Top 30 Most Powerful Militaries

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

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Cheers, all, and mind the Predator drones.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.