With a severe recruitment crisis and lackluster scores for readiness and capacity, all three major branches of the US armed forces are lagging behind Russia and China
This smells like propaganda. It's on a random "news" blog with no information about the organization. There isn't even a name in the article's byline, only "News Desk." The article itself is lazy and biased, simply parroting taking points from a nationalist conservative think tank with a clear political agenda.
If anyone is unfamiliar with the heritage foundation they are just a mouthpiece for the ultra-wealthy’s interests. Nothing they say should be taken as factual information.
PSA: @yogthos@lemmy.ml is a radical pushing a specific anti-US agenda. Keep that in mind when considering their posts and comments. I suspect "news" organization linked to in this particular post is an Iranian-funded propaganda outlet.
People could make a pass at a reasonable argument that the US armed forces are lagging behind China (the evidence for that is still poor), but claiming it lags Russia has no basis in reality.
US is very obviously not dominant in nuclear delivery systems given that both Russia and China have hypersonic weapons while US does not. There's also no indication that US has any superiority in submarines or other forces. In fact, US airforce admits that they don't actually have superiority over China https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-rethink-air-superiority-allvin/
The war US is obviously thinking about is one with China because China is surpassing the US now.
Hypersonic weapons are an interesting avenue. But that is not the entirety of the nuclear deterrence story. You want a multiplicity of delivery systems so that you can guarantee delivery in any scenario.
I would love to see cited sources indicating the US has insufficient nuclear delivery capability to at least peer Russia and China.