Top US General Confirms Climate Change’s Threat Military Ops

"Climate change is going to impact natural resources, for example," he said during a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Armed Services as quoted Friday by Military.com news outlet. "It's going to impact increased instability in various parts of the world. It's going to impact migrations, and so on."

Milley further pointed to the destructive effect of hurricanes -- which scientists say have been worsened by warming oceans -- on military infrastructure in the US. Tyndall Air Force Base in southeastern State of Florida was devastated by a major hurricane in October 2018.

The remarks by the top general came a day after US President Joe Biden told American troops based in Britain that top military leaders had told him nearly 12 years ago that global warming was the greatest threat facing country due to its effects on population movements, increased scarcity of land capable of growing food and potential conflicts over land.

"When I was over in the Tank in the Pentagon, when I first was elected vice president with President Obama, the military sat us down to let us know what the greatest threats facing America were -- the greatest physical threats," Biden asserted at the England-based RAF Mildenhall US Air Force base. "And this is not a joke: You know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming."

During the hearing on Thursday to discuss US Defense Department's proposed fiscal 2022 budget, Milley was asked about Biden's remarks about global warming being America's greatest threat, to which he responded that climate change had significantly affected military operations and must be taken into account.

Insisting that there is no difference of opinion between himself and Biden when it comes to taking climate change as a serious threat, Milley then noted, "The president is looking at [potential threats] at a much broader angle than I am."

"I'm looking at it from a strictly military standpoint and, from a strictly military standpoint, I'm putting China and Russia up there. That is not, however, in conflict with the acknowledgment that climate change, or infrastructure, or education systems -- national security has a broad angle to it."

He also described China as the top military threat facing the United States during his testimony, further referring to Russia as a considerable "great power competitor."

Milley also warned US lawmakers of China's expanding military capabilities, insisting on the need to adopt measures to ensure competitive advantage of American armed forces.