense-minded lawmaker and longtime overseer of military policy, is using blunt readiness language to force urgency onto a system that prefers slow, budget-driven drift. “Nearly every combat brigade” is deliberately sweeping: it’s meant to deny the Pentagon and Congress the comfort of treating the problem as isolated to a few unlucky units. By anchoring the warning “within the United States,” he also closes an easy loophole. This isn’t about troops already deployed and understandably strained; it’s about the home-based force that’s supposed to be the nation’s strategic reserve, the thing you call on when the next crisis hits.

The phrase “not ready for duty” does double work. On its face, it’s a technical indictment: training hours, equipment availability, maintenance backlogs, personnel fill. Underneath, it’s an accusation of misaligned priorities - too many commitments, too little reset time, too much reliance on patriotic grit to cover institutional shortfalls. “Lowest levels of readiness” is calibrated to trigger institutional shame and public alarm without spilling classified detail, a politician’s way of translating military metrics into a moral and fiscal argument.

Context matters: Skelton’s era was defined by post-9/11 tempo, repeated rotations, worn equipment, and budget fights where “support the troops” rhetoric often outpaced the mundane spending needed to keep units actually deployable. The subtext is simple and sharp: America can be busy, or it can be prepared, but pretending it can be both for free is a dangerous fantasy.