“Significant and urgent action” is needed to prepare the United States for the national security threats it’s facing today, said the leaders of a commission tasked by Congress.

“Our commission believes unanimously that the threats to U.S. national security and our interests are greater than at any time since World War II and are more complex than during the Cold War,” Jane Harman and Eric Edelman, the chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy of the United States, said in written testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The commission also said the Army is too small for its mission of dominating adversaries and enabling the joint force. “Lessons from the Ukraine war demonstrate that the U.S. Army needs to expand its force structure in key areas—particularly air defense, counter–unmanned aerial systems, electronic warfare, and long-range fires—that are applicable across theaters, including in a Western Pacific contingency,” the commission says in its report.

Additionally, “the public has no idea how great the threats are and is not mobilized to meet them,” Harman told the committee July 30. “Public support is critical to implement the changes we need to make. Leaders on both sides of the aisle and across government need to make the case to the public and get their support.”

Harman is a former member of Congress who led the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for 10 years. She has served on advisory boards for the CIA, director of national intelligence and the departments of defense, homeland security and state.

Recommending “fundamental change” in the way the Pentagon and other government agencies do business, the commission also urges a full embrace of America’s partners and allies and better integration with private sector technology.

Several members of the commission served on the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission, which sounded the alarm that the U.S. was losing its decisive military edge, said Edelman, who was that group’s co-chair. “Six years later, the threats are more serious, and we have failed to keep pace,” he said.

A former U.S. ambassador to Finland and Turkey, Edelman is counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He previously also served in senior positions in the State Department, DoD and the White House.

Harman and Edelman warned that there is potential for “near-term war, and potential that we might lose,” citing the partnership between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as a “major strategic shift that we haven’t yet accounted for.”

China, which DoD leaders have called the U.S.’ “pacing challenge,” is “in some ways outpacing the United States,” Harman and Edelman said.

“China’s cyber capabilities, space assets, growing strategic forces and fully modernized conventional forces are designed to keep the United States from engaging in the Taiwan Strait or the South or East China Seas,” they said. “China has infiltrated our critical infrastructure networks to prevent or deter U.S. action by contesting our logistics, disrupting power and water, and otherwise remove the sanctuary that the United States has long enjoyed at home.”

Russia also continues to be a threat, as it has reconstituted after its invasion of Ukraine, the commission said. Russian President Vladimir Putin “seeks to re-assert Russia as a great power and is happy to destabilize the world to do it,” they said.

DoD cannot—and should not—provide for the national defense itself, Harman and Edelman said. “A truly ‘all elements of national power’ approach is required to coordinate and leverage resources across DoD, the rest of the executive branch, the private sector, civil society and U.S. allies and partners,” they said.

For its part, DoD must change how it works with the technology sector, they said. “DoD is operating at the speed of bureaucracy when the threat is approaching wartime urgency. DoD’s structure is optimized for research and development for exquisite, irreplaceable platforms when the future is autonomy, AI and large numbers of cheaper, attritable systems,” Harman and Edelman said.

The military also is too small for today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges, the commission found. It also warned about the current recruiting challenges facing the force.

“The joint force is at the breaking point of maintaining readiness today. Adding more burden without adding resources to rebuild readiness will cause it to break,” they said. “The United States must spend more effectively and more efficiently to build the future force, not perpetuate the existing one. We have to cancel legacy programs. Additional resources will also be necessary. Congress should pass a supplemental appropriation to begin a multiyear investment in the national security innovation and industrial base.”

Read the commission’s report here.