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Countries With the Largest Air Forces

Enter the top 20 countries with the most military aircraft.
Includes fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters in all branches of service
Quiz by kalbahamut
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Last updated: January 8, 2019
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First submittedJanuary 23, 2013
Times taken31,150
Average score80.0%
Rating4.30
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Aircraft
Country
13,362
United States
3,914
Russia
3,035
China
2,185
India
1,560
South Korea
1,508
Japan
1,281
Pakistan
Aircraft
Country
1,262
France
1,132
Egypt
1,056
Turkey
944
North Korea
844
Saudi Arabia
843
Taiwan
832
United Kingdom
Aircraft
Country
828
Italy
723
Brazil
714
Germany
596
Israel
567
Greece
565
Thailand
+3
Level 14
Mar 19, 2013
Fine quiz but I think Malaysia should be there in the list
+4
Level 82
Mar 19, 2013
Thanks. According to GlobalFirepower, Malaysia is #46 in the world... so they don't make the top 30. If I were to update this list then Sweden would be out of the top 30 and the United Arab Emirates would be on, but that's the only change from the last two months.
+1
Level 82
Mar 19, 2013
and, in case it wasn't clear from the title of the quiz.. this isn't at all about the quality of these airforces it is strictly based on the number of military aircraft they have. Malaysia is reported as having 244 military aircraft, not enough to make the top 30.
+1
Level 40
Oct 28, 2013
Ha. While the air force DOES make a lot of noise when they do drills and whatnot, in reality they don't have much of an air force.
+2
Level 79
Mar 10, 2019
no.
+2
Level 82
May 22, 2013
Updated May 2013! Major changes include Sweden decommissioning or selling more than half of its total aircraft, thus dropping them off the list, and China DOUBLING their total aircraft, allowing them to take the #2 spot from Russia.
+1
Level 82
Jun 14, 2014
with the latest update, however, China has slipped back into the #3 slot. Seems they adjusted the way they are counting.
+1
Level 82
Apr 1, 2015
Updated again to include the latest data. Nothing Earth-shattering. The same trends of the last several years have continued: the increasing irrelevance of Europe as virtually every European country has fallen, the rise of pretty much everywhere else especially Asia, and continuing American dominance. Virtually no change in order at the top of the list, only minor shuffling at the bottom. Somehow Ukraine has lost 90% of its aircraft, sending it well out of the top 30 and making room for Australia. Meanwhile Indonesia has just barely overtaken Vietnam. Those were the only two changes in roster of the top 30.
+1
Level 82
Nov 4, 2018
Update late 2018: some minor reordering. Canada is out of the top 30 now and Mexico is back on.
+2
Level 55
Oct 13, 2013
Does Syria mean the government or the rebels?
+2
Level 82
Oct 13, 2013
I think you're kidding. Right?
+2
Level 40
Oct 28, 2013
Just laughed for thirty seconds straight at that. Obviously kidding.
+1
Level 82
Oct 28, 2014
Maybe not so funny anymore that the rebels have gone and declared their own state...
+1
Level 35
May 8, 2015
Maybe not so funny anymore 'now' that...
+2
Level 35
Feb 3, 2014
Missed Greece... yet got UAE. *facepalm*
+5
Level 82
Feb 3, 2014
They're both at the bottom of the list. Why the facepalm?
+1
Level 24
Mar 12, 2024
Maybe for a low educated person like yourself it's not facepalm worthy?
+1
Level 46
Feb 14, 2014
Every single military quiz I type in USA, China, and Russia and they are always there.
+1
Level 82
Feb 14, 2014
Try my Countries by Military Spending (as a % of GDP). One of them's not there.
+1
Level 82
Jun 14, 2014
Update June 2014: GFP really shook up their rankings. Seems they are counting aircraft differently now, and probably not counting certain types that they were before considering most of the numbers have gotten smaller. China and the US for example each lost 2k planes a piece. Other changes include France, Egypt, Turkey, South Korea and Japan all moving way up; North Korea and Iran moving way down; and Mexico and Libya shuffling clear off the bottom of the list making room for Canada and Algeria.
+2
Level 73
May 1, 2016
Very surprised about Columbia (P.S. please correct spelling)
+9
Level 82
May 2, 2016
*Colombia. There you go.
+1
Level 47
Jun 20, 2016
Netherlands is now included - need an update
+1
Level 13
Dec 6, 2016
Can you make it so that typing USAF would render as USA, typing RCAF would render as Canada, and typing RAF would render as the UK?
+1
Level 82
Dec 6, 2016
I could but 1) I'm too lazy to look up the acronyms for all 30 of these countries and then put them all in as type-ins, and if I didn't do that it would make the quiz inconsistent. and 2) the directions clearly ask you to name the country, not the air force of that country. If it was just "Largest Air Forces" that would make more sense, but then the numbers would be inaccurate as that 13k figure is all branches combined. Or "Military Branches with the Most Combat Aircraft." If the latter- then you could have the USAF, USMC, USN, and USA all on this quiz as every branch of the US military has more than 417 aircraft in its inventory.
+6
Level 76
Jan 7, 2019
If you divide the US Air Force and the US Navy into two separate forces, the USAF is still largest air force while the USN

is the 2nd largest air force in the world

+1
Level 82
Jan 8, 2019
Here's the original version of the same quiz, with 30 answers instead of 20.
+2
Level 47
Jan 9, 2019
The amount of military spending by Greece really does bemuse me.
+1
Level 82
Jan 9, 2019
Greece's military expenditures are 32nd worldwide according to the source, not super high unless you consider the dire straits their economy is in.
+3
Level 75
Feb 8, 2019
Greece is next to Turkey: a country 7 times its size, with 8 times its population and 10 times its economy, a massive military, led by a dictator with expansionist views. And they've been enemies for the last millennium or so.
+1
Level 82
Feb 8, 2019
Do you mean the last century or so? Greece wasn't even a country more than 200 years ago. At the time both the territory that is currently Greece and the territory that is currently Turkey were part of the Ottoman Empire. They've pretty much hated each other ever since bother countries came into existence, but not before. Unless you're trying to conflate Greece with Sparta and Turkey with Troy or something truly bizarre like that. :D But those were not the same people. Nationalist creation myths are always a lie.
+5
Level 76
Sep 7, 2019
@kalbahamut: Greeks and Turks didn't appear out of nowhere when the respective states were created, and indeed conflict between those nations started around 1000 years ago, when Turkish tribes started invading Byzantine lands, pillaging, slaughtering and forcefully converting to Islam the Christian, mostly Greek-speaking population. The Ottomans continued these practices during their conquest and later continuously oppressed the Christian population throughout the existence of the Ottoman Empire. The separation between the Christians and the Muslim conquerors/converts in Greece and Asia Minor at the time essentially constitutes the definition of the modern-day Greek and Turkish nations.
+2
Level 82
Sep 7, 2019
This is a false but commonly believed lie. Nationalism is a lie. There are not distinct, discrete, cogent groups of people connected by common heritage, language, religion, genetics, etc that have existed in the same arrangements for thousands of years. This is part of the nationalist fantasy. While there were "Turkic" people in Central Asia that invaded Anatolia, speaking languages related to modern Turkish, those are not the same people who live in Turkey today. And while there were "Greeks" in the Ottoman and Byzantine Empire, the label did not mean the same thing at those times. Turks and Greeks did indeed appear out of nowhere, at around the same time, right around the middle of the 18th century- the same time that Macedonians, Bulgarians, Germans, Italians, Russians, Chinese, etc. as we conceive of them today also appeared.
+1
Level 82
Sep 7, 2019
"Greek speaking" people of the Byzantine Empire were not Greeks, the way you're using the word, any more than Jamaicans are English, or Mexicans are Spaniards. I know that this goes against the nationalist myth of Greece, and because nationalism as an idea is so deeply ingrained and commonly accepted today, I also know that this seems counter-intuitive.
+3
Level 76
Sep 8, 2019
What defines a nation then, statehood? That is an absurd notion, and the comparison with colonialism is obviously flawed. Even the Byzantine Empire was, in fact, made up of Greeks, Armenians, Slavs etc. ruled by an aristocratic elite. Their culture, language, religion and feeling of unity at the time of these nations' respective independence actually had more in common with that of those times than with modern, westernized society. This has nothing to do with the feeling of superiority or vengefulness that nationalism draws from the past, and whose flames are still fanned by national and international interests, resulting, among other things, in the numbers on this quiz. It is merely a historical fact.
+2
Level 82
Sep 8, 2019
No. A nation itself is an absurd notion. The idea that "Greeks" today are the same people as the "Greek"-speaking people of the Byzantine Empire, or the "Greeks" of ancient Athens, that's absurd. The whole concept of nationalism is a lie built on a fallacious and tribalistic concept of how history works. AND, this concept did not exist prior to the 18th century when the concept of nationalism was invented. THIS is when some subjects of the Ottoman Empire decided, hey, all of these many different disparate people around the empire who speak a language basically the same as Greek, and go to Greek Orthodox Christian churches, they are all the same people, and they have all descended from Alexander the Great and the people of ancient Greece, and they all share the same history and culture and genetics, and they should come together and form their own country where they will be self-ruled on land that belongs to them by genetic birthright because of some ancient lineage.
+3
Level 82
Sep 8, 2019
This was a completely new concept in the 18th century, and it's completely BS. The same concept inspired Bismarck to unite all the "German" people, and Garibaldi to unite "Italy", and spelled doom for the multi-ethnic Ottomans. But it is based on fantasy, not reality. So... yes... these nations did not spring in to being until they were imagined to have existed. They did not exist prior to that inherently. Nationalism is a social construct. We are all the same people. We are all the same race. Tribalism is evil in addition to being simply wrong.
+1
Level 59
Feb 7, 2019
Nice quiz. Are there an army and navy versions available?
+20
Level 76
Feb 7, 2019
My grandfather single-handedly downed 8 German planes killing 23 Nazi crewman in just one day during the Battle of Britain. They say he was the worst mechanic in the history of the Luftwaffe.
+1
Level 28
Feb 7, 2019
Greece has more than Spain? That’s some news to me!
+3
Level 59
Feb 7, 2019
Probably because of its less than cordial relations with Turkey.
+2
Level 32
Feb 25, 2019
Check top 8, all bordering China ( USA has many bases in Japan and S.Korea, and the Philippines). Northeast Asia is truly hell mode.
+1
Level 82
Feb 26, 2019
The USA does not have any military in the Philippines.
+1
Level 65
Nov 8, 2019
Great Quiz, perhaps ready for an update?

According to the source Italy has now overtaken the UK and Thailand has overtaken Greece.

+1
Level 50
Jan 20, 2020
Jeez got them all in 1:08
+1
Level 55
Oct 8, 2020
I really want to see switzerland on one of this quizzes :D
+1
Level 67
Mar 14, 2023
Just missed Taiwan
+1
Level 57
Apr 26, 2023
For some reason I thought countries air forces would be a lot larger like 10000s for US and China.
+1
Level 75
May 9, 2023
You might think that Taiwan being on here is surprising, but it really isn't. One word. China.

China is on their doorstep and could invade any time, so that's why they have a big air force despite being a small country.

+1
Level 47
Mar 27, 2024
Somehow missed UK and Greece...