Which country has the best armed forces?

Obviously as several people have said, sheer fighting prowess does not an effective army make. Supply, transportation, command, control, communications, and in some cases, a technological edge in all facets of warfare are quite telling on the battlefield.

That said, the US obviously has the “best” armed forces, if by “best” you mean able to confront and defeat any other armed forces in the world. It’s not even close. The US has well equipped, well trained and well led troops with a military tradition that teaches the right lessons, as well as having the most advanced communications, control and command systems in existence. Add to that the highly developed and battle-tested supply and transport arms and a numerical superiority to most other armed forces, and you have an almost unbeatable foe.

Sure, it’s true that other countries may have better trained soldiers, but when you take the whole package into account, the US armed forces are pretty much a juggernaut that could roll over almost anyone in a stand-up fight.
Another note- I’m not at all convinced that the IDF has better-trained infantrymen than say the US or UK. After all, the vast majority is National Guard-style citizen soldiers. What they do have is a tradition of fighting and winning, and passing those lessons to the next generation, along with a very strong motivation to stay military strong and ready due to the constant Arab threat to their borders.

My dad was a field medic in Vietnam (US) and he told me this same story. The platoon was in the jungle and once the guy on point made it halfway across a clearing, they shot him in the lower body (leg? gut?, I don’t remember exactly) and waited for someone to help him out. A couple of his guys open fired across the clearing (suppresive) to allow someone else to drag the injured guy back to where my dad could help him. They got the first guy patched up and called a helicopter in, but a couple of the other guys who went to grab him and who returned fire died in the process. While that is the only example I can remember, the impression I got from my dad was this wasn’t an uncommon occurance. My dad doesn’t talk about Vietnam much, and I have never pressed him about it. I might try to get him to write some of his stories down, or at least tell them to me so I can write them down.