Top Ten Armies of the World

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RM-Nod RE:Heres my go at a top ten 3/27/2004 10:24:31 AM

In vietnam the US won every battle, if they had been given enough time they could have won the war. If it wasn't for the American public then the Vietnamese would never have won anything. So I wouldn't give them that much credit. Russia has seriously been depleted from 15 years ago. The are trying to keep a military 5 times the size of Britains on the same budget as Britain. This is an impossibility. They have only 6 more surface combatants than the UK but most of there navy is rusting in port and what does come out of port is in questionable condition, just look at the peter the great incident recently. Since the cold war the Russian navy has decreased by 80%, similar numbers can also be said for most other areas of the Russian military. Training is also hugely lacking in all areas. There air force is in a similar state, most pilots have far less flight hours than there western counterparts, and therer aircraft is largley unservicable due to budget constraints. There morale is pitiful and desertions are common. Save for a small core the Russian military is obsolete or unservicable. I won't say anything about there inability to move forces past Russian borders. I don't know why you put the others there though like India or ROK. If you read through this and other top ten posts you can see why few here would agree with your list.

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Rule Britannia RE:Heres my go at a top ten 3/27/2004 2:45:27 PM

"Russia has seriously been depleted from 15 years ago. The are trying to keep a military 5 times the size of Britains on the same budget as Britain." -

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Rule Britannia RE:Heres my go at a top ten 3/27/2004 2:45:27 PM

"Russia has seriously been depleted from 15 years ago. The are trying to keep a military 5 times the size of Britains on the same budget as Britain." -

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Rule Britannia RE:Heres my go at a top ten 3/27/2004 2:48:11 PM

"Russia has seriously been depleted from 15 years ago. The are trying to keep a military 5 times the size of Britains on the same budget as Britain." -Not even that, the Russian Federation only spend $22 Billion on Defence. In contrast the United Kingdom spend nearer $45 Billion (or over).

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fullamongo My top ten explained. 3/27/2004 3:19:04 PM

Ok. when i made my list i assumed that countries would have some time to gear up to a wartime economy. when deciding who would beat who, you must take into account the size and quality of their standing armed forces (not just army) and reserves and the size of its military industrial complex (how many tanks you can produce is more important than how many Big Macs you can buy). 1 USA. Whose going to argue with that? 2 Russia. russias standing armed forces havn't deteriarated as much as many claim. many of their problems could be fixed in a short period of time. eg russia improved the readiness of its airforce from circa 60% to 80-85% in about a year. russia ain't afraid of making examples of people. a few executions would sort out their disipline problems. they are fairly well equiped with t-72 and t-80 tanks (being replaced with t-90s) mig 29s su27s akula class submarines etc. not up to the standards of the western stuff but they have a great numerical advantage over most countries. russias secret strength lies in their stockpiles and huge, self sufficent military industrial comples. they have 1000 mig-23's in warehouses!!! cos of conscription they also have the people to operate them. production wise, russia is a sleeping giant. back in the day of the USSR tey used to produce 300 MIG 23's a year (god only know what the total capacity of these factories is). they could beat anyone barr th US. eg China. Russia has more su-27's than china. if you look past chinas su 27's you see that they have Mig 19's backing them up. so russian and chinese su 27s, lets say for arguments sake, cancel each other out (the reality would be different for countless reasons). then yout have russian mig 23's facing chinese mig 19's. thats the situation throughout the chinese armed forces. first rate stuff backed up by third rate, 50 year old stuff. thats all irrelevent anyway. all the first rate chinese stuff is russian! spare parts shortages would grind the chinese armed forces to a halt. (the indegenous J-10 uses russian engines, assembled in china and only a handful are actually in service, same for type 90 tank). russia wins. 3 china that said, china still has a 3,000,000 strong standing armes forces. assuming that russia supplies it, it should be able to steam-role anyone else. troop quality is dubious. after all when did the chinese last win a war? 4 ROK large, (600,000 strong) well equipped and very well trained. all their equipment comes from reliable forign sources (US mostly). has good indeginous stuff too (Hyundai tank). ROK have a HUGE reserve, 4,500,000!!! maybe they should be ahead of china? 5 India 1,200,000 strong, fairly well equipped (su-30mki etc.) and large military industrial complex. training & motivation is questionable. maybe should be as low as 8th. 6 Germany twice the germans have taken on the world and come close to beating it. big armed forces, 1st class training and equipment. top quality M.I.C. (builds the best tank in the world, Leopard IIA6). Only a fool would say that the germans don't know how to fight. 7 UK Top class army. Good M.I.C. Empire a major drawback. Overcommited. UK army chief of staff says the won't be able to do another Iraq sized campaign till 2008! 8 France Same size a UK if not bigger, as well equipped, but not as well trained and no recient combat experience. 9 Israel Well trained and equipped but is a conscript army who are trained for policing/security as well as combat. Arditi's point about them is valid but i can't think of anyone else who could beat them. 10 Sweden Sweden possibly should be 9. Every small country should have a military like Sweden's. A small but world but world beating M.I.C (Gripen, anti-tank missiles etc). Conscripts are well trained equipped and motivated. serving in the army is a matter of pride. the swedes have always been inovative. eg. all swedish aircraft can be properly maintained by conscripts and are capable of being re-armed, re-feuled and ready for combat in 10 minutes. the government straighteded loads of 1640ft stretches of road close to airbases making an anti-airfield campaign impossible! They have stealth frigates for gods sake. these guys rock! During WW2 Hitler invaded Norway to secure access to Swedish iron ore but thought better of invading sweden itself. Stalins armies invaded Finland but stopped on the Swedish border! They could have taken sweden but they would have paid dearly. Sweden: Pop. 8,000,000, tax rate 70%, military: first class. I mentioned vietnam cos on paper France, US and China should have wiped the floor with them but they didn't. The X-factor, the things we can't measure (luck etc.), may decide who wins a war. However, the race might not always go to the swiftest and the fight mightn't always be won by the strongest, but as the cynic once said, that is the way you bet. I welcome any constructive criticism and clarifications. Any country that can beat my allstar team? Try your own top ten.

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RM-Nod RE:My top ten explained. 3/27/2004 4:35:18 PM

"russias standing armed forces havn't deteriarated as much as many claim" Or so you claim. The fact is that Russia cannot keep the military it has on budget it gives them. $50bn is not enough to keep there airforce at good enough standards never mind there entire armed forces and that is taking my number into mind if RB is right with the $22bn then that is even worse, that is economical fact. The condition of most of there equipment means it could not be brought up to standard quickly if total war broke out, if you think otherwise I would like to see something to back that up because everything that I have read says otherwise and almost everyone who I've talked to on the subject share similar or the same views as me on this. If Russia had to go into a full scale war there economy would collapse. "they have 1000 mig-23's in warehouses!!!" How many of them actually work? Like I've said before there budget cannot support that many aircraft even in storage. It's seems you've ranked these on the hypothetical basis of them going to war against the one below them on the list. You also seem to have based the list largley on numbers. Russia for example may have huge numbers but much of what they use is either obsolete, in poor condition, simple doesn't work. Similarly there training is very poor and morale is even worse. Conscripts have historically been proven to be of little use unless in the defencive role. Going deeper into military capability and power you must take into account logistics, without this an armed forces is useless except in a pre-prepared defencive fight. An armed forces is only a tool of the government and what use is a tool if you can't use it for gain. Russia, China, ROK, India, Germany, Israel, Sweden, all have no ability to project a sizeable force for anything other than minor operations. You also talk about the ability to wage a protracted war but most militaries these days are not geared for that, the reason is because technology today means a war of attrition is very unlikley. For example if the UK and Germany went to war the UK could begin attack immediatley and seriously disrupt German industry before the Germans can strike back, so what use is there industry now? The ability to get the first punch in is far more important in modern war than it is to out produce your enemy. "Stalins armies invaded Finland but stopped on the Swedish border! They could have taken sweden but they would have paid dearly. Sweden: Pop. 8,000,000, tax rate 70%, military: first class." They stopped because Sweden was a neutral countried that had been agreed by both the Germans and Russians, it had nothing to do with there capability to repulse an attack.

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Rule Britannia RE:My top ten explained. 3/27/2004 4:49:16 PM

-The $22bn figure was taken from the Ministry of Defence Website.

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fullamongo RE:My top ten explained. 3/27/2004 4:56:37 PM

"They stopped because Sweden was a neutral countried that had been agreed by both the Germans and Russians, it had nothing to do with there capability to repulse an attack" Really? i didn't know that. However, they also agreed to share poland. You're going to laugh at this. The russian budget for 2004 is 13.7 billian dollars (391 billion rubles). 60% of the budget will be spent on maintaining equipment the other 40% on everything else. i admit that i focused more on a country's ability to defent itself. " Russia, China, ROK, India, Germany, Israel, Sweden, all have no ability to project a sizeable force for anything other than minor operations." Fine but what nation not in my top ten can project power in force? Whats your top ten?

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fullamongo RE:My top ten explained. 3/27/2004 4:58:22 PM

check this page out for the budget. i converted the currency a few minutes ago. link

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RM-Nod RE:My top ten explained. 3/27/2004 5:51:09 PM

I don't really have a top ten because I think there are too many variables. However I do have my opinions on what makes a good military. Generally I think any military that matters to world affairs should be a world class military, they can't be world class militaries unless they can project significant power, so the only real militaries that matter are the US, UK and France. If I ever was to make a list these would be the top 3. If you make a list based on who can beat who then you have to take into account all the terms of the war and that can really only be done on a 1 vs 1 basis and takes a lot of time to make an educated guess (which is all it will ever be) and even then anything could change the whole situation.

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fullamongo RE:My top ten explained. 3/28/2004 8:07:08 AM

how much power could the uk and france project without outside help? whats their amphibious capabilities? (i don't have a clue but those 2 new carriers should greatly increase the uk's capabilities) i hope the uk has made improvements in this respect since the Falklands. i suppose a good barometer of projection of power would be how big a country could uk/france conquer on their own? any ideas?

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Rule Britannia RE:Top Ten Armies of the World 3/28/2004 11:59:01 AM

This website should provide all the information you could possibly want to know about the Royal Navy, including it's amphibious capabilities. link

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RM-Nod RE:Top Ten Armies of the World 3/28/2004 1:45:42 PM

Projection power is a bit difficult to judge. However I'll try and give you an outline and some basics of it. There is no military on earth that would attempt an apposed large scale amphibious landing, not even if they had the landing craft to do it. Because of this only one country (the US) has got any sort of provision to do it and even then only if it needed to. The UK and to a lesser extent France are fully capable of put large amounts of troops into friendly territory, which is the usual thing to do. Britain's merchant fleet consists of around 3-400 ships plus 22 RFA ships and our RN logistics ships, so we have the ability to move. However to move forces anywhere near an enemy you must have escorts, in that respect the UK is also capable of moving huge amounts of troops and in theory could probably transport enough troops to do most sorts of operations including full scale wars. However currne UK commitments mean we would not do this unless 100% nessisary. RB how many transport ships do you think the RN could escort at once?

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fullamongo RE:Top Ten Armies of the World 3/28/2004 3:27:54 PM

depends on how many tyre 45's they decide to buy. they seem to be cutting that amount by the day. it would also depend on what they're up against. against a country like Iraq, re-supply ships would only need escorts for the last few hundred miles cos Iraq hadn't got a navy worth talking about

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fullamongo RE:Top Ten Armies of the World 3/28/2004 3:32:02 PM

I think you should judge an army by its ability to defend its country as thats any army's primary objective. my top ten doesn't really take into account power projection.

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