Top 30 Most Powerful Militaries

I always forget Poland, and then I see George W. Bush in my head, defending his "coalition of the willing,": "don't forget Poland!" haha

Hey everyone. Pleasure to be featured as always. Hope you guys enjoy the quiz and if you do, here are a few other similarly-themed quizzes I created you may also enjoy:

Countries by Air Force Strength

Countries by Active Military Reserve Strength

Countries by Military Expenditures (as a % of GDP)

Longest Lasting Empires

Countries by Debt to GDP Ratio

Enjoy and if you do, subscribe to get updates on new quizzes by clicking the link next to my name above.

Cheers, all, and mind the Predator drones.

What gave it away? Was it the caveat at the top that says "According to the website GlobalFirepower.com?" You are a master sleuth indeed!

If you're referring to the linked quizzes above, 2 used GFP as a source, 2 use Wikipedia, and 1 uses the SIPRI database and also references Wikipedia.

Another year another update from GFP. Mostly minor shufflings. No major changes at the top of the list. Throughout the bottom ranks the major theme seems to be the sharp rise of some Asian countries and the steady decline of Europe. Spain and Syria have both tumbled off the top 30, making way for Algeria and Singapore. And GFP apparently still hasn't fixed whatever quirk of their algorithm that allows Czech Republic and Switzerland to make the list over North Korea, the UAE, Mexico, or other larger, more powerful countries. It's my hypothesis that they are too generous with the boost they give to landlocked countries for having no navy. But without looking at the algorithm I don't know.

The update this year seems to include an algorithm overhaul that makes the top 30 rankings seem a lot more intuitive and sensible. For instance, Switzerland, Singapore, Ethiopia, and the Czech Republic are all off now, as probably anyone would agree they ought to be; and North Korea is back on, which seems obvious. No more difficult explanations.

I haven't updated this in 2 years. Pending approval I put in the numbers for 2018.

Not really any big changes. North Korea, South Korea, Iran, and Spain all moved up significantly. Other than that there were just minor shufflings and the top 5 remain the same. The only move in to or out of the top 30 was Sweden out, and the Czech Republic back in. This seems unfortunate as it doesn't make sense to rank Czechia higher than Mexico, Sweden, The Netherlands, South Africa or many other nations. I suspect the algorithm is still in need of fixing as mentioned above.

I'm not entirely sure how the algorithm is calculated. In terms of conventional weaponry, for sure, the USA could clean Russia's clock at this point, even though Russia still has the 2nd best airforce in the world and among the most poweful navies. However, if you look at non-conventional weaponry, Russia still has some 17,000 nuclear warheads sitting around. Enough to destroy the world 5 or 6 times compared to the USA's capability of only destroying the entire world 3 or 4 times. I'm not sure, practically speaking, what difference that makes... but maybe it accounts for the closeness in score.

I never saw Red Dawn, but I thought that it was about North Korea (on paper), even though it was about China (really). Or you're talking about the 1984 film? In 1984 the Soviets and Americans were more or less on equal footing. Now, that's not the case. But....... hard to speculate given the hypothetical parameters you set up. With nukes, Russia has the advantage. With air force, tactical missiles and drones technology, the USA has the advantage. Leave it just to ground forces and the US probably still has an advantage but you would have taken away most of their technological superiority if you eliminate the air force (assuming that you are grouping in air-based weapons from the Navy, Army and Marines along with Air Force), so... in all likelihood it would be a horrific, grinding total war a la WW1 or WW2 wiping out generations of men, with advantage going to the defender if there was one. I know I'm taking your comment too seriously. :)

eh... Americans have done fine at forgetting about Afghanistan which is now the longest war in the nation's history. Of course that's all "over there" so not really present in most Americans' minds. But, the USA has also successfully negotiated World War 1, World War 2, the Revolutionary War, and the American Civil War which were all pretty awful, the last one especially for Americans. Russia weathered attacks from Napoleon and Nazi Germany, but then again they also lost the will to fight in Afghanistan much the same as the US did in Vietnam. I say it's a wash.. and.. like I said before... ultimate advantage goes to the defender.

hm... no, not really. Global Firepower ranks them 48th, even with the boost they get for being landlocked (landlocked countries are not penalized for having no navy), they still end up pretty low.

I looked more into the algorithm used by TotalFirepower. As it turns out, they actually do *not* count nuclear weapons when considering the algorithm. So there are other reasons for the closeness in scores between the US and Russia. It's a complicated formula using 40 different data points. Of those, Russia has an edge on the United States in artillery strength (a variety of different kinds) and certain types of naval vessels. Russia's external debt is 1/28 that of the US. It produces more oil than the US but consumes far less than it produces (unlike the US which consumes almost twice what it produces). Russia also has 3x more proven oil reserves. And its a bigger country, though I'm not sure if that's a plus or minus... harder to conquer, but also more difficult to defend.

betwixt France and Spain, last I checked.

You realize that this is a top 30 list, right? Not top 5 or top 10. Which country do you believe should take Sweden's place? The Philippines? They're currently ranked 31st. Switzerland? Malaysia? South Africa?

Sweden still has among the finest air forces in the world. I think that alone probably places them in the top 30. Though they have downgraded the size of their airforce in recent years and are near the bottom of this list. Perhaps in a few more years as we see the rising power of Asian countries and a few in Africa, Sweden will be knocked off the list entirely. But for now, honestly, who would you replace them with?

In the latest update Sweden has slipped to 29th place and the DPRK is again ranked higher than them.

I don't think that god's favor is part of the algorithm used. And while in the past, for sure, the Vatican could field a pretty formidable armed force, these days I don't think they have much in the way of conventional weaponry.

This reminds me of Dave Chappelle's rendition of "Black Bush" and his attitude toward the UN, which I cannot repeat here and not be censored.

Yeah last year.

This is my theory: GFP doesn't publish their algorithm. But they do say a couple things about it. One thing is that landlocked countries are not "penalized" for not having a navy. It's my opinion that for most countries which are not landlocked this probably means that they are, in effect, heavily penalized for having a coastline. If they are comparing naval strength against some sort of mean, then the fact that America's naval power so *completely* outclasses everyone else, it's just totally embarrassing how weak every other navy in the world is compared to America's (even including countries like Russia and the UK), then I think what happens is that countries that are landlocked in effect get a pretty substantial boost to their ranking. By far the oddest countries to ever show up in the top 30 are Ethiopia, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. All land-locked countries.

:) ha. but... see... the US Navy is so overpowered they wouldn't even have to. They could park a fleet of aircraft carriers, missile cruisers and nuclear submarines somewhere in the Mediterranean and launch enough tomahawk missiles, tactical nukes, and B2 bomber-delivered bunker busters to turn the Swiss Alps into a valley. And that's true for any land-locked country on Earth. It's not as if navies are only used in amphibious assaults these days.

They have more troops but in terms of military power? Not even close... the United States has BY FAR the largest, most powerful, most advanced and sophisticated Navy in the world. Same goes for their air force. Either branch of the United States military could probably take on the combined navies or air forces of the entire rest of the world and win. The US army is smaller in size than China's, but also more experienced and technologically advanced- that one might be a draw. The US has far more sophisticated command and control technology, much better drones, the best and most experienced special forces in the world (UK comes in 2nd)... at present it's just not even close. Though China is rapidly narrowing the gap, they're still not close to overtaking the US. The USA also has enough nukes to destroy the entire world multiple times, and Russia does too, though nukes are not part of the above calculation.

You may be right. I didn't say that it was necessarily money well spent, though an argument could be made.

Chaos, objectively not true, but they are pretty good and have a respectable service record.

I don't know. For whatever reason, the website GlobalFirepower chose not to rank them. I'm guessing that if they were ranked they would be about on par with Australia.

update: The Netherlands was recently added to the GFP list of ranked countries and I have removed the caveat. They're currently ranked 32nd in the world.

but your country is well equipped to defend itself from attacks by Don Quixote.

A lot of people don't think of Saudi, though as a % of GDP they are the 3rd biggest military spenders in the world, after North Korea and Eritrea. Having lived and worked here for 5 years, though, I'm not sure if that would translate into actual war-making capability if it ever came to it. I wouldn't have much confidence in the people here. I know they conquered one of the largest land empires in history in a very short span of time once upon a time but that was a long time ago.

Probably depends on who invades you. If it was the USA, a week might be optimistic. If it was Finland, though, you'd probably be fine.

Regarding Japan, it's actually true that the Japanese constitution prohibits the development of "war potential" and specifically renounces war as a means of settling disputes. The constitution was written by the USA after World War 2. However, starting in 1950 largely in response to developments in Korea, Japan began building up something like a national guard. That has evolved into the Japan Self Defense Force, one of the finest national guard forces in the world. And more recently (last year, in fact), the Japanese government has approved a full-scale rearmament of the country as a way of countering the increased military spending and posturing of China and the continued craziness emanating from North Korea. Not that that decision had any effect on these rankings, but it shows attitudes have slowly been changing since 1945.

Defending your own territory is a lot different from invading someone else's. I'm sure the Finns are brave enough but if they wanted to invade Sweden, really, the Swedes have nothing to worry about.

It's probably worth noting that of all of these countries, only the United States and Russia really have the capability of projecting significant power all over the world. China and India have significant weight to swing around in their own regions, but are still not significant global powers militarily. The UK and the rest of the top 10 are capable of projecting some more across the world and in their own regions, but not enough at this point to conquer a decent-sized country more than 1,000 miles away or so. The bottom 20 countries on the list are all quite capable of defending themselves against their neighbors- but none of them really have the power necessary to attack any other country that they are not adjacent to. Not in any meaningful way, anyway. With a few odd exceptions most of these countries are only interested in self-defense or at most settling border and trade disputes in their local area.

I just updated it a month ago. But I can do so again when I have time. They made a lot of changes in the last month, much more than in the entire past 18 months combined... maybe they adjusted the algorithm or something. Syria, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic are now in the top 30.. The Netherlands has been ranked finally (#32), and Mexico, North Korea, and Ethiopia have all dropped out of the top 30.

I edited the quiz and resubmitted it.

In addition to the precipitous drops of those three countries which fell off the top 30 entirely, there were big declines in the numbers posted by Iran, Sweden, and a few other countries; as well as big gains for the three newcomers to the top 30 already mentioned, and also Turkey, Japan, Canada, Poland, and Australia. China continues to close the gap between itself and Russia, but has not yet surpassed it's comrade to the North. The USA, of course, retains its commanding lead.

Sweden used to have a pretty good air force.

I don't know what you mean. The smaller the number is, the stronger the military force is. The ordering is correct, I just double checked.

I don't think that's how it works. I'm guessing that the aim is to make 1.00 the median score, as there are 126 countries on the list, and #62 (Hungary) has a score of 1.0007.

Of the 126 countries ranked by GFP, the Central African Republic comes in last place. But there are many countries not ranked that don't even have a military.

I put them on the quiz as a joke, too.

I didn't put them on the quiz as a joke. My comment was the joke.

It's more than enough time.

You might be surprised how much is controlled by the military in Egypt. They've got their hands in everything there.

fighting a homegrown ideologically-motivated guerilla/terrorist insurgency is next to impossible. Even the United States, by far the most powerful and sophisticated military power in the history of the world, has had only middling success at such endeavors.

It depends on the resolve of both the insurgents and the established power, how much legitimacy/popularity each have with the populace at large, and also how much brutality the stronger power is willing to or able to exert on the weaker one. Before the contemporary age of democracy and television news media, if an indigenous population was causing you trouble you could just commit wholesale genocide against them and that actually tended to work pretty well.

They used to be.

You never saw the movie 300?

Germany is ranked higher than Italy but not by much. The size of the number is inversely proportional to the strength of the military.

Sweden used to have a premiere air force but their military power is dwindling.

If I get around to it. I haven't been as active here as I used to be.

They have a pretty astonishingly high win:loss ratio. The most amazing thing is how much flak they catch from everyone, everywhere, on every subject.

Isn't it amazing, though? I mean... criticize them for their rate of obesity, or their rate of incarceration, or for the ubiquity of reality television, or for electing a mentally retarded orangutan as president. All of that would be completely fair. But apparently it's not enough and you also have to criticize them for their weak military? That's like trying to make fun of the New York Yankees for not winning the World Series very often. I think it shows a sort of desperation to find fault with them no matter what, even in areas where they completely dominate every other country on the planet and nobody could reasonably argue that they don't.

The Israeli military is far more sophisticated but the Egyptian military is larger and the equation also factors in demographic information. In addition, Egypt and Israel have had a peace treaty in effect since 1979. If Israel had to fight off the same coalition of countries today as they were able to defeat in 1948, it's very likely that things would go a different way.

I've worked full-time in Virginia, California, Seoul, Riyadh, and Dammam. I had a residence in Bahrain when I was working in Dammam. I went to South Korea and Saudi Arabia specifically for jobs I had accepted. I've lived and visited many other places but the rest of those places I was there just because I wanted to be, though sometimes I would do a bit of work here and there.

it's odd that it is included.

Looks like there hasn't been any changes to the countries included in the top 30, just a bit of shuffling up and down within their ranks. I'll probably hold off updating until next year. They still haven't fixed the stupidity of the algorithm that boosts the Czech Republic so high.

Not really. Ak-47s are not really much use against aircraft carriers, stealth bombers and predator drones.

Because it's not very powerful.

The algorithm only factors conventional weaponry, so nukes are not included. It also takes into consideration things like economic power, natural resources, geography, etc. North Korea has an anemic economy, it can't feed its own people day to day, it has no oil or anything like that. It's a house of cards that would collapse without outside support. Most of their military technology is obsolete, too. But they do have a lot of jets, a lot of submarines, a lot of artillery, and a very large army... so they make the list.

Emus are OP

I don't know but I assume it's because the widespread use of nukes would render conventional weaponry pointless and would be a civilization-ended event where nobody won. And, knowing this, most governments and world leaders with an IQ in triple digits are extremely reluctant to use nuclear weapons for any reason, making them basically very expensive very dangerous paperweights in the majority of scenarios.

I didn't do the update but looks like South Africa and Switzerland are new. Don't remember who was at the bottom before. I think Sweden, the Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Singapore, and the UAE were on some previous iterations.