Agreed on some of your points here, British procurement of equipment leaves much to be desired, however it is not as bad as it seems. While we lack surplus to requirements material we have just about enough equipment for the armed forces to do their jobs well. sure they are lacking in some areas, helicopters, heavy transports, this is mostly the army air corps department, the Royal navy is severely lacking in some aspects mostly due to the fact that the orders are place but are always scaled down, or cuts are made to save money on a sacrifice of quality, however generally on many areas British soldiers especially get excellent kit, the equal of that used by their American counterparts, they have enough of it too, but yet again they lack the support e.g. helicopters, they are there, it just that there are not enough of them.

as you say man for man, platoon for platoon, regiment for regiment, the British are the business (some people won?t like me saying this, no doubt i will be accused of bias). They are well trained, extremely combat experienced, for the most part well equipped but could be better, but the stuff they do have is of good quality, they desperately need more funding, this countries new government should make sure that they are aware that the armed forces are a necessity not an option, so yes more funding is needed, expansion is needed, quantity of certain equipment is needed.

 

Now to your list, hmm

1. America, yes, why? They have a good balance of resources/equipment, men, funding, and training, downside, too big for their own good sometimes, a little over confident of their own abilities

 

From here I disagree (nothing personal) so I?ve changed things as you will notice

 

2. Great Britai

i think it should go like this if were talking about convinsional ( non- guerrila)  forces:

1. USA

2.UK

3. China

4.Isreal

5.india and pakistan (its really evenly matched)

6. france

7.japan (japan is a sleeping giant)

8. germany

9. sweden

10.south korea

The concept of ranking a countries military in a linear non-specific array greatly over-simplifies the nature of warfare and foreign policy, A good example is Indonesia versus Australia.

 

Now Indonesia has a population of two hundred million and Australia has a population of twenty million, going by gross man power alone Australia is pretty much Scr**d in a direct confrontation right? Wrong.

Indonesia has no capacity too project it's forces, would not be able to maintain Air or Fleet superiority and has a corrupt, woefully under-trained and under-funded ground force structure who would not last five seconds against the professional infantry and mechanized forces of the ADF; who would also have the benefit of Air/Fleet superiority, however the Indonesia knows that there is no way Australia would want too or could in invade Indonesia. 

Also as an Australian I have no desire to fight Indonesians (except if they get antcy with the islands again...) and I know that Indonesia benefits greatly from our trade and joint security pacts which keep the region from falling under even heavier Chinese influence... But that doesn't stop us both from expanding and modernizing our armed forces...

I really think you were on crack when you said that... India and China are good enough to clear all of Asia and for all european countries, there little small militaries is something that the top five armies of ASIA can take out. U.K. is garbage, 105k isn't enough to face a million. I know quality matters but at points you also need quantity.

What was is you said in one of your replies....? "Check your facts kid"

 

For a start you?re over assumption of them military capabilities of Asian forces based purely upon numbers is entirely incorrect. i would far rather have 50,000 well trained, highly experienced, well led, and well equipped men than one million men that are qualitatively inferior. As Napoleon once said upon inspecting a unit of the Royal Marines in their earlier form "One could do great things with 10,000 men such as these". I think that puts it quite well.

 

It appears to me that you seem to be a pro Asian forces supporter who seems to think that an Asian army with many thousands of men, perhaps even millions in certain cases in purely and simply going to win every engagement it is faced with just by its pure numbers alone. Certainly if such a force was pitted against a western army today, the term bloodbath would apply. The qualitatively superior western forces would turn such an encounter into mere sport. The 1 million man army would simply be more targets to shoot at.

 

Now, as far as your comments about the British armed forces go. I would like to see the results of any attempted invasion of the UK by an Asian nation. while the British armed forces may be small (and your figure is inaccurate, the British army totals something in the area of 140,000 men with the inclusion of the TA, you must also remember that you are talking about a military force that has never lost a war in its history, and a nation that has not been successfully invaded in almost 1000 years, and coincidentally ruled much of Asia during the days of its empire, the world?s largest empire that is, forged by the so called "garbage" British military) they more than make up for their number deficiency with their skill, world beating quality of training and professionalism. Numbers do matter, but only when you have a balance.

 

If an Asian army was to face a European force, or western force in this day and age, the Asian force would be annihilated, the quality gap is far to extensive to make numbers the ultimate decisive factor. Maybe through extensive attrition the Asian forces may eventually win, but the losses that they would suffer would make any victory gained, rather hollow indeed.