What are the wrold’s top ten armies; how many people are in each?
Define your terms. Largest would be China. Most effective would be the United States.
Here are some candidates. In terms of combat effectiveness they may be:
First Rate:
United States
Germany
Russia
China
France
Britain
Isreal
Italy
Second and Third Rate:
North Korea
South Korea
India
Pakistan
Other Possible Candidates:
Taiwan
Ukraine
Switzerland (no joke)
Sweden
Egypt, Syria, Jordan
Turkey
I know it’s popssible to get a copy of Jane’s or some other Stragegic survery, but that takes the fun out of it.
The most recent ranking I found that’s probably reliable is the Country Rankings 1999 from the World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers page of the US Department of State.
Link
What you’re looking for is on the second page in the Armed Forces (AF) (thousands) column.
I think you have to put Canada in the top 10. I think we’re around 11th in military expenditure, but some of the countries that are higher are not trained as well and aren’t as modern, spending a bigger chunk of money on maintenance of old weapons systems and manpower.
Far be it from me to dis the Canadian military (as I’m part of it) but our weak point has always been our substandard equipment, including Sea King helicopters that crash on demand.
Personally, I blame it on the killing of the Avro Arrow.
Bjork’s army of me.
THe bigger they are the harder they fall.
Is Russia’s army any good these days?
France ahead of Britain?..you must be joking
Um, what about Jimi Hendrix?
… sorry, I got this thread confused with the one ranking guitarists …
What about the ANZACS? We always seem to save everyone’s ass.
tommyw , when you say the world’s top ten armies, by what means are you intending for this to be measured? Manpower, equipment, training, whowould win in a stand up fight? The question as it stands is slightly vague, as there are many factors which could be used to decide on the top ten. Different countrie’s armies also have differing levels of expertise in a given combat situation.
Whichever way you look at it Americas army is invincible at the moment.
The uniforms are quite nice as well, plus you have Richard Gere, Tom Cruise and you once had Meg Ryan flying a copter.
But seriously folks my first para. is a true one
I don’t know that there;s that much difference. We now have a totally professional army having done away with conscription, like the British, the Challenger and Leclerc range of tanks are pretty much comparable (the Leclerc is a perennial favourite in the UEA), we have similar airforces equipped with essentially 1970s planes, and both have been getting very excited about actually really flying Eurofighters or Rafales for years. The French army has a rifle that works even if it’s sandy and if people don’t clean it properly, both countries are properly tooled up nuclear powers with submarines, ICBMs and the lot, and the French navy actually have an operational massive aircraft carrier.
Finally, the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers are designed by a French company, as is the long term New Infantry Soldier (or something like that, it sounds like a Jean-Claude Van Damme film) programme. So I don’t know and don’t wish to find out who’d win in a fight, but I think that there’s little to choose between the two.
I wouldn’t say the US’s army is invincible. I doubt it would last in a fight against, say, the whole world. (Or even a significant minority of the world.)
But nobody is interested on fighting what would assuredly be a war even more destructive than WWII, mostly because we are friends with most of the people who could.
Rating militaries is difficult. To use Sam Stone’s example of Canada, what kind of war are you asking Canada to fight? If a land war, Canada would have difficultly defeating a less well armed but much larger army like, say, North Korea. Or Canada would be unable to rapidly deploy a substantial fighting force to a trouble spot in East Africa, because of a lack of heavy transport.
But on the other hand, Canada’s navy could deny the sea to many nominally larger navies just by virtue of having a number of modern destroyers armed to the gunwales with ship-to-ship missile technology that trumps theirs. If Brazil got a wild hair and decided to invade Nova Scotia they’re going to be suffering an onslaught of Harpoon missiles and various and sundry aerial attacks on the way in, which I do not think they could possibly withstand; as evidenced in the Falklands, there is very little you can do if the enemy has better anti-ship missiles than you do, so how do you get transports past a navy that deploys a dozen missile destroyers? (Or maybe they’re frigates. Either way, Halifax-class ships have fore and aft quad Harpoon IIC launchers.) On the other hand, if you deployed Canada’s and Brazil’s army to the same neutral country and let them fight it out, Brazil’s army would likely be too large for Canada’s army, which lacks heavy artillery and attack helicopters, and could not field more than a division. But if you deployed their air forces, Canada’s jet fighters would likely slaughter the Brazilian air force, so what kind of air bases are available?
So, to properly answer the question beyond the really big militaries with multiple capabilities, you sort of have to define your terms. Various national armies serve very different purposes. The Swiss army is designed to defend Switzerland, not invade Vietnam, and excels at the former but couldn’t do the latter at all. The Canadian military is designed to support NATO operations abroad, not fight an all-out land war in China.
So having said that, I think you can basically group the world’s militaries into four categories.
-
The United States.
-
The countries with very substantial armed forces and nuclear weapons: France, United Kingdom, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel.
-
The countries with large and impressive armed forces: North and South Korea, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and a few others. North Korea might be in category 2.
-
Countries with smaller but modern and well-trained armed forces; Canada, Sweden, Australia, Spain, Netherlands, etc.
-
Everyone else, having either a Third World banana army or no army at all.
There’s a lot of flexibility between categories 3 and 4, though.
France always rates higher in the coaches poll. But Britan owns in the AP.
Does anyone else have no idea what this means?
I was going to say the same thing.