The World's Major Navies. Ranked. (DEEP DIVE)

The sea is a brutal mistress, and some navies are better at impressing her than others. Some patrolled distant oceans with power to burn, others struggled to get much further than their own harbors.

This is a global ranking, where we separate the serious sailors from the peer-side pretenders, sorting the world's fleets into five tiers, from landlocked wishful thinkers to the unquestioned global superpower.

It isn't just about ship counts either, although that certainly plays its part. But instead, what it's really all about is capability. How far a navy can sail, how long it can stay there, and what it can do when it arrives, and whether it can do it again next week without breaking down or begging for fuel.

Oh, and just to be clear, from the off we aren't covering every navy too, as such an approach would give you a single breath worth of words per entry, and leave the video having the depth of a paddling pool.

Instead, we're going to focus on a representative spread, the most telling, the most surprising, and occasionally the most ridiculous examples from each tier. Some are textbook cases, some are wild outliers, a few are there just because we couldn't not talk about them.

So let's get into it. The Little Guys Now, not every nation is vying for maritime supremacy. Some, in fact, don't even bother with a navy at all.

Oftentimes, not having a navy is a choice forced upon a nation by a simple fluke of geography, i.e. they are landlocked. That means no Nepalese carrier strike groups, no Armenian dreadnoughts, and no Swiss submarine corps. Shocking revelation, we know.

Although that isn't to say that every landlocked country doesn't have a navy, because some certainly do. Take Kazakhstan. They have five missile boats and twelve patrol boats in theirs, all of which operate exclusively on the Caspian Sea.

Sure, it's an inland body of water and not connected to the ocean, but it is a very, very big one, so naturally they need to protect it with the navy. And then there's Bolivia. Stripped of its coastline in 1879, following the end of the War of the Pacific against Chile, the country nonetheless maintains a navy of about 5,000 sailors.

They patrol Lake Titacaca and Amazon tributaries in a fleet of riverine craft, fighting drug traffickers, delivering aid, and even deploying abroad on UN missions from time to time.

But for Bolivia, their navy is also symbolic, as every year on the 23rd of March, the anniversary of when they lost their coastline, they commemorate the Day of the Sea, with sailors parading in full uniform with anchors and naval flags, a reminder of their long-lost coastline, which they still claim to this very day.

Sometimes, though, and where the matter gets all the more interesting, is where a country does have a proper coastline, but still forgoes a navy.

Take Costa Rica as an example. It abolished its military in 1948 following a brutal civil war.

It was a move meant to signal the nation's newfound pacifist posture to the world, but crucially, it was not a move that left it defenseless, as the nation does spend a fortune, hundreds of millions worth a year. $200 in fact, on a coast guard to police its fisheries and shoot up the odd drug smuggler.

Panama went the same way in the 1990s after the fall of the Noruega regime. Nothing is not a bold move from the small Central American nation, given the whopping great canal that segments it and is vital to both its economy and to that of the entire world. And so it's rather important for strategic interests.

But again, they have not left it fully defenseless, as they do use the National Aeronaval Service, a coast guard of sorts, as well as the Americans, who are only too happy to help, given how unfathomably important the canal is to their economy. And then there's Iceland, which has no armed forces at all, despite being a NATO member.

Instead, just like Panama, it fields a coast guard only, with theirs having only three ships.

That's it. Fortunately, geography is really on their side, as just have a look at the map and the countries that surround Iceland. They don't really have to worry about getting invaded anytime soon, do they?

It also doesn't hurt that, again, just like with Panama, the U.S. is happy to step in and help out. You can also consider, as further examples, Haiti, which totally disbanded its armed forces in 1995 after a history of them getting overly involved in politics. And Mauritius, again, they just have a modest coast guard.

Then there's the ones that do have navies, but they're so small that we really shouldn't overly dwell on them. Belize, for example, has a navy that consists of five ex-U.S. coast guard cutters, six patrol boats, 13 speed boats, and a few more small, miscellaneous utility boats.

And we'd love to tell you what the deal is with the Gambier, because they do have a navy, properly established as one of the three branches of their armed forces, but seemingly it is so small that no one, not even the Gambian government themselves, has actually bothered to write down what it feels.

But we did find out that it only has 500 personnel on the books, or for some context, enough people to crew one and a half-ish modern destroyers. So take from that what you will. And because we have a lot to be talking about today, let's knock this chapter on the head here and take things up a tier.

The Local Powers Our first proper tier is all about fighting competently in one's own neighborhood, the specifics of which include skill and sustainment, do their ships sail often and finish exercises without the engineers crying, and if they do, the higher up this tier, we'll find them.

Steel At this tier, we're looking at, at best, a light sprinkling of modern frigates forming the backbone of the fleet, admittling a single knackered old frigate acting as a sole flagship, and at worst, no frigates at all.

Beyond that, the numbers of smaller things that we won't even bother to count for the more powerful nations as they fall below the abstraction layer, patrol boats and the like, can make a real difference on how the nations stack up against one another.

Submarines? Here, any submarines at all is a notable point in and of itself, even if they're aging Cold War vessels begging to be sent to the scrapyard so they can be put out of their misery.

The better nations in this regard may have one or two newer, but still very much diesel-powered ones that they properly look like. after, or, well, just a lot of old ones.

Stretch, now and indeed for the rest of the episode, this metric is autological. Do they rarely go beyond their own maritime borders, i.e. move locally, and that means they're probably leaning towards being a local power, aren't they? And so on and so forth for a regional power and a global power too.

Blend all of those factors together, and ta-da, you arrive at our ranking, so let's get into it. And we begin by looking at Nigeria, whose navy is less of a warfighting fleet, and more of a law and order force in a tough neighborhood.

Their flagship, for example, the NNS Aradu, was once a fine vessel by the standards of her day, a West German-built Miko 360 frigate, launched in 1980 and commissioned on the 20th of February, 1982.

And although she served Nigeria diligently for 35 years, as of 2017 she has been laid up and out of service, with even the navy itself admitting that her condition had become deplorable. That's a quote by that point.

A Turkish refit deal was signed in 2023, which may return her to service, but then they also announced that they were just going to replace her outright in 2021, so who really knows what the deal is.

So what actually sales then? Well, the heavy lifting is done by two Chinese-built P-18N offshore patrol vessels, the Centenary, delivered in late 2014, and the Unity, delivered in 2016, as well as two ex-US Coast Guard High Endurance Cutters, the Thunder, ex-USCGC Chase, and Ocapabana, ex-Glating.

More recently, Nigeria also took delivery of the Kata in 2022, a small 2,800-tonne displacement Emirati-built amphibious warfare ship that allows them to land some troops and operate a few helicopters away from their borders.

Then throw in 18 patrol vessels, whose displacements range from 100 tons, as is the case for the old French-built Darina, to 200 tons for the indigenously-built Andoni, 20 or so auxiliary vessels of all different stripes, and, well, you then pretty much have got the Nigerian Navy.

You can probably see what we mean about it being less of a warfighting fleet and more of a law-and-order force. It's not something that would allow Nigeria to dominate its neighbors if they came to blows, although it certainly wouldn't stop them putting in their half-decent showing in a regional conflict.

But it is also enough for the day-to-day real responsibilities that it should us. Anti-piracy operations counter all theft patrols and keeping the Gulf of Guinea's shipping lanes open for the tankers that keep the economy running. That's the reality of the job, and the fleet is tailored to it.

There is not a single submarine to shadow intruders, no missile frigates to enforce a blockade, no area air defense to keep hostile aircraft honest. What there is a working set of hulls that can stay at sea, board suspect vessels, and show the flag where it matters. And now we move on to our next country, the Argentine Navy.

They were a regional juggernaut in living memory, fielding a fleet during the Hunter period that included an aircraft carrier, the ARA Ventas Cinco de Mayo, a heavily upgraded World War II-era carrier originally built by the British, rather.

But ironically, over a dozen destroyers and frigates, submarines are plenty, and the infamous cruiser General Belgrano. Today, they don't have a submarine arm at all.

The Santa Cruz and the Salta, Junta-era diesel-electric subs bought from Germany. They're technically still on the books, but they're inactive and they're kind of just being left to rot, as Buenos Aires gave up on returning them to operability in 2020. As for the carriers?

Well, forget about it. Vein Ticinco de Mayo decayed into inactivity in 1990 and sat moored up for a decade before humble pie was finally eaten and she was just scrapped. Brazil did offer up the Minas Gerais as a replacement, but she was deemed too expensive to get back into ship shape, and so that was the end of that.

Three Junta-era Almirante Brown-class destroyers, again built by the Germans, are hanging on in there, but their futures don't look promising, with their sister, the heroina, having been retired in 2024, when, after a very long period of inactivity, the Argentine government gave up on ever getting her going again and sent her for scrap.

What is working well, however, is the four Gowin Corvettes that they've procured from France since 2019. They're small, coming in at 1,650 tons, but they're reasonably modern, have decent tech on them, and provide Argentina with at least something capable of performing the basic duties of a modern navy.

Patrolling their vast coastline, asserting presence in contested waters, and flying the flag abroad without immediately breaking down or just straight up sinking in port, which, for the Argentine navy these days, frankly, is a win. And we aren't being hyperbolic on that last point either.

Consider the case of the Santissima Trinidad, a British-built Type 42 destroyer that Argentina got our hands on during the Junta period.

Her story ended in 2013 in quite the undignified manner, as you can see. And something else that is working well for Argentina, because we want to find the positives where we're able to, is the Almirante Irizar, an icebreaker that doesn't break down, doesn't sink, and does actually do some vital work in the Antarctic.

Simple logistics, supporting scientific expeditions, the odd tourist run down the line, and things like that.

All in all, then, Argentina's navy today is a shadow of its former self. No carrier, no functioning subs, and just a handful of aging destroyers and modern corvettes keeping everything held together. It's not the blue water powerhouse of the past, but it's also not entirely defunct.

It's a navy in hibernation, waiting on the return of political will and economic means. Until then, it gets by doing the bare minimum. And that, for now, is kind of enough.

Next up, the Philippines. Of late, the archipelago nation has finally realized second-hand cutters don't deter a great power, since it started buying itself some real teeth. Specifically, two newly South Korean-built missile-armed Hosea Rizal-class frigates, the BRP Hosea Rizal, commissioned in 2020, and the Antonio Luna, commissioned in 2021.

With a modern radar, a helicopter hangar, and two autocannons to accompany their missiles, these are serious, modern, proper ocean-going warships, even if they're on the smaller end of such things. things. and there are only two of them.

Soon, though, they will be joined by something set to be even better, the crown jewels of the fleet, even, the Miguel Malvar-class guided missile frigates. Built by the South Koreans, again, they're a size up from the Rizzles, and crucially come wired for modern air defense and anti-submarine warfare from day one.

The lead ship, Miguel Malvar, was commissioned in May 2025, and her sister, Diego Salang, launched March 2025 and is slated for commissioning soon. Behind them, though, the old workhorses keep working to hold the line.

Three ex-US Coast Guard high-endurance cutters, Gregorio del Pillar, Ramon Alcarez, and Andres Bonifacio, remain the fleet's big presence hulls and are being kept ship-shape despite their age, with Gregorio del Pillar only recently emerging from a long overall process.

They also have amphibious lift capabilities, too, covered by two 2010s-built Tarlac-class landing docks, Tarlac and Davao del Sur. Beyond that core, the rest is the necessary plumbing that keeps an archipelago navy going. Nine newly Israeli-built Acero-class fast-attack interdiction craft and 16 auxiliary ships, of all flavors, to just name a few.

And while certainly all that affords the Philippines a certain blue water capability that was lacking with, say, Nigeria, it's a modest capability at best, and serious gaps remain. Submarines, for example, the Philippines, like Nigeria, has none of them at all. And any warship bigger than a frigate, forget about it.

Then there's the sheer issue of quantity. While the Jose Rizal and Miguel Malavar classes both appear to be perfectly competent designs, there's only going to be four hulls among them. And as we will see as the episode presses ever on, that is not that many at all.

And now on to Sri Lanka, who take things up a notch by having five decent-sized hulls forming the backbone of their fleet. Two Indian-built advanced offshore patrol vessels, equivalent to normal patrol frigates in the SLNS.

Sayarala, commissioned in August 2017, and Cinderella, commissioned a year later, as well as the ex-Chinese Type 053 H2C frigate Parakrambahahu, transferred in 2019.

And finally, two ex-US Hamilton-class cutters, Gajabahu, the Quad in 2019, and Viajabahu, which they got their hands on in 2022. Below that, older but still useful ships keep pulling their weight. The ex-US Coast Guard Reliance-class carter, Samadora, for example, still does long patrols.

Then, from India, the sturdy Sagara, which spent years hunting Tamil gunrunners back during the tail end of the Civil War. Amphibious lift capability is modest but real, with the Shaxi and a clutch of assorted troop ferries able to move troops and stores around the island when needed.

Sri Lanka also, thanks in no small part to its Civil War experience, where such ships proved vital, but also just the pragmatism of being a developing nation concerned about bang for its buck, also really prioritizes small, fast vessels that pack a decent punch for them. their size.

The Navy's Fast Attack Flotilla, for example, is crammed with Israeli-built Super Dvorah Mark III and Mark II boats, older Mark I Dvorah's II, as well as a whole zoo of other holes in the form of the Shaldags, locally built Columbo and Summonar designs, plus Chevron, Trinity Marine, and the aptly named Killer Class.

All of them are quick in the 40-50 knots ballpark, agile, and carry enough autocannons, heavy machine guns, and grenade launchers to make sure anything they catch doesn't get away. And as for the numbers, the Fast Attack Flotilla alone has at least 45 of these small, lethal boats.

As for auxiliaries in the war years, Jetliner, a leased civilian roll-on-roll-off ferry, proved itself very capable as a fast troop ferry, and today they have very much kept its spirit alive through their new fast personnel carrier catamarans, things like the Hansar.

What was once pragmatism where you put your foot down to avoid Tamil raiders and suicide ships now has become core doctrine? Because, yes, it turns out it is handy for an island nation to be able to use its waters as fast logistical highways.

Who knew? And when it comes to aviation, well, that's a weak point for Sri Lanka, to be honest.

The 2020 edition of Maritime Doctrine of Sri Lanka, which, as you've no doubt guessed, lays out how they intend to do things going forward, said that a proper, dedicated naval aviation branch was in the works, something that would be handy, given that Sairala and Cinderella, to name just two, have all been built with dedicated helipads.

But, as the time of writing, it does not appear as though such a branch has yet been achieved. Where it gets properly interesting, however, and that's why we place Sri Lanka above the Philippines, in fact, is that Sri Lanka is really starting to use its fleet.

In exercises, admittedly, now that the civil war is 16 years in the past, but still, it's a big deal for a nation in this position in the rankings.

The big cutters, and advanced offshore patrol vessels, for example, are regulars at multinational drills. Karat Marek, Sri Lanka 2023, saw Gajabahu and Veabahu train with USS Anchorage and the 13th Marine Expedition Reunit on Air Defense. Slynex-23 and Slynex-24 paired Sri Lankan and Indian ships for gunnery, helicopter ops, and special forces inserts.

And in 2024, Sairala joins India's Milan in the Bay of Bengal. Then, in 2025, Japan's Samadar trained with Gajabahu off Colombo, and Veabahu deployed to Oman in Karachi.

Consider all of their ships, factor in the extensive training regime, and consider the fact that their senior NCOs and officers actually have combat experience, courtesy of the civil war, and what you find is a nation that, while very much still in the local powers tier, is actually a bit of a surprising contender within it.

Kicking it up a notch, however, if only by just a smidge is Myanmar. Because, well, get this, they've actually got some submarines. Admittedly, though, they've only got two, a nearly 40-year-old Indian Sindhoghosh class, the UMS Minye Thiankhatu, and a Chinese Type 035 class, the Min

We don't know exactly how old that last one is, but given that it is a B variant, which was produced only between 2000 and 2003, we can narrow it down to being about 25 years old.

And make no mistake, a world-leading submarine force this is not, but still, for regional conflicts, it is enough under the wave's capability to give Myanmar's neighbors something to think about. On the surface, six frigates make up the core of Napador's fighting fleet.

The indigenously built Ong Zeya, commissioned in 2011, Thalung, commissioned in late 2024, and the two strong Kian Sita-class, commissioned in 2014 and 2015, as well as two Type 053 frigates from China, Maha Bandula and Maha Siyathuru, both transferred and recommissioned in 2012.

In capability terms, however, while the surface force might not exactly be world-leading, it would be more than fair to describe it as adequate and perfectly capable of bringing some meaningful punch in a confined coastal battle space.

The newer indigenous ships, to give details, carry Chinese C-802 or KH-35-class anti-ship missiles, 76mm main guns, and a mix of Chinese and Western electronics, giving them the credible strike and patrol role, while the 053s remain adequate for patrol and surface warfare, but lag in modern air defense and anti-submarine warfare capability.

And then there's the smaller stuff, three Anurata-class corvettes, commissioned between 2001 and 2014. All three are armed with a 76mm gun and C-802-class anti-ship missiles, giving them respectable striking power for their size and more than enough to deter anything short of a full-scale blue-water opponent.

Offshore patrol duties fall to the two 1,500-ton inlay-class offshore patrol vessels, inlay, commissioned in 2017, and inma in 2019, both locally built, with a flight deck and hangar, finally giving the Navy sensible endurance for exclusive economic zone patrol and constabulary work.

In the littorals, the Sting comes from six Chinese-built Hoaxin-class missile boats, delivered in 1990s, small and fast, with four C-801 missiles apiece, and ideal for ambush in the coastal shallows.

For lift and command, the South Korean-built Matama Landing Platform Dock, commissioned in 2019, provides a helicopter deck, well deck for landing craft, and the ability to move troops and equipment quickly in a crisis.

When it comes to Mar Mar, however, training, a big variable that can make all the difference when discussing navies at this level, and cannot be taken as a given, is a bit of an unknown.

You see, we don't know if you've been keeping an eye on the goings on Mar Mar of late, but if your mental map of the country goes something like famous woman under house arrest gets freed, something about Rohingya democracy, blah, blah, blah, we hate to inform you that, as we've been covering on this channel, Mar Mar has since collapsed into a catastrophic

State of civil war.

And thanks to all of that, information coming out of the country, particularly when it comes to military matters, has been tightened a bit. But from what we can piece together, we know that they're getting support from India for their submarines, with crews noted as having trained at the Indian Navy.

Navy Submarine School, as well as one of their subs participating in the Vandula 2020 Fleet exercise. Then there's clearly some surface fleet cooperation with the Chinese, as three People's Liberation Army Navy ships were papped in Yangon in November 2023, and Russians have also been getting involved too, running joint naval exercises with Myanmar in 2023.

So while we don't know too many specifics, from what we can piece together, it stands to reason that the training level of Myanmar's Navy is likely adequate at worst to the better side of all right at best, a developing nation like Myanmar, even if all was well on the home front, is never going to be able to afford a training regiment to match that of

Developed nations.

But as we can see, there's no evidence to make us think it's proactively bad either.

And now over to Africa to have a look at Morocco's naval offerings, because as you no doubt have come to expect in this chapter by now, their navy is not big, but actually all things considered, it actually seems to be pretty decent, and certainly a step up from what we've seen so far, both in terms of quantity and quality.

Their flagship is the Mohammed VI, a French-built, European multipurpose frigate, or FREM as it becomes an acronym, thanks to the wondrous mysteries of the manufacturer's language.

And she, no matter how you cut it, is a proper, up-there-with-the-best-of-them banger of a frigate. 6,000 tons of modern hull with a 127-millimeter gun, a 16-cell silver vertical launcher stocked with Aster-15 surface-to-air missiles, eight Exocet Block III anti-ship missiles, MU-90 lightweight torpedoes, a towed array sonar, and a flight deck and hangar big

Enough for an NH-90 or Panther helicopter.

The only downside is that Morocco could only afford one of them, something that probably won't come as much as a surprise when you find out that if you convert how much Morocco paid into US dollars and then adjusted for inflation, you end up somewhere in the region of $800 million.

Backing her up are three Dutch-built Sigma-class frigates, Tariq Benziad, commissioned in 2011, Sultan Mouleh Ismail in 2012, and Alaou Ben Abdela, also in 2012.

They're smaller, displacing around 2,000 tons as compared to Mohammed's 6,000, but still competent and modern things with VL Mika surface-to-air missiles for point defense, Exocets for reaching out to strike ships when a 76-millimeter main gun can't quite get far enough, and a whole host of electronic gubbins from sales for eyes and ears.

Then comes the two floreal classes, Mohammed V and Hassan II. Both built in 2002, they are economical patrol frigates built to the standards of the day, fine for presence and escort, but not your first pick for a missile knife fight.

Below that sits the legacy Corvette, Lieutenant Colonel Ahami, an ex-Spanish Descubierta from 1983 that still shows the flag and pads out task groups, but agent sensors limit what you can ask for. Ultimately, there's no submarines and no destroyers either, but given the quality of what they do have, we're not going to hold it against Morocco.

It's a component surface force that can escort ferries and tankers, police the fisheries, and just maybe if- ever needed give some of the country's immediate neighbors a bloody nose, an archetypal middle-tier local power if there ever was one.

Similarly, the Pakistani navy is also a tight and surprisingly well-equipped force, although we'd argue just a smidge more capable than their Moroccan counterparts. Let's start under the water, because this is where Pakistan really puts up a good showing for this tier. Currently, they operate five submarines.

The most notable among them are three Augusta 90B-class diesel-electric attack subs, P&S Khalid, Saad, and Humza, built in tandem with the French.

They're not top-tier submersibles by any stretch, being much more peak Cold War in their general design and capabilities, but they have been modernized with air-independent propulsion, a type of submarine engine system that lets the subs stay underwater for much longer without needing to surface for air, just to give them a smidge of an edge in stealth if

They ever have to trail a carrier group or loiter off a hostile coast.

Then there's their two Augusta 70-class subs, elder sisters of the 90Bs, that, as you no doubt guessed, they're the same fundamentally, just a bit more crude, with slightly less technology.

They also have not been upgraded with air-independent propulsion. Basically, they're line-pluggers called upon to stand in if, for whatever reason, a 90B isn't available for the job.

Although soon, it'll be the 90Bs which are plugging the line because Islamabad has been throwing the cash around of late as it orders itself eight Hangor classes, basically Pakistanized variants of the Chinese Type 39B.

They'll still be diesel-powered rather than nuclear, and they won't have the latest pump jet propulsion, a system that uses an enclosed fan instead of a traditional propeller, making this up quieter and harder to detect. But they will come with wired guided and wake-homing torpedoes, long-range land attack, and anti-ship cruise missiles, and naval mines.

So, for subs at this tier, they'll be really, really cool, actually.

Up on top of the waves, it's a similar story. Decent numbers of not exactly world-leading, but perfectly competent and competitive ships included are, in terms of the big stuff, Tughrill-class frigates for in service.

These are Pakistan's Navy's largest combatants, fitted with vertical launch systems, supersonic CM-302 anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and a decent suite of radars and multi-roll sensors.

Zolficar-class F-22P frigates for in service, built in China, assembled locally under a technology transfer. They feature a stealthier hull design, C-802 anti-ship missiles, and FM-90 end-service-to-air missile systems. Yarmouk-class Corvette for in service, based on a Dutch offshore patrol vessel design.

These ships aren't the heaviest hitters, but they've got great range, modular fit-outs, and an ability to carry long-range cruise missiles if needed, making them perfect for maritime policing with bite. Babur-class Heavy Corvette is one in service, three more on order.

These Turkish-designed ships bring a lot of firsts for Pakistan, vertical launch systems, modern sensors, close-in weapon systems, and a sleek hull that's got both firepower and flexibility.

A single Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, a repurposed US hull that's still useful for basic escort work and training duties, but realistically more of a legacy asset than a frontline warfighter. And how do they use it all? Well, in a word, denial.

The Pakistan Navy's playbook is a layered homeborders killweb whose first move is underwater. The 90Bs lurk off Karachi, Oromara, and Sir Creek, while the older 70s, if things get dire, handle the inshore ambush work if needed.

When the Hangars arrive, that web maybe stretches further, quiet patrols down the Gulf of Amman, land attack options, and more confident stalking of high-value units.

The idea isn't heroic fleet actions. It's to make the Northern Arabian Sea feel booby-trapped, to safeguard the motherland, and to keep an adversary carrier group honest. Above the waves, the surface force plays to the same tune.

The Targrills give Pakistan a credible area air defense screen, while the Zulfikars do the day-in, day-out convoy work. This isn't all just theoretical either, as the every other yearly exercise Amman can vouch.

And yes, it's partly PR, and yes, it doesn't take the fleet that far from home, only into the Arabian Sea, but it is still the Pakistani Navy getting out there, trying to learn things, and trying to integrate itself into international strategic structures.

That, however, is about as much as they do. So, where does that leave our verdict? Well, ultimately, very much still a local power, but a rather good one.

Sure, they have a respectable enough number of decent vessels, but they have no carriers, no overseas bases, and never really go that far from home at all. Although, as we have seen, Islamabad certainly seems to be aiming for bigger things in the future. So, watch this space.

And now, Iran. A peak local power, if there ever was one, Iran's Navy is not designed to project power around the world, nor even to its regional neighbors. It's designed to lock the nation's waters down tight, and stop would-be aggressors from thinking about any anti-regime antics.

Or rather, should we say they're navies? Because, actually, Iran has two navies. The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

The former is the normal one. Big ships, big submarines, fleet operations, all of that good stuff. The latter is a harder-to-explain thing.

They're a more special operations-oriented force, with the Revolutionary Guard being an explicitly political, separate military hierarchy to the regular military. Think, like, the Nazi German SS compared to the Wehrmacht, for an example that you're likely familiar with, and you'll get the gist of how they are organized.

But let's begin by looking at the normal one first.

It currently operates six and a half frigates, three 1970s vintage Alvin class, three newer Mudge class, and another Mudge, the Irish Sahand, which is currently in refit after suffering from a little whoopsidaisy in port. Hence, the half.

Beyond that, vessels of note include three corvettes, two of the 1960s, bay underclass, and a one-off that, shockingly, is even older still, the Hamza, which originally started off life as a royal yacht in 1936.

It's nearly 100 years old, guys, before eventually being converted into a corvette of sorts. Let's get it.

Let's get it. the 90s throw in 15 fast patrol ships on top of that six patrol boats and you pretty much get the idea and then there's the submarines three kilo classes bought from russia in the 90s and a single indigenous fat air newly commissioned in 2019 we don't know that much about it but the experts seem to believe it's on a vague par with later cold

War american or european designs for the revolutionary guard corps navy they actually have some quite weird and interesting stuff the sahid bhagari an old turn of the millennium container ship rebuilt and recommissioned as a drone carrier in february 2025 being the most eyebrow raising perhaps by far followed by the four sahid salmani class middle corvettes

Notable for being catamaran designed beyond that well loads of armed speed boats and fast attack craft the best of the bunch as you've probably already guessed are the mujiz locally built 1500 ton displacement a proven 76 millimeter vajir 27 gun anti-ship nor and kader missiles torpedo launches and a seemingly quite decent 3d asapasa radar they're certainly

Not world-leading but still plenty capable enough to be useful in the gulf one of them dina even has iran's first vertical launch system claimed to be paired with a 360 degree radar that can see out to 300 kilometers and of course as we said at the start of this segment how they use all of that is peak local power the revolutionary guard navy unsurprisingly

Is the more visible of the two at least by headlines with their operations revolving around almost entirely the persian gulf and the strait of homers seizing tankers standard in 2023 for example they nabbed the advantage suite towing it off to bandar abbas then in 2024 it was the msc aries boarded via helicopter and marched off under escort and beyond those

Headline grabbing operations there's the day-to-day persistent gps jamming fast boats warms shadowing us destroyers drones buzzing tankers it's real-world harassment tactics with real world impact specifically considered to make the strait seem as uncomfortable as possible and thus iran as powerful as possible without actually tipping proceedings into a

Proper shooting war the normal maybe for its part does the heavy lifting when it comes to protecting iranian shipping particularly in the gulf of aden and arabian sea their frigates routinely escort merchant vessels through pirate infested waters and have even opened fire on occasion in 2024 for example the jamaran one of the mudge class frigates was

Deployed for this exact reason with iranian media proudly proclaiming every safely transit vessel and blasted apart pyra vessel has a glorious success for the regime and of course both navies regularly flex with domestic drills the most recent sustainable power 1404 saw anti-ship missile launches from coastal batteries torpedo firings from subs speedboat

Swarms and revolutionary guard commandos fast roping onto mock tankers it all took place just off iran's south eastern coast right in the gulf of amman and when iran does poke its nose further afield which it absolutely does from time to time it's usually for sure an operation to make Iran peer-powerful, rather than necessarily achieve anything strategically

Useful.

The snappily named 360-degree mission of Iran's 86th naval fleet from 2022 to 2023, for example, saw their drone carrier and light frigate do a full around-the-world trip. And that's it. No big strategic goal, no particular skill they wanted to drill, just a lovely round-the-world voyage.

Essentially, this was an attempt to be able to turn around to Iran's populace, a notable proportion of which have a habit of setting things on fire when the public security force avert their eyes for but a moment and waving some pictures of their ships in foreign ports so they could shout, see, look, our ships are in foreign waters doing military things.

We're a serious world power and it's all thanks to the leadership of the glorious Ayatollah. Isn't that fantastic?

Now stop setting fire to shit, okay? Although saying that, once a year they do legitimately send their ships off to do some proper bilateral exercises as part of marine security belt held between Iran, obviously, as well as China and Russia. Iran also sends a surprisingly decent complement to six ships when it was first held in 2019.

But as analyst Sylvia Baltic noted when reviewing the 2025 exercise, as much as some useful stuff was practiced, the exercise fundamentally lasted for two days, meaning that there was limited time for anything too serious. Useful? Sure, but not exactly.

Tear, redefiningly useful. So what we're left with is a navy that, despite much posturing towards something greater, is almost aggressively local in character and is likely perfectly happy that way. Because, say, what you like about Iran's leaders, ultimately, they're not stupid.

What they'll be concerned with above all else, despite all the instances of some higher ideology or purpose, is their survival, lest their cushy situations come to an end and the next find themselves getting fitted for a lovely length of rope. So, it's a navy that's excellent at one thing and one thing alone, deterring foreign invasions.

And that is exactly what Iran needs.

Anything else on that is just a cherry on the cake. Not every top-tier local power is one that has aspirations of something greater, but can't quite manage it for one reason or another, though.

Sometimes, a top-tier local power is simply small, advanced, and overwhelmingly focused on local defense, save for some token integration with global allies here and there.

And Singapore makes for a fantastic example of such a power.

On the point of their navy being small, something that shouldn't come as a surprise, given that they are a whole nation with a smaller population than London, currently they field six formidable class frigates jointly built between Singapore and France in the noughties, six victory classes jointly built with the West Germans in the late 80s, and, well,

Actually, that's it for the big surface stuff.

All six formidable derivatives of France's Lafayette design were commissioned between 2007 and 2009.

Their 3,200 tonne ships, packed with power power, each carrying a 76mm main gun, harpoon, anti-ship missiles, and a unique configuration of MBDA Aster 1530 surface-to-air missiles are mated with You don't want to think of it as if you want to run back. cells, Heracles Radar.

At their introduction, according to Wendell Minich, speaking to Defense News, they were, quote, by far the most advanced surface combatants in Southeast Asia. And while the competition has caught up a bit since then, they remain very competitive to this day.

The victories are fine, to be sure, and are far from a joke, but given their age, all commissioned in the early 90s, there is only so much that can be done to upgrade them before their fundamental systems become an insurmountable barrier to improvement, and generally, the victories are believed to have reached that point.

But, like we say, they're fine, and still just perfectly viable as warships. It's also worth taking note of some of Singapore's smaller vessels, particularly their eight Independence-class littoral mission vessels, as these are also really quite good.

Commissioned between 2017 and 2020, and built and designed entirely indigenously, they are 1,250 tonne ships that feature a high degree of automation, specifically to deal with the fact that, like we say, Singapore isn't exactly what you would call a populist nation.

Despite their compact size, though, the Independences are heavily armed for their class. 76mm guns, Typhoon remote weapon stations, Mika anti-ship missiles, and they can be reconfigured with modular payloads for missions ranging from mine countermeasures to humanitarian assistance.

Throw in four Endurance-class amphibious warfare ships that can each put 500 troops ashore on a good day, a few auxiliaries, and what you have is an agreeable little surface force.

Beneath the waves, things are a bit more… hmm. At the minute, Singapore rocks two ex-Swedish Archer-class diesel-powered boats. They're from the 80s, they've been retrofitted, but they are fundamentally old, and a bit past their best.

Fully aware of their shortcomings, though, Singapore is working on the fix as we speak, with the acquisition of six, four in service at present, German-built Type 218 SGs. This invincible class, as it is known in Singaporean service, is a big step up.

Still diesel-powered, but far more modern and refined than the Cold War hand-me-downs that they're replacing.

And for Singapore, all of that is exactly what they need. Sharing a land border with now-friendly Manasia, their attention is instead naturally focused straight up to that very large and very powerful nation that happens to find itself on the other geopolitical team than themselves, and that, of course, is China. Their strategy in that regard?

Sea denial and coastal defense make getting even a single pair of Chinese boots onto Singaporean soles so costly and any resulting victory so pyrrhic that odds are the Chinese just won't even bother.

In practice, this means Singapore's highly-networked ships, submarines, and surveillance assets can form a prickly defensive screen around the island, a porcupine strategy to give any aggressive pause.

As President Lee Kuan Yew himself put it back in the day, In a world where the big fish eats small fish and the small fish eat shrimps, Singapore must become a poisonous shrimp.

Or alternatively, because he was nothing if not a man full of great analogies, Singapore is like the durian. Try and squeeze it and you get hurt. It also doesn't hurt that thanks to being rather wealthy, the 27th most wealthy by- like- gross GDP, in fact, as well as fourth per capita, Singapore can afford very, very good training for its sailors.

As good as any other nation, in fact. And now another tiny nation that sports a modest but very high-tech, high-capability navy, Israel. On the surface, they have no destroyers at all, with their largest ships being seven missile corvettes, four of the Sa'ar 6-class and three of the Sa'ar 5-class.

As is rather obvious from the names, the Sa'ar 6s are the newer, more high-tech ones, with all four having been delivered between 2020 and 2021 and coming packed with the good stuff.

An Italian-built 76mm main gun for the big shooting times, two typhoon remote weapon stations to deal with close-up stuff, both on the waves and in the air, 32 vertical launch cells for Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles, 40 again for sea dome point defense missiles, Gabriel-5 anti-ship missiles, torpedo launches, and a suite of sensors that can only be written

As pure alphabet suit, but trust us, it's all very capable stuff.

For the Sa'ar 5s, all launched between 1993 and 1994, it's that again, but just a bit less, you get the idea.

Under the waves, Israel runs a small, high-end dolphin-class diesel-electric flotilla built in Germany, five in service, with a sixth in bound. The original Dolphin 1 trio commissioned between 1999 and 2000, and the newer Dolphin 2 pair commissioned from 2014 to 2016 give them quiet, credible patrol options, with the later adding air-independent propulsion.

Where it gets interesting, however, is that some of those submarines, as much as Israel denies to the contrary, are nuclear-armed.

Typically, it's the Dolphin 2s which are suspected to carry them, as they have four 650mm torpedo tubes that are only seen on the 2s specifically, almost as if there's a particular sort of special weapon that Israel would trust only to its advanced and most capable submarines.

It's not the kind of thing they'd roll out universally and just say for special occasions. I mean, whatever type of weapon that might be, right?

It's also suspected they might have vertical launch systems, thanks to the 2s' longer hull, but this remains purely speculative, with, if they do have them, great lengths having been gone to leave their hull flush and normal looking when surfaced.

As for what they fire when it's atomic time, that's uncertain too, but most pundits point to this, the Popeye Turbo. Normally, it's a surface-to-air missile, with the nuclearized cruise missile variant being assumed to be broader, 650mm unsurprisingly, as opposed to a normal Popeye's 533mm girth.

As for range, it's typically believed to be 1,500km, and as for warhead yield, it's usually given as a single 200-kiloton one, so with some from the hip-rounded maths, call it 10 times more powerful than the fat man the US dropped on Hiroshima back in 1945.

And despite their hushed denials about having nukes for political reasons, Israel wants you to know about the Dolphin 2's true capabilities. I mean, It would be a bit of a nuclear deterrent if they weren't able to leverage it when, say, they were having a spat with a certain neighbor, right?

Beyond the subs and their nukes, however, Israel uses its modest surface fleet pretty much exactly as you would expect, defending coastline and offshore gas fields, keeping shipping honest, and hardening fixed targets that groups like Hezbollah would like to take a shot at. All in all, then, you can probably see what we mean.

Israel basically is just nuclear-capable Singapore.

Small, high-tech, capable, and above all else, very, very much oriented towards its own survival as a state and immediate neighboring geopolitical interests. Should we have bummed them up a tear just because they have nukes? That's tempting, but ultimately we decided, no, they're short-range missiles for local leverage.

Israel isn't going to be popping a sub off the waters of Qingdao and doing a bit of nuclear diplomacy with China, aren't they? Well, no. Instead, though there is a little reminder to Tehran and Doha that if push comes to shove, both capitals can be reduced to a sheet of glass in a matter of minutes.

Finally, standing proudly as the king of the local powers is North Korea.

And they were actually quite tricky for us to place in this video because they do legitimately have some insane capabilities, like the stuff that global powers do.

But despite that, we tempered our verdict somewhat because such instances are the exceptions for Pyongyang and not the norm, with their actual, more broad, real capabilities being somewhat lacking by comparison, but also far from incompetence. And so, here they are at the top of the local power pile.

As for an example of their mold-breaking insane capabilities to get us started, we've got four words for you. A ballistic missile submarine. As in, one that skulks under the waves and hurls big nuclear missiles at far-off cities.

Not just a normal sub that can also shoot off some nuclear-dipped cruise missiles, as per Israel's dolphins. Yeah, North Korea's got one of those. And here she is.

The hero Kim Kung Ok. Launched in 2023, she is not nuclear-powered, instead using old-school diesel-electric propulsion. But what comes out of the business end of her?

Well, that is very nuclear indeed.

With her main complement, generally the four Puk Guk Song 3s, each with a probable range of around 2,000 kilometers, and a single warhead with a yield that is absolutely unknown, but stands to reason is happily into the hundreds of kilotons of TNT equivalent, so many times more powerful than the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just so you've got

Some sort of provisional reference point.

A world-leading ballistic missile submarine.

She is not, as they tend to be nuclear-powered and way more stealthy, but a fully up-and-running, ballistic missile submarine she is nonetheless. That, no matter how you cut it, is a bit of a big deal.

And from there, the matter of submarines more broadly only appears to stay rosy for the Democratic People's Republic, as they also have in the region of 70 to 80 normal ones.

And that's a big number of them by anyone's standards. But they aren't exactly top of the line. We're talking maybe around 40.

Tango classes, diesel-electric attack subs, that can't really go out into open waters, but that can still launch a torpedo or four, 20 or so Type 033s they bought from China, diesel-electric attack subs, whose base design comes from the 1950s, but that can at least go out into the sea proper, and a handful of Yono classes, tiny little miniature submarines

That absolutely cannot go out into open water, but can absolutely do some damage close to the coast, as the South Korean Rox Chanan can vouch for as she was sunk in 2010, and it's widely believed that it is a Yono that delivered the killing shot.

Is this a joke token force, as many in the commentariat are keen to dismiss it as? No, it's absolutely not if you ask us.

They can, and do some damage, and so would likely be quite the headache in the opening phases of a shooting war, but it isn't a force that'd go the distance in such a conflict, both literally and figuratively.

They wouldn't be going far from home, and owing to their second-rate design, would likely all be sunk or confined to port relatively easily by a focused anti-submarine warfare effort. Still, though, that's a bloody good showing by the standards of this chapter, isn't it?

The story remains the same for their surface fleet, too. Quantitatively brilliant, qualitatively middling. For example, they have an estimated 120 1980s-built Sinhung-class torpedo boats, and a dozen give-or-take Chinese-built Type 062 gunboats hailing from the 1950s.

So you can probably see what we mean. Big numbers? Sure.

When you look at what it actually is, most of it is small, and a lot of it is old. But they do have some big stuff, mind you, and what they have in that regard is actually an interesting matter, too, because it does appear as though Pyongyang is starting to adopt a quality-over-quantity approach there, at least as much as it is able.

Take, for example, the two Nanjing-class friggers that they're believed to have.

They're old, hailing from the 70s, but are being modernized heavily, a process that started all the way back in 2014.

Then there's the totally newer ships, two Amnok-class corvettes launched in 2023, two Nambo-class corvettes launched in 2013 and 2014, and the centerpieces of the whole North Korean fleet, two Cholhyeon-class destroyers, both launched in 2025.

Those last two are modern ships, heavy incorporation of missiles, radar coming out the West Zoo, modern automated guns, various integrated bits for operating UAVs and helicopters, the whole shebang.

And as the cherry on the kegs, they're capable of launching nuclear weapons as well, likely cruise missiles. That last claim is very much a trust-me-bro one, as invariably it often is for matters related to North Korea. But we're inclined to believe them, because if there is one thing the nation doesn't need to lie about, it's its nukes.

As for the total number of big ships, just so you have a rough comparison to be working with here, we're talking two Cholhyeon-class destroyers and 11 corvettes. Further bolstering it all, too, is an unusually large amphibious and special forces flotilla.

Pyongyang operates scores of high-speed landing craft and hovercraft, about 100 hovercraft, and many hundreds of other normal landing craft, all ready to swarm troops onto enemy beaches.

As for the training standards in the North Korean Navy, actually it appears to be pretty decent all things considered. I mean, don't get us wrong, we doubt the Royal Navy is going to be looking to them for pointers any time soon, but I mean, not too bad all things considered.

For example, Conscript's basic naval training lasts up to three months, a much longer duration than in the Army, and the focus is on repetitious drills, occupational know-how, and psychological resilience, often under punishing daily schedules that stretch from before dawn into the evening.

The regimented approach ensures that their day-to-day tasks become second nature, and that they can perform well under stress. As military scholar James Minnich put it, the result is a force that is, quote, well-versed in the basics, even under adverse conditions.

Officer development follows a structured pipeline, standout enlisted sailors are selected for specialized training, attending institutions like the Kim Jong-Suk Naval University in Hamhung, before returning to the Navy proper, with a seemingly decent standard of knowledge under their belts.

Where it appears to come short, however, is with the on-the-job practice sailors get once they're out of the academy, as it appears rather limited.

In North Korea Military Power, published by the Defense Intelligence Agency, for example, it is noted that naval steaming days are simply not published by North Korea at all, and with there not being any publicly published Western intelligence on the matter, we instead have to use supplementary evidence to make deductions, like the fact that fighter pilots

From the North Korean Air Force only get 15 to 25 practice flight hours a year, indicating that fuel is likely in rather short supply across the whole armed forces, and thus we can assume that the Navy gets limited exercise time out at sea too.

Despite such drawbacks, however, and we hope you'll agree, North Korea is a nation that has earned its place at the top of the local power's tier, a Navy that, between limited exercise time, limited operating resources, and the size and capabilities of its fleet, is clearly not fit for serious blue water operations, and so could never be considered a

Regional power, much less a global one.

But thanks to its ample number of okay submarines, a small but seemingly quite modern surface fleet, actual loads of nippy little coastal boats, and, of course, the insane out-of-tier capabilities of the hero Kim Kong, it can absolutely be considered a very, very serious local power. The best of the bunch, in fact. And so that's the local powers for you.

They're not going to win any global naval games, sure, but that isn't the point, is it? These are fleets built for the home front, with just enough steel to defend what's theirs, keep their neighbours guessing, and show up when it really matters.

Some are surprising, some are scrappy, and one or two are just a little bit scary, but none of them are sailing too far from home.

Yet, anyway, we're looking at you, Pakistan, Iran, and just about maybe North Korea. The Regional Powers Regional powers is a tier, ooh, when we start seeing fleets that stop mostly hugging the coastline and properly get out there without needing a hand to hold.

We'll also start seeing notable increases in both the... quantity of vessels, with ships that were one-off flagships before now becoming fleet staples, as well as their quality too, with types that have remained elusive until now making their first appearances.

Helicopter carriers and amphibious assault ships, for example, we'll be seeing plenty of them in this chapter, as well as our first proper flat-top aircraft carriers. But the real deciders are Endurance and overseas bases.

Can you take a meaningful task group across Blue Water, run the playbook with allies, and still look fresh a fortnight later, but typically be having to use other people's facilities while doing it?

If yes, odds are, then we have a place in this chapter for you. And leading off is Brazil, which despite almost certainly having the most powerful navy on the continent, is just clinging onto regional power status by its fingernails.

And it's a shame too, because just as we saw with Argentina, not too long ago they were a major player operating proper full flat-topped aircraft carriers for over 60 years, specifically the Minas Gerais from 1956 to 2001 and Sao Paulo from 2000 to 2017.

Today, however, these capabilities are gone, replaced instead by Atlantico, a single 21,000-ton helicopter carrier acquired from Britain in 2018. Formerly HMS Ocean, she now serves as Brazil's flagship.

There are no jets, but she's still a useful platform to be sure, able to position 18 helicopters and a marine battalion, act as a task force command center, and serve as a high-visibility tool for diplomacy, disaster relief, or regional patrols.

Backing her up is Bahia, the 12,000-ton landing dock acquired from France in 2015, and two aging Newport-class tank-leading ships bought second-hand from the United States. They give Brazil amphibious lift, real amphibious lift, which admittedly is a rare capability in the region, but it's not the same as proper carriers, is it?

But if Brazil's carriers are a crack which has since been welded up, weaker than it once was, but still strong and functional, elsewhere the cracks do remain rather bare to the world.

Brazil's six Niteroi-class frigates, for example, essentially Brazilianized Type 21s, were built between the 1970s and 80s, and last modernized around 2000. They remain the backbone of the surface fleet, even as their age shows in sensors, systems, and survivability.

They're backed up by two Inhummer-class corvettes from the early 90s, three more of which are now at the bottom of the ocean, serving as artificial reefs after they aged out of service.

The amphibious squadron is thin but functional, with Atlantico and Bahia naturally doing the heavy lifting. In fairness, though, this does work for Brazil's actual strategic needs, protecting oil rigs, managing riverine security, and sending marines ashore in regional scenarios.

They don't need to chase fleet actions on the high seas, and frankly, they can't.

The submarine force paints a similar picture, competent enough for the local job, but not transformative. Brazil currently operates four submarines, two Rigelos-class diesel electrics based on a French design and built locally, and two older German-built Type 209s that will be phased out once two or more Rigelos arrive by decade's end.

The Rigelos, in fairness, aren't too bad at all.

They're modern, portedly have decent sonar, pack SM-39 missiles, i.e. more than capable for standard patrol and deterrence work. The 209s? I mean, they'll do for now.

They're grey-haired stalwart employees just waiting to cash their pension before they bolt from the office, never to be seen again. But there is reason to be optimistic. Brazil is currently working on the Tamandare, a planned class of eight frigates, of which the first is due to enter service very, very soon.

They're shaping up to be stealthy, full of good electronics, and bristling with firepower. Then there's the sub-situation, because, you see, they're actually planning on getting a fifth Roquello, and they want that one to be nuclear-powered. Will that be enough to push Brazil up to a global power?

Mmm, no. No, certainly not, because as you'll see as we go ever on, the bar to make it into that here is just a bit more than having a scattering of decent major vessels, some amphibious lift capability and a single nuclear-powered submarine. But, might it be enough to push them up to the middle, maybe upper middle of the regional power tier? Well, yes.

Yes, it could be. Next, straggling two continents, the Suez Canal and a whopping great coastline is Egypt. Their navy isn't just the biggest in Africa, it is a well-armed, thoughtfully structured force, objectively in its own right.

As for what they have that makes it the biggest on the continent, that'd be two Mistral-class helicopter carriers.

Note the word helicopter there, they do not operate any fixed-wing aircraft. 13 frigates, 7 corvettes, 30 fast attack craft, 8 submarine chases, 23 patrol vessels, and 17 mine clearers, as well as a swath of other, smaller still, support vessels and auxiliaries. And several of these ships are very much worth taking a closer look at.

Take the Mistrals, for instance. The Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Anwar al-Sadat, each of which can carry up to 900 troops, 35 vehicles, and 16 helicopters, as well as act as command and control hubs and amphibious launch platforms.

They were, actually, originally ordered by Russia in the early 2010s, but the sale was cancelled after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Egypt snagged them instead for a little bit of a discount, 950 million euros, as opposed to 1.2 billion that Russia was originally going to pay.

Not bad, given that it made Egypt the first and indeed only African nation to operate carriers of any kind. Although, ironically, they did end up with Russian aircraft on them all the same, as when the time came to fill their hangars up, Egypt turned to the Kamov Design Bureau and ended up with a load of Ka-52s and 27s. And then there's the Frems.

Remember that frigate Morocco had that we were gushing over? Well, yeah, Egypt doesn't just have one of them like their transcontinental counterparts, they have three of them. The Tay Amisa, acquired from France in 2015, the Al-Ghalala and Bernese, both acquired from Italy in 2020, and we already know how good those frigates are.

And the quality doesn't stop there, because the next four in the lineup are the German-designed Miko 200 frigates Al-Aziz, Al-Kahar, and Al-Kadir, as well as the Al-Jabar.

All brand new, delivered between 2022 and 2025, with Al-Jabar being the first warship of its class assembled domestically at Alexandria's shipyard, with the rest being built back in Germany. They come armed with Exocet and ship missiles, vertical launch Mika air defense missiles, and decent towed sonar systems.

They're not quite as advanced as the Frems, but they are far from terrible, they're fast, they're flexible, and they're well-suited to the kinds of patrol, presence, and deterrence missions that Egypt runs day to day. Behind them, however, the quality begins to trail off a bit.

The rest of the frigate fleet is made up of four ex-US Navy Oliver Hazard Perry classes, good guided missile units in their day, but that day was the 1970s and 1980s, as well as two ex-US NOx-class anti-submarine warfare frigates, which were designed back in the 60s.

For both of these classes, their sensors, combat systems, and missile capacity are undeniably well behind modern standards, despite attempts to retrofit them here and there, and while they pad out the numbers and are certainly useful in real-world day-to-day operations, they aren't contributing much when it comes to high-end naval combat.

Then there's the submarines, eight of them in total, but only half or equal modern. The best of the bunch are four German-built Type 209-class boats, delivered between 2016 and 2021.

They're solid enough, diesel-electric, armed with heavyweight torpedoes and harpoon missiles, and quiet enough to be viable. About as good as you can realistically expect a diesel sub to be, basically.

The other four are Chinese-built Type 033s, Cold War relics, exact production dates unclear that have been refitted a bit over the years, but realistically aren't doing much beyond training or backup duties.

Between them, they're enough to cover Egypt's essential sub-duties, intelligence gathering in the Med, enforcing a potential blockade of the Suez Canal, stuff like that. Crucially, though, for their placing today, Egypt's fleet is far from being a harbor princess, as they are put to work regularly.

Since April 2025, for example, they've taken command of Combined Task Force 153, a multinational maritime security operation covering the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden.

That means that Egypt isn't just a contributor, it is a leader, directing coalition patrols, deterring threats, and managing uncrewed surveillance assets as part of a broader security architecture. On the Mediterranean front, Egyptian warships are regular players, too.

They patrol near offshore gas installations, intercept smugglers, and enforce maritime claims, especially around the eastern Mediterranean and volatile Suez approaches.

In the Red Sea, the corvette Abu-Kir was also recently filmed, conducting coordinated maneuvers with the U.S. destroyer. Egypt also hosts and participates in heavyweight regional drills, Bright Star with the U.S., Cleopatra with France, to give just two examples.

These exercises are more than just PR, they're operational rehearsals across real sea challenges from anti-submarine warfare to rapid response command and control.

So certainly, Egypt is impressive. But all of that was quite close to Egypt's own waters, wasn't it? Regional, you might even say.

And thus, they belong in this very chapter. It's almost as if we planned this video in advance or something. And now, Thailand, the first nation we've seen that can boast having a full-on flat-top aircraft carrier.

And here she is, the HTMS Chakri Narrabeta ski-jump-configured vessel built... factor. built by the Spanish and commissioned into the Thai Navy all the way back in 1997. She isn't exactly what you'd call big, as the eagle item on you may have picked up from the scale of the aircraft on her deck, coming in at not even 12,000 tons with a full load.

But she is active, and so you've got to give Thailand the props that they are owed for that.

Beyond her, Thailand currently boasts seven frigates, one modern Behimba Adelaide class built in South Korea and commissioned in 2019, and six legacy 1990s frigates from the Chinese-built Narasuan and Chao Praa classes.

Four amphibious warfare ships, specifically one big modern one they got from China, the Chang, and three much smaller, much older ones between the Aang Thong and the two ships of the Sichang class.

Four offshore patrol vessels, two Krabby classes and two Patani classes, five mine countermeasures vessels for coastal and choke point clearance, and a whopping zero submarines, although they're working on that just really, really slowly.

And before we get into discussing what they use all that for, and how we believe that qualifies them as a regional power, we have a bit of a confession to make. Remember when we said that the Chakri Narraba was an aircraft carrier?

Well, it would be kind of more accurate to say that she was an aircraft carrier, and the emphasis is definitely on the past tense there.

You see, Thailand has always had issue keeping a Harrier jumpjet, specifically Spanish Matador variants, going, and by 2006, they were pulled altogether. From there, Chakri Narraba was left just operating helicopters, and so she really became much more of an amphibious warfare ship.

Not that's a bad thing, to be fair, because while a true aircraft carrier, even just a small one, may have proven to be just a smidge beyond Thailand's means, the resulting five amphibious warfare ships they are left with are nothing to turn your nose at, as this gives the nation the ability to deploy and support thousands of troops to any regional coastline

It pleases.

They keep their Navy's skills sharp, too, as every year the country co-hosts Cobra Gold, one of the largest and longest-running multilateral exercises in the Indo-Pacific. It's not just a flag-waving affair, it includes amphibious landings, live fire drills, and interoperability across land, air, and sea.

Then there's Karat, Thailand, where Thai frigates work with U.S. and Singaporean forces on anti-submarine warfare, interdiction, and maritime security patrols.

Thai ships have also taken part in UN-sanctioned anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden under CTF-151. It's not a force designed to sail around the world, though. There's no at-sea replenishment capability worth writing home about, and there's no overseas basing infrastructure.

And while the complete lack of submarines, not even a shit-old comedy ones held together with duct tape, is certainly a detriment, we don't see it being enough to knock them down to being a local power, as their surface fleet more than makes up for it.

They are a nation that regularly shows up, properly trains with the big navies, moves serious hardware, and just for good measure have the ability to really mess up some coastlines thanks to their crazy over-weighting of amphibious warfare ships. And that isn't really the stuff of local power, is it?

And back to the Mediterranean now, because there we find Turkey, who feels one of them the most silently competent navies in the region you can see it in numbers alone one amphibious assault ship 17 frigates 9 corvettes 24 fast attack and fast patrol ships essentially numbers wise they're on rough parity with egypt down sometimes but up in others and

Centerpiece of it all is that amphibious assault ship the tcg anadolu which was commissioned back in 2023 all 27 500 tons of her had been planned to operate as a quasi-aircraft carrier of sorts with turkey planning to give her all the necessary facilities needed to operate f-35s specifically the conventional takeoff and landing a model but this plan went to

The dogs when after purchasing s-400 surface-to-air missile systems from russia turkey found itself disinvited from ordering interestingly though this led to something of a light bulb moment for ankara however as with the nation having something of a burgeoning uav industry they opted just to go down the unorthodox route of making the anadolu configurable as

A drone carrier instead but both the conventional prop-powered baykar bayaracta tb3 and the jet-powered stealthy bayaracta kinselma plan to go on her remain in the prototype phase and so she currently operates only as a conventional amphibious assault ship for now beyond that turkey operates a solid spread of surface combatants the 17 frigates are a mixed

Bag eight older u.s oliver hazard perry classes still serviceable but aging four meko 200 frigates modernized with turkish sensors and weapons four of the domestically built barabas classes which are undergoing midlife upgrades to carry modern radar vertical launch sams and anti-ship missiles and one ultra-modern istif class the lead ship of a planned class

Of eight it's a similar mix with the corvettes too as their nine hulls are split between four of the ex-french bura class and built in the 70s purchased and overhauled by turkey in the noughties and five modern indigenously built ada classes that come with stealth shaping advanced sensors and harpoon anti-ship missiles under the waves turkey fields a 13

Strong submarine fleet 12 which are derivatives of the german type 209 the very same one used by egypt commissioned as various turkish specific subclasses between 1978 and 2007 and one race class a much more modern indigenously built planned class of six that will see the 209s eventually phased out when it comes to raw fleet size and qualities of ships then

Turkey and egypt sit in a rough parity with one another so why did we place turkey higher and that's simple self-reliance innovation a political muscle on the matter of innovation consider the anadolu not content to just be another helicopter carrier turkey morphed it into a drone carrier the first of its kind in the entire world sure it's very much a work

In progress but as of the time of writing it the db3 has flown over 100 sorties and racked up 1167 flight hours from the anadolu including ai-enabled operations and live fire tests so it's very much a matter of when and not if now turkey also utilizes its navy as a tool of politics in recent years for example turkish warships escorted the seismic survey

Vessel are rays through contested eastern Mediterranean waters, which sparked actual naval standoffs, even a mini-collision with a Greek frigate in 2020.

That's bold brinkmanship matched with naval firepower. And Turkey doesn't just buy ships, because as you've seen, they're building their own ones increasingly.

They're exporting them too, as the Aida class alone has found its way into the navies of both Pakistan and Ukraine, with Malaysia being poised to get some in the near future too.

This, i.e. not being entirely dependent upon foreign suppliers for one's warships, is a big deal when the world starts heating up, and something we have to give Turkey props for, even if they're a long way off from being a wholly indigenous navy.

So yes, at face value, Egypt may well appear to be on parity with Turkey, and maybe even pip them depending on how you argue it.

But if you ask us, when you pop the bonnet and look closer at how their navies work, the match goes to Turkey. Next up, Spain, where we see things kick up a notch, noticeably so in fact. And why?

Well, that's because they are the first nation we're looking at that has a particular capability. A ship that can launch fixed-wing aircraft properly. Anyway, we're not counting the Chakri narrowbeds on account for not actually having any aircrafts, never really having them as functional assets, and almost certainly never going to get them in the future.

And for Spain, the ship in question is the Juan Carlos I, a 26,000-ton aircraft carrier and landing helicopter dock hybrid commissioned back in 2010. A supercarrier, she absolutely is not, but she is nothing if not capable, being able to embark as many as 25 Harrier IIs in her belly when in a pure fixed-wing configuration.

Compare that to Egypt's Mistral's helicopter-only, or Turkey's Anadolu drone-focused, and you can see why Spain's slots rung higher.

Carrier aviation, even in this modest form, is a big deal, because fixed-wing jets bring speed, range, payload, and versatility that helicopters or drones simply can't match. It means striking further, covering more airspace, and projecting force ashore in ways no other navy we've seen so far can.

Oh, and if you think that Juan Carlos I and Anadolu look similar, that's because they are.

Anadolu is a near copy of the Spanish design, built under license with a few Turkish tweaks. As for frigates, Spain has 11 of them, split between six old Santa Maria-class vessels, basically peri-knock-offs, and five much more formidable Alvaro de Bazan classes, built in the noughties and early 2010s.

And the difference between those two groups really tells the story of where Spain sits today, versus where it's going.

The Santas are a smidge creaking, yep, but the Bazans are top-tier, world-leading kit, fitted with the Aegis combat system and Spy 1D radar, which means they can track and shoot down incoming aircraft and missiles across hundreds of kilometers.

In practice, that makes them more than just defensive escorts, they can act as the air defense linchpins of NATO task groups, covering whole fleets with their missile umbrella. Spain also fills two Galicia-class landing platform docks, which give the navy proper amphibious teeth.

Each can carry a battalion of marines for the first two minutes in the future. It's about all the large-size-size industry now. For a modest use of all states.

Your Honor, E. Sft. 30 vehicles, and four landing craft while operating helicopters from a flight deck. They aren't glamorous.

Let's be real, they do kind of look like ferries with a coat of gray slapped over them, but they are the backbone of Spain's expeditionary capabilities, and combined with Juan Carlos I, they give Madrid the ability to land and sustain sizable forces ashore.

In what may come as an unexpected turn, however, Spain's submarine force is, and there's no polite way to put this, is just shit. It's kind of weirdly shit, in fact, as it's not just lacking in comparison to other areas, it's, well, it's two boats.

One being the Galerna, a knackered old Augusta-class commissioned all the way back in 1983, and frankly whose capabilities, or lack thereof, reflect that fact, and the other being Isaac Peral, the lead ship of a planned class of four, which pretty much follows the same pattern as all the other good submarines that we've seen so far.

Diesel-powered, air-independent propulsion for long dive times, and so on and so forth. And why is that the case?

You probably want to know. Well, TLDR, Spain screwed the pooch on the transition between the two classes when a weight miscalculation on the Isaac Perales, also sometimes called the S-80 class, left them as much as 100 tons heavier than planned, and thus created a lot of problems in Madrid, as they feared they would not be able to surface.

And correcting that little error took so long that by the time Isaac Peral was finally plopped into the water, Galerna, the last of her type, was just about still serviceable, creating a dire capabilities gap that likely won't be plugged until the end of the decade.

The absolute catastrophe of a situation, coupled with the fact that Spain isn't awash with frigates, as good as some of them admittedly are, very nearly had to push them down this list further, maybe even below Egypt. But we have to be fair.

Even when taking those detriments into account, Spain has earned this spot here, because when it does put to sea, it pushes above its weight.

Its ships are not dockside mascots, they're routinely deployed. Spain's frigates are a constant sight in standing NATO maritime groups. The Alvaro de Bazan classes, in particular, are trusted to run air defense for whole task groups, something Egypt's or Turkey's fleets simply aren't called on to do.

Spain also rotates units through EU NAV4 Atlanta, the EU's anti-piracy mission off of Somalia, and its vessels have been on hand for humanitarian crises, like when the frigate Reina Sofia evacuated over 160 EU citizens from Sudan in 2023. Closer time, the Galicia classes, and Quant Carlos I, are central to exercises with NATO and EU allies.

Together, they give Spain not just the ability to land troops, but to sustain them ashore with armor, supplies, and helicopters, something that puts it in rare company among regional navies.

So yeah, the submarine arm is borderline embarrassing, and the Santa Marias are showing their age, but balanced against that are Spain's very real, very modern strengths. A functioning fixed-wing carrier, amphibious lift that few at this level can match, and frigates that are trusted by NATO to provide high energy. air defense.

It's those assets, used consistently in operations abroad and backed by a competent shipbuilding industry, that secure Spain's place.

And it's back to Asia now, for a little look at the South Korean Navy. And really, it's a shame our format today doesn't let us put the two Koreas back to back, because the gap in capabilities minus nukes obviously is pretty stark, to put it mildly.

Starting with the numbers as we always do, amphibious assault ships, two of them, both of the Dokdo class, they are full flight deck helicopter carriers that look every inch the small carrier.

Destroyers, 13, split between four of the Sejong the Great class, six of the Chong-Mug-Yong-Yi Sushin class, which is a mouthful, and three of the Kuang-Gato the Great class. Frigates, 17, six of the Incheon class, eight of the Daegu class, one of the Cheung-Nam class, and two of the Olsen class.

Submarines, 21 of them, split between nine of the Jang-Bogo class, nine of the Song-Won-Il class, and three of the Dawson are Chang-Ho class.

Now let's talk about how we use them. Now that we're done with that, what sounds to me like a word salad. The South Korean Navy has done quite the remarkable thing in the span of a single generation, gone from a brown water coastal defender to a proper full on blue water capable navy.

In many ways, it's a story that parallels that of the northern neighbors that want to improve and really make it as a naval power. But equally, in saying that, it's a story that has a radically different ending. Because whereas Pyongyang, in all fairness to them, has absolutely made some progress, they ultimately remain a brown water navy.

Whereas Seoul, well, they've done a bit better. And chiefly, that success is down to two things. It's quality and quantity, as they have actually nailed both.

Take the Docto class alone. These two Leviathans displace around 19,500 tons with full load, stretch roughly 200 meters, and carry some 700 marines alongside 15 helicopters, two ALCAC hovercraft, and heavy armoured vehicles and artillery. Oh, and there's also repeated murmurings of them being able to take VTOL jets in the future.

Whatever type, they might end up being F-35. And then there's the Daegu class frigates, an 8R class with more still in various planning stages. They're built on the older Incheon hull, but the upgrades are meaningful.

A 16-cell vertical launch system that can fire surface-to-air KSAM missiles, anti-subred shark rockets, and Heesong land-attack cruise missiles. They also feature a towed array TB-250K sonar, hangar and deck expanded for a 10-ton helicopter, plus a clever hybrid propulsion system for stealth and flexibility.

Generally, such quality is representative of the fleet.

Sure, there's some older stuff clinging on in there, like the two Olsen-class frigates built back in the early 90s, although extensively upgraded to keep them competitive. But typically speaking, such things are exceptions, not the rule. South Korea's fleet is modern and moderately sized.

Everything that one needs to make it a middle-tier regional power.

And with their submarines, South Korea is archetypal regional power, having a decent number of competent enough modern diesel electric boats. boats, but ultimately having the force held back by the fact that they are only diesel electric, and thus there's an inherent cap on their capabilities from the outset.

Take the still rolling out Dawson and Changho class to show you what we mean.

They're South Korea's first indigenously designed diesel-electric submarines. The Germans did all the rest, and over 3,700 tons submerged, they're the largest conventional submarine South Korea has ever fielded, and they come with a major party trick. Six vertical launch tubes capable of firing cruise missiles, or, wait for it, ballistic missiles.

Only Hyeong-moo 4-4s though, so we're talking 500km range and absolutely no nuclear tip, but still quite the capability. The subs also feature air-independent propulsion, allowing them to stay underwater for around 20 days at a time, and they're far quieter than earlier classes. Quite the force then, we're sure you'll all agree.

But it is, however, one that remains firmly planted in the regional power category because of how they use it.

For example, in early 2025, Korean and American sailors tested what happens if special forces try to sneak in by sea, something that South Korea does have to contend with in the real world during the snappily titled Maritime Counter Special Operations Executives, or MCSOFEX.

Because that's easier, it's realistic, it's high-end, and it's very relevant to the geopolitical situation that South Korea finds itself in.

However, in saying that, they are inching ever closer towards maybe one day reaching global power status by increasingly getting more and more involved in big NATO exercises in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Pacific Vanguard, which saw them head over to the Mariana Trench kind of area to practice anti-submarine warfare, air defense, and advanced maneuvers

With the Americans, the Japanese, the Canadians, and the Australians.

Then in March 2025, it was over to Guam for Sea Dragon, another multilateral exercise focused on joint ASW mastery with Australia, Japan, India, and the US. Nowhere, however, can South Korea's aspirations to and potential competence as a global power be better seen than with 2011's Operation Dawn of the Gulf of Aden.

There, when Somali pirates hijacked the Sam Ho Jewry, a South Korean freighter, Seoul didn't just file a complaint to ask someone else to sort it out. They dispatched a destroyer halfway across the world and resolved it themselves.

A Chongwongong Yi Sun-Sin class launched a commando raid in international waters, freed all of the hostages, and killed or captured the pirates.

It was sharp, swift, and frankly, a bit of a shock to the world, as a brownwater navy, well, they just don't do that. However, then, as now, such instances are exceptions to South Korea's norm.

A bit more of that, a sprinkling of overseas bases, maybe a proper aircraft carrier or two, and we wouldn't think twice about scooping South Korea up and hurling it into the next chapter.

Next, we have the Italians, and frankly, they were dangerously close to getting promoted to the global powers tier, as they have some serious capabilities. Take just their fleet alone, as they feel too fixed-wing aviation capable.

Here we go. capital ships one light aircraft carrier cavor and the newly commissioned landing helicopter dock trieste three amphibious transport docks three destroyers 14 frigates eight attack submarines nine offshore patrol vessels and of course a whole load of now below the abstraction layer mine hunters coastal patrol boats and things like that so let's

Zoom in on the capital ships first as they basically are the entire reason italy has found itself so highly placed in this chapter cavor italy's 30 000 ton light carrier carries 10 top of the line f-35b fifth gen stealth fighters as well as 12 augusta westland aw101 anti-submarine warfare slash utility helicopters and while the 38 000 untriest favors

Helicopters hence a nominal categorization she can also take f-35s too when the situation calls for it they aren't the biggest they aren't the heaviest armed as far as carriers go as we'll see as the video goes ever on but they give the italian navy some very serious power projection capabilities all the same and certainly are in a different league to say

Spain with one trieste equivalent type ship the juan carlos the first plus you know italy is rocking f-35s as compared to spain's harriers and well whiz-bang stealth fighter beats 1960s fuselage with modern avionics kind of shoved inside as for italy's 14 frigates 10 of them are friends and you know how we feel about them with the four final being thiand or

Revel classes slightly smaller things coming in at about 80 of the displacement of a frem but very modern only having been introduced in 2021 and stuffed with all the high-tech and up-to-date gear you'd expect of a ship of that vintage coming from a prosperous nation like italy there's some marine force however and in a notable dip in standards is fine it's

Not terrible it's not fantastic it's just kind of good enough to do the job of patrolling waters of the mediterranean a smidge further afield if needed but that's kind of it this approach was very intentional however have enough submarines to cover the basics and put the cash saved into the far more flexible surface fleet correspondingly they're all diesel

Powered with that ape being made up of four legacy sorrow class designs built in the late 1980s and later modernized for continued service and four more modern noughties designed type 2 12a class submarines that come equipped with their independent propulsion despite having the on paper capability to venture far out into the ocean blue though italy's navy

Remains firmly rooted in regional responsibilities and strategic posture and thus it remains here in the regional powers chapter its frigates and destroyers for example are staples in mediterranean security enforcing the un arms embargo on libya policing migrant smuggling routes and commanding eu missions like operation asperides in the red sea in the gulf

Of aden where italian destroyers serve as flagships in maritime escort and anti-drone missions further they also engage in joint exercises such as dynamic manta a nato-led operation focusing on training with anti-submarine warfare again in the mediterranean not to say that they don't go further afield at all because they absolutely do with a cavor-led

Carrier striker group having spent five months on deployment to cavor-led carrier Singapore, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines in 2024, taking part in Exercise Pitch Black hosted by the Australians, as well as also maintaining a permanent presence in Djibouti as part of ongoing anti-piracy operations.

But such operations, however, are mere sprinkles on the cake, as Italy ultimately remains a nation with its keels planted firmly close to home. A fact that, coupled with its navy's good but not mind-blowing size, firmly qualifies it as a regional power, but no doubt among the best of them.

Another nation, which was dangerously close to being bumped up to global power, was Japan.

They have one of the largest, most advanced, best-trained navies on Earth, and yet they aren't actually allowed to do very much with it. A set of shackles that keep it firmly fastened to regional power, although, without question, the best one of a whole lot. Technically, for all of its tonnage and awesome power, what Japan has isn't even a navy.

It's technically a maritime self-defense force. Now, it goes all the way back to the adoption of their 1947 constitution, which was forced upon them by U.S. occupation forces after their imperial project got a little bit out of hand during World War II, let's say.

Specifically, it's chapter 9 of that constitution that we're interested in, which states that, quote, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.

When written, this had been intended to fully demilitarize Japan forever. But real politic is as real politic does.

And so, following the collapse of the U.S.'s and the Soviet Union's relationship around pretty much exactly the same time, the former suddenly found itself in need of some friendly nations on the eastern side of the map that could send its young men to die for it if World War III kicked off.

And so, more and more liberal interpretations of that chapter were allowed, to the point that today the chapter is still in effect, and parts of it, like the not-declaring war bit, are taken very seriously, and attempts are made to humor its ideals more broadly. As a whole, in real terms, it is a chapter in name only at this point.

Take the Izumo and Hyuga classes.

To any other nation on Earth, the four ships that comprise them, two apiece, would be helicopter carriers, but not in Japan. They are helicopter destroyers, because destroyers are defensive, you see, and carriers, as 2,403 American stationed at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 can vouch for, are not that.

And they aren't just any old helicopter destroyers, either.

The two Izumos at lead ship and Kaga are big-ish. 27,000 tons on full load, flat-topped, and extremely modern. Oh, and as we speak, both are also being upgraded into full, proper, fixed-wing-capable aircraft carriers, at which point they will both field a minimum of 12 F-35s.

The smaller Hyugas, for their part, are cut from the same conceptual cloth, but have a bit more of an anti-submarine warfare flavor, as they are, and will be remaining, helicopter carriers.

They're a bit smaller, also, coming in at 19,000 tons with a full load. Backing them up is one of the finest destroyer and frigate lineups anywhere, with them currently having 35 of the former and 8 of the last. latter.

And when we say destroyers, we really do mean destroyers, as eight of Japan's line up a top-of-the-line Aegis combat systems equipped guided missiles.

Four Congo classes, two Otago classes, and two of the even newer, even more lethal Maia class.

They're modern, they're deadly, they're stealthy, and thanks to that Aegis system, they're capable of shooting down incoming ballistic missiles in space, a capability which is nothing if not handy, given that one of their neighbors has a habit of launching ballistic missiles over their heads, and does keep talking about one day launching one of them for

Real.

As for frigates, all of Japan's tally of eight come from the Megami class, with another five likely being on the way.

They're middling in size, 5,500 tons, under a full load as compared to a rough average of 10,000 for the fancy classes of destroyer that we mentioned, but they're reliable multi-role workhorses that pack towed sonar, missiles, and a modular payload bay that can, in theory, be swapped out for whatever a mission may demand, from minesweeping to cruise

Missiles.

And under the waves, it's just as serious. Japan operates 23 attack submarines, a fleet widely considered to be one of the best non-nuclear undersea forces in the world.

The latest Taige class boats use lithium-ion battery technology instead of air-independent propulsion, and don't lack for teeth. So why then, given all of that, are people still calling Japan a regional power? And that's simple, because they've chosen to be.

Despite having a fleet that is absolutely capable of operating globally, they basically do the exact kind of stuff as every regional power that we've looked at today. Plenty of bilateral exercises, such as 2025's Operation HIMARS, which saw it work alongside the US, the UK, and Australia.

A bit of overseas deployments, with Japan's only real overseas operation being a single counter-piracy hub in Djibouti.

That's basically it. They could, if they changed their minds, become a global power almost overnight. But until Tokyo and indeed Japanese people more broadly give the green light, politically, legally, and culturally, they remain what they are, a regional titan with global-tier gear, minus the nukes.

And so, that's your regional powers, the fleets that have decent numbers of quality ships, that reach out and train with the big players, and are, no doubt about it, real forces to be contended with, but that ultimately lack the nuclear prowess, worldwide operational reach, and or just sheer big number of vessels that we would expect to see from a bona fide

Global power.

And speaking of which, the global powers. And thanks to how we closed off the last chapter, we already know what we're looking for here in global powers.

More ships, better ships, true nuclear capabilities, both in propulsion and payload, global operational reach, both through overseas bases, and just where they sailed, that kind of thing. The more of that they have, the higher up they are. And we'll start off with a rather difficult one, too.

Russia. You see, in much the same way that we struggled with where to place North Korea, so too did we struggle with Russia. But in the opposite, i.e. potentially moving them downwards, as in many ways. they don't really feel like they belong in this chapter.

Take as an example their aircraft carriers, or more rather, their lack thereof, because they are the only nation in this tier not to have any.

Kind of, anyway, because technically they do have one, and here she is, the Admiral Kuznetsov, an inherited relic from the Soviet Union originally commissioned in January 1991 that has largely been held together with duct tape and a can-do attitude since only a few years after that.

For a time, she allowed newly independent Russia to LARP it up as a potential superpower, still bombing the odd insurgency there, the odd cruise missile through the English Channel, while the crew all waved their fists menacingly towards the White Cliffs of Dover.

But then, in 2017, the duct tape finally snapped, the can-do attitude turned sour, and she found herself moored up in Mamansk, supposedly for a refit that would keep her going for another 25 years or so.

And, as of the time of writing eight years later, that work is nowhere near complete, thanks to a compounding cacophony of f***-ups, and although Moscow would never admit it, everyone knows that the next time Kuznetsov leaves Mamansk, it's on a one-way trip to a scrapyard.

Compound that with a healthy spread of disasters in the Russia-Ukrainian war, such as completely struggling to maintain naval supremacy in the Black Sea, and the loss of their Black Sea flagship, Moskva, in April 2022, and you can see why we're so torn on where to place Russia.

But, on full reflection, we do think Russia still just about snags it as a global power, although it is by far and away the weakest of the bunch. Chiefly, this is down to its submarine force, which still remains a very fearsome thing indeed.

At the front of the pack, both in terms of prestige and power, the ballistic missile submarines, of which Russia currently has eight Borai classes and five Delta IV classes.

The former are the current leader of the pack, having first been commissioned in 2013, being nuclear-powered for unlimited range, and coming packed with 16 RSM-56 Bulava Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles, SLBMs, each of which has a range of 9,000 to 10,000 kilometers, and six to 10 independently targetable 150 kilodon nuclear warheads.

The Deltas are Soviet leftovers, all being commissioned before the Union collapsed, and very much just being kept running until interoperability to bolster the fleet.

Not that relegated status stops them from being terrifying prospects in their own right, as they too use nuclear propulsion and come armed with 16 R-29RMU Synerva nuclear SLBMs, which are a smidge shorter range with a maximum of 8,000-ish kilometers, and whose 10 independently targetable warheads only come, only, with a 100 kiloton punch. 10 of them.

Independently targetable. Only. That, if you were counting, is 13 go-anywhere, blow-anything-up, world-ending, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

They alone, if you ask us, are a capability that earns a nation a spot in this tier.

And that's before we even mention the rest of Russia's submarine force, six Oscar-class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines. 18 nuclear-powered attack subs split between the Sierra 2, Victor 3, Akula, and Yasin classes, eight special-purpose submarines of far too many classes to list, and maybe as many as 18, true numbers are unclear, diesel-powered

Attack subs of the Kilo and Lada classes.

So despite what the Kuznetsov and her related catastrophes may lead you to believe, Russia's submarine force is really quite serious.

As for what they have on the surface, well, this is where the Russian Navy stops looking like a heavyweight prizefighter and starts looking more like a washed-up boxer. Still dangerous if he lands a blow, but coughing his lungs up and wheezing between rounds. The big deck end of things, for example, is practically a Soviet museum.

The all-in-class battlecruiser Piotr Veliky, nuclear-powered incidentally, is still clinging on as the flagship of the Northern Fleet, bristling with long-range missiles, but increasingly more of a maintenance nightmare than a war machine.

She has a sister, Admiral Nakamov, who just left refit, as the type of writing is undergoing sea trials before her full return to service.

The two surviving Slava-class cruisers, Marshal Ustinov and Varyag, can still throw serious salvos of anti-ship missiles, but with their black sea sister, Moskva, sitting on the seabed, courtesy of Ukraine, their age and vulnerability are plain to see.

As for destroyers, the Soviet-era Udaloys anti-submarine destroyers are still around in handfuls, a couple modernized with caliber cruise missiles, but they're hardly the sort of force that you'd sell proudly across the Pacific. Where Russia has managed some proper 21st-century kit, however, is in its frigates and corvettes.

The Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates are the Navy's crown jewels above the waterline, modern multi-role, and the first ships in the world to go to sea armed with 3M-22 Zircon hypersonic missiles.

Only a few are in service so far, but they've already been sent on high-profile cruises, precisely to remind everyone that Russia does still have teeth. Below them, the corvettes, the Bruyne M, and the Karakirk classes. They may be small, measured in hundreds of tons rather than thousands, but each carries caliber long-range cruise missiles.

Then there are the newer Sterogushchev and Gremyashchev classes, bristling with vertical launch systems and stealthy lines.

Quantity isn't too bad either, with there currently being 14 Buyan M's, 6 Karakirk's, 9 Sterogushchev, and one Gremyashchev in commission at the time of writing, with plenty more either under construction or having been launched, and just waiting on their commissioning.

As for Russia's global naval footprint, it has operated the Mediterranean Sea Task Force since 2013, has a naval base in Syria for now, and depending on whether or not you count it as overseas, another naval base in Crimea, where it stations its Black Sea Fleet.

It is a modest presence, for sure, but it is a global presence all the same, and has afforded Russia genuine reach around it, from launching caliber cruise missiles during the Syrian war, facilitating its access to the Mediterranean, and having very obvious uses during its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Russia seems to be aware of the comparatively small size of its global footprint too, as it is currently on the hunt for more overseas bases, proposing deals in Libya, Algeria, and Sudan, as it is currently on. the latter of which is supposedly semi-confirmed at this point.

Russia does make a point of sailing globally, too, although often through orchestrated port calls that serve as strategic and diplomatic signaling.

In January 2025, for example, the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, lead ship of the class we mentioned earlier, undertook a high-profile Atlantic deployment, visiting Havana in Cuba, La Gara in Venezuela, Orlan in Algeria, and Bizerte in Tunisia, before returning home via the English Channel.

Meanwhile, in May 2025, corvettes, hero of the Russian Federation, Aldar Chinjapov, and Rezhki, both Sterogushchi-class corvettes, docked in Da Nang, Vietnam, following participation in multilateral drills in the northern Indian Ocean and joint naval exercises with India, a pair that, incidentally, had also been sent over to Georgetown, the capital of the

Malaysian state of Penang, in 2024, to partake in commemorations for the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Penang in World War I.

Complimenting such runs, the training ship Smolny, in summer 2025, completed visits to Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome, and Princip, the Republic of the Congo, in July, before then heading to South Africa.

All in all, you get the idea, then. Does Russia field a juggernaut of a navy, and is it considered a leading global power? Well, on both counts, no, absolutely not, because, as we've seen, it does have some real problems.

Equally, however, are these problems so vast that it knocks them down to being a mere regional power? Again, no, absolutely not. Sure, one of their carriers might be up to East Creek, and a lot of their ships might be Soviet inheritance as retrofitted for modernity, but beyond that, they still tick every box needed.

They have, and proactively use, a worldwide reach.

They have a good number of perfectly serviceable and viable hulls, including no small amount of modern corvettes and frigates, with total numbers of all types across the full fleet, being one, nearly two battlecruisers, two cruisers, 10 destroyers, 12 frigates, and 84 corvettes, and also have what is certainly the second largest submarine force on Earth,

Besides only the eventual winner of today's episode.

And that, no matter how you cut it, makes a global power, even if it is one that is currently losing in the Black Sea against a country that has no navy.

Close on Russia's heels is India, a nation which is not fighting to regain lost naval glory, but to build it from scratch as it takes its newly won seat at the table of the global big boys.

And notice how we said build in the present tense there, though, because while India is making fantastic progress in expanding and modernizing its fleet, it is very much a work in progress, with some parts being fantastic and world-leading, and others still having a really long way to go. Consider their aircraft carriers as something India gets right.

Currently, they've got two of them, the first being the venerable INS Vikramadita, a heavily modified former Soviet Kiev-class carrier acquired from Russia, originally laid down in the 80s as the Baku.

India rebuilt and commissioned her in 2013, and now 45,000 tons of Earth serves as a floating airfield for a squadron of 26 MiG-29K fighter jets and 10 Ka-31s. helicopters and do note unlike the ill-fated kuznetsov operated on a shoestring budget as she is by a navy that chooses to prioritize submarines instead the vikramadita well not the biggest carrier

Out there and still being diesel powered rather than nuclear is a perfectly respectable and competent thing her reliability is good and a general level of tech engines aside is well perfectly adequate and then there's the other carrier and current pride of the fleet the vikrant commissioned in 2022 she's essentially a vikramadita but indigenously built still

Displacing the same amount built very much in her older sister's image still diesel powered and carrying the same aircraft complement beyond its carriers however india also fields an array of modern surface combatants its latest and greatest are the vik sapabantum class destroyers the lead ship of which joined the fleet in 2021 with a further three being

Commissioned as the time of writing to complete the class as for why they're a big deal well they are 7 500 tons stealthy destroyers armed to the teeth with indo-russian brahmos supersonic cruise missiles advanced barack eight air defense missiles co-developed with israel modern sensors and a mix of russian and indigenous close-in weapons simply put they are

Among the most potent warships in asia right now but and this is why we stressed india's rise to naval glory was a work in progress the visa campantums are not exactly what you'd call representative because india also sports the delhi and rajput class destroyers a class of three built indigenously in the late 90s and early 2000s and another class of three

Bought off the soviets in the 1980s respectively both are perfectly competent designs make no mistake and kept competitive by regular overall programs but fundamentally they are an older design and just not as pack leading this far into the 21st century on the frigate side india fields are capable but compact force three indigenous chivalric class stealth

Frigates commissioned between 2010 and 2012 alongside a fleet of six russian-designed tower class frigates built in two batches and entered into service over 2003 to 2013. these platforms modest in number but potent especially when equipped with brahmos or club missiles are complemented by a balanced corvette force of 18 vessels across classes like kamorta

Kora kukri via india's big shortcoming however is its submarine fleet for attack submarines they're 17 on the go as the time of writing which doesn't sound too bad i mean certainly no russia but an agreeable enough number surely well actually no because every one of them is diesel powered india doesn't have even so much as a single nuclear-powered attack

Submarine and such subs are fine and certainly do the job of protecting india's coastline and projecting some power out a bit but when we're here in the global powers chapter well they could be doing a lot better the situation does get a bit better when we look at ballistic missile submarines however because while india only has two of them the arahans and

Arik hart commissioned in 2016 and 2024 respectively they are at least nuclear powered although their armaments are a bit lackluster being either 12 Sagarikas that only have a range of 1,500 kilometers and have one warhead of an unknown yield apiece, or four K-4s, which are being made multiple-warhead capable as we speak, and are believed to have a range of

4,000 kilometers.

Certainly, the type is better than, say, the Puk-Yok-Song-3 that North Korea fires out of the hero Kim-Kung-Ok, but it ain't what most nuclear powers are chucking out of their subs, is it?

And if you're wondering how they use all of that to earn their global power status, because let's be fair, that's going to be shouldering a lot of the weight, given that nukes and carriers aside, what we've seen thus far screams more of an upper-tier regional power, you'll be pleasantly surprised to hear that the Indians are actually very active around the

World.

For example, their navy runs frequent mission-based deployments that keep their holes in the Indian Ocean's doorways, Bab al-Mandeb, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman and Hormuz, the Mozambique Channel, and the Malacca-Sunda-Lombok Straits.

Enterpiracy escorts have also been continuous since the late 2000s, and more recently, Indian ships have executed long-range interdictions and boardings against hijackers well beyond the usual convoy lanes.

Second, they practice, practice, practice alongside foreign nations. The big exercises such as Malabar run annually with the US, Japan, and Australia naturally come to the fore as an example awash with carriers as it does tend to be.

But they also have plenty of more humble Marshall VTUPS, Varuna with France, Konkan with the UK, Ozindex with Australia, Jimax with Japan, Simbex with Singapore.

None of them are mere flybys or photo-op goodwill visits to foreign ports. They're where India practices air defense, anti-submarine warfare, replenishment at sea, and command and control at real tempo all the skills a global power needs. Where they do come short, again, however, is with overseas naval bases.

They have six coastal surveillance radars in the Seychelles, so hardly a proper base, but they might have one in Mauritius. The Indian military built a runway there in 2024, and the commentariat is really divided on the matter of whether or not any naval installations accompany it and solve vagary.

All in all, a respectable effort from India then, and there can be little doubt that they've earned their place here in the lower section of our global past here.

If you're watching, Prime Minister Modi, unlikely, but you never know, grab yourself some overseas bases, fancy up those subs a bit, pump out some more victor happenings, and, well, you'll be able to move you up a few pegs. And now, the UK.

You may be shocked at where they've been placed because Britannia rules the waves and all that, but actually, when you dig under the surface a bit, you discover that the Royal Navy is beset by some real serious problems.

Not problems serious enough to knock them down to being a regional power, don't get us wrong, but certainly problems serious enough to risk Horatio Nelson himself punching his way out of his sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey and then crossing the street to give out a good few hidings to the politicians responsible for creating the situation.

As for what problems we mean, let's begin by explaining that with a quick Fleet Review. Two 80,000-tonne max-load Queen Elizabeth-class carriers built with ski-jump shore take-off vertical landing decks packing F-35Bs and Merlin helicopters.

Six Type 45 destroyers, top-spec long-range air defense ships built around the Samson multifunction radar and also packing Sea Viper Aston missiles. Eight Type 23 frigates hailing from the 1980s, mixed general-purpose and anti-submarine warfare ships that have been overhauled many, many times to keep them competitive. And that's it.

That is the whole of the Royal Navy's surface fleet, barring smaller vessels and auxiliaries that we've long stopped talking about to prevent this video from being, I don't know, 65,000 hours long. Shocking, isn't it? This is the bloody Royal Navy, the same organization that once locked down the waterways for the largest empire that history has ever seen.

And now, that's all they've got. I mean, they do have some submarines. Four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and five astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarines.

Admittedly, they're all rather good as individual units. But, I mean, really, UK, you've got only nine? As for problems, besides just their limited number of ships, there's also their limited number of aircraft.

Naval aviation is something we've only mentioned in passing, all we know, but it is worth zooming in on for the UK specifically, because it's absolutely shocking for a nation at this tier, with the UK currently only having 37 F-35s in service at the time of writing.

And do note, we said the UK there, not the UK's Navy, as that 37 is split across both the Navy and the Royal Air Force.

And considering that Queen Elizabeth takes 12 to 24 of them during normal peacetime conditions, and as many as 36 of them in time of crisis, that means that if the UK gathers up all of its F-35s and sends them to the Royal Navy, they still wouldn't be able to fill both ships with their maximum peacetime complement.

How fortunate, then, that during exercises such as 2021 Strike Warrior, I mean, what would you know? The US Marines just happen to need practice liaising with and operating from foreign carriers, which is handy.

Then there's the fact that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which operates many of the UK support vessels, just can't recruit enough sailors, leading to entire ships having to be omitted from exercises or just laid up altogether.

We could go on, but this is ultimately not a video exclusively about the Royal Navy. So now that we've said enough to establish the fact that it's having some issues, let's move to explain why, despite all that, we're still placing the UK as a middle-tier global power.

Put simply, even with all of those problems, they can still put their money where their mouth is and put a decent showing on when it counts.

Start with the big stick, the carriers. Sure, they might not have enough planes for both of them, and always certainly not enough smaller vessels to make carrier strike groups out of both of them, but they don't operate both of them, at least not at the same time.

As a general rule, one will be available ready to go, and another will be in the shop, as it were.

So sure, it's not perfect, but it can't be denied. denied that being able to send one 80,000-ton carrier out there at basically any given time is actually really quite the capability.

In fact, just as this is being written, HMS Prince of Wales is out there on Operation HIMARS, running a months-long loop from the Mediterranean and Red Sea into the Indo-Pacific region.

Along the way, she's drilled with India and Japan and pulled off a quietly historic party trick, a UK F-35B landing on Japan's carrier CAIGA, proof the airwink, tech crews, and comms for all their issues of quantity are not lacking in quality.

The UK is also plugged into Talisman Sabre, Australia's biggest military exercise, where it's worked alongside the US, Japan, Canada, and others across thousands of miles of combined naval, air, and amphibious operations. That's serious reach and serious company.

And then there are the quieter missions, HMS Tamar and Spey remain forward-deployed across the Indo-Pacific, conducting constabulary patrols, defense diplomacy, and routine port visits.

In February 2025, Royal Navy vessels even joined US and Australian ships for joint freedom of navigation maneuvers in the South China Sea, reinforcing international maritime norms in a region where that's no small statement.

Helping sustain that tempo is the British Empire, because while the vast, vast bulk of it has long since collapsed, a few pockets of far-off land here and there still have Union Jacks planted on them, and it is on them that the UK constructs many of its overseas bases.

Take Gibraltar, one of the single most strategically important patches of land on Earth, positioned as it is to pour firepower into anything that tries to access the Mediterranean.

They first captured it in 1704, it formally surrendered to them in 1713, and ever since, through the ups and downs in British fortune, it has remained under their control. Naturally, they have a base there. They also have one in the Ascension Islands, British since 1815, the Falkland Islands, British since 1840, barring a little 74-day gap in 1982.

Elsewhere, former colonies, for one reason or another, allow the British to maintain a naval presence. Cyprus, for example, allows Britain to have the sovereign base areas at Akrotiri, and Singapore allows Britain the old Sembawang Dockyard as a permanent support unit.

Add a few newly negotiated spots into the mix, and you can see how the UK still has a serious global reach, and more fully, exactly why we've placed it where we have today.

Yeah, it's a fleet that's a tad small. Yeah, it has more than one rather rough edge to it. But despite that, there can be no doubting that old Blighty is still a proper, serious, bona fide global power.

And to backtrack to the point of things that would make the old admiral smash out of his tomb through pure rage, for our next nation, up in the rankings from the UK, we're looking at France. Sorry, Horatio.

It's an easy claim to make, too, as the French feat is bigger than the British one, with it specifically having a single aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, three Mistral-class helicopter carriers, the same ones that Egypt has two of, eight Aquitaine-class multirole frigates, all of them friends, the same ones that we gushed over. when discussing Italy

And Morocco.

Two Horizon-class air defense destroyers, five Lafayette-class stealth frigates, six Floreal-class light surveillance frigates, five nuclear attack submarines split between the Rubus and Suffern-class, and four Triumphant-class ballistic missile submarines.

So, let's address the aircraft carrier-sized elephant in the room, though, because while the French fleet may be larger than the British one as a whole, it does have less aircraft carriers by an order of half.

However, if we apply a qualitative lens instead of a pure quantitative one, we'd argue that the French actually have the edge in this regard, because, sure, the Charles de Gaulle only comes in at 42,500 tons with full load, half of a QE class, with a bit of math simplifying rounding, but what France's fun-sized fighter ferrier lacks in size, she more than

Makes up for in sophistication.

She's nuclear-powered, you see, the only non-American nuclear carrier ever built, also has steam catapults, unlike the QE's ski jump and bin the fast lever method, carries comprehensive anti-air systems in the form of Aster-15 and Mistral missiles, unlike the QE's, which carry no such systems and depend on Type 45 frigates for air cover instead, and has all

Manner of fancy below-the-abstraction-layer electronics wizardry going on.

So, you can see what we mean. You could easily argue the toss, particularly if you take availability and maintenance needs into account, but for us, one Charles de Gaulle tops two QE's rather happily.

The aircraft Charles de Gaulle carries, however, they do look worse than that of the QE's, because whereas the latter carries big, sexy, fifth-gen stealth fighters, the former carries Dassault Rafale's competent fighters, certainly, but not stealthy at all, and as a result, very much fourth-gen and worse.

But what if we were to tell you that in the grand scheme of things, the Rafale is actually a better fighter, at least for these two countries? You see, the F-35, actually insane as its capabilities are, is an American jet, and as many of you no doubt know, and the Rafale, slightly worse as its capabilities are, is entirely French.

So, you can probably see where this is going. Operating the F-35 fundamentally depends upon keeping Uncle Sam sweet. It doesn't have a physical kill switch that the Pentagon flips if a formerly cordial nation finds itself on the naughty list, but they are so maintenance-heavy that they essentially do.

Stop shipping spare parts, and that entire F-35 fleet is going to be grounded. And that really is the crux of why we placed France above the UK, because they maintain this attitude across the board. Their aircraft?

French. The Charles de Gaulle? French.

Her catapults? French. Nuclear weapons?

French. Their anti-ship missiles? French.

Their helicopters? French. Now, there are a few exceptions, but as a general rule, you get the idea.

France buys French. This attitude has served them well ever since World War II, giving them a degree of geopolitical independence that no other US-aligned nation has. If they want to withdraw from NATO because their carrier's namesake threw a wobbler, for example.

Done. As for the global part of global power, France… has that covered happily. In terms of actual bases, there's Djibouti, home to around 1,500 French personnel and a fully operational naval facility sat right at the mouth of the Red Sea, overseeing one of the most strategically vital maritime choke points on Earth.

Then there's Camp de Lepay in Abu Dhabi, established in 2009, which provides France with permanent access to the Persian Gulf. It's a joint naval airbase, with docking facilities large enough for nearly every ship in the fleet.

Over in the Atlantic, there's Degrade de Caen in French Guiana, which serves as a Caribbean patrol base and a security act for Europe's spaceport at Corot.

Then there's Fort de France in Martinique. In the Indian Ocean, France operates out of Réunion and Mayotte, while in the Pacific, it maintains bases at Numia in New Caledonia and Papite in French Polynesia. Each of these territories fields patrol ships, support vessels, air assets, and combined infrastructure, all under French control.

Long story short, France doesn't need to be invited onto exercises to bolt its global operations onto the side of someone else's show. It's already there, and it can do whatever it pleases. Taken as example, Operation Clemenceau, its regular flagship global maritime deployment.

In 2021, it operated in the Eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. And by 2025, it was transiting through Suez, stopping in Goa, training with Indian, Australian, and Japanese vessels, and then sailing deep into the Pacific.

And all this talk of independence, self-sufficiency, and to be fair, withdrawing from NATO for a bit shouldn't be taken to mean that the French Navy is a lone wolf outfit, as they do absolutely still embed themselves in multinational operations.

For example, in the Red Sea, French frigates have participated in Operation Asperides, the EU-led response to Houthi drone and missile threats.

Similarly, in anti-piracy efforts, France has played a leading role in the EU's Operation Atalanta, patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Somali coast, intercepting pirates, protecting shipping, coordinating boardings alongside their Italian and Spanish counterparts, all the good stuff like that.

Then, in the Arctic and North Atlantic, French submarines and service vessels regularly take part in NATO exercises like Dynamic Mongoose and Dynamic Manta, honing anti-submarine warfare skills alongside US, British, and Norwegian units.

France. You get the idea. France has an agreeably-sized modern fleet that it can operate with significantly less international oversight than many European nations, and on top of that, it has, and puts to good use, a global-spanning logistics network.

So yeah, sorry, Horatio, but your old adversaries have earned their place here at the top end of the Global Powers tier. And now we get to our final entry in this tier, the nation which is, in our opinion, the most powerful global power… And that's China.

Let's start with just the pure numbers, because China fields the single largest battle force navy by hull count on Earth, and the second largest by displacement.

No ifs, no buts, yet it's still expanding. And here's what that looks like in steel, type by type. Aircraft carriers, too. commissioned, one nearly commissioned.

The two, the Liaoning and the Shandong, are ski-jump short take-off but arrested recovery designs intended to launch J-15 family fighters and helicopters. For China, new to the carrier club as they are, they're really just stepping stones for a proper carrier arm, for which that third nearly commissioned carrier, the Fujian, is going to be the first unit.

And you can see this purely by the difference in capabilities too, as she's going to be much bigger, carry maybe as many as double the amount of aircraft, and even then we're talking J-35 stealth fighters rather than the old-school J-15s, as well as also coming with an electromagnetic aircraft launch system rather than the rampant floor-it method used by her

Older sisters and all sorts of top-of-the-line cutting-edge electronic systems, of course.

Then there's the amphibious assault ships, four active with four more on the way, big-deck helicopter assault designs currently typified by the Type 075 and soon the upcoming Type 076. Amphibious transport docks, eight.

Well-deck ships, such as the Type 071 design, purpose-built to move marines, vehicles, and supplies, and to launch landing craft and helicopters in combination with the aforementioned assault ships.

Destroyers, 53. Modern multi-role combatants forming the high end of the surface fleet, this total includes the large cruiser-like Type 055 family alongside the widely produced 052D series. Frigates, 46.

The backbone escorts, principally the Type 054A, with the larger, longer-range Type 054B now enduring service as the next standard workhorse. Corvettes, 50. Near-sea patrols and anti-submarine specialists, and for an example, consider the Type 056A anti-submarine warfare-optimized variant.

Submarines, 61 total, with that number comprising seven ballistic missile submarines, all but one of which are nuclear-powered, nine nuclear-powered attack submarines, and a further 45 conventional diesel-powered ones. Pile a few hundred smaller auxiliary vessels on top of all that, and you start to get the idea.

China, by raw numbers alone, is simply just in a whole other league to anything that we've already looked at.

But steel, of course, only matters if it leaves the pier. And China's does, routinely. Since 2008, for example, they've kept a rolling counter-piracy escort in the Gulf of Aden, numbered task groups built around a destroyer, a frigate, and a replacement ship.

It's all pretty standard stuff, yep. But for China, there's a whole other level to it. Because since they've been keeping to themselves of late, and not gotten involved in any wars particularly, this allows their navy to get their hands on that most precious of things, experience.

As such deployments involve real multi-month-long transit, real replenishment at sea, real hard command and control, and real escort duty. Without such practice, there would be a very legitimate risk of China's navy when the next big war kicks off, quickly becoming little but a boondoggle.

A fleet, in being, that was just incapable of operating effectively, no matter how big, fancy, or numerous they might be.

Further, they've also built places to stage them. Tribute is the stand. out as their one true overseas naval base. Its pier is long enough for very large combatants, giving predictable fuel, water, and a mailbox on the Horn of Africa.

To the east, Cambodia's Riem base has been upgraded. The public line is open to all, but the layout and use patterns very much suggest that the Chinese are the number one customer. It's not a truly global web by any stretch, and certainly it's lacking compared to the overseas-based network of France and the UK.

But is it enough to warrant knocking them down a rung or two in the rankings? Well, with that fleet? No, we don't think so.

On the operational side, the training tempo now includes dual carrier drills well beyond what China calls the first island chain, up to the China-facing edge of Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand, basically. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Shandong was only commissioned back in 2019, and if you went further back still, to the 90s or so, and told a Western analyst that you thought China would soon be operating one carrier, never mind two of them, they would have laughed at you.

And in regular combined patrols with Russia in the Western Pacific, plus exercises with Pakistan in the Arabian Sea during Sea Guardian, and Thailand during Blue Strike, you get an AV that is normalizing multi-fleet operations, multi-country communications, and complex exercise sequences at distance. And there's the political payoff.

When Yemen imploded in 2015, Chinese frigates raced on over and lifted up both their own nationals and hundreds of foreign citizens, and the whole feat then turned into some real good boy points for China on the global stage.

China naturally took notice of this, and since then, non-combatant evacuations, disaster relief, and even just simple goodwill port calls from the Mediterranean to the Baltic have become part of the portfolio. It is soft power brought with hard steel.

And of course, as little bonus, all those give a handy-dandy excuse to train the skills needed in a shooting war, sea control, logistics under pressure, and tight timelines.

TLDR then, China has a huge fleet full of some really quite competent vessels, and is taking every possible opportunity to get them out there into the big wide world, and while doing so, also making sure that its sailors will have all the skills needed for the next big war, whenever that might come.

If that doesn't make them the clear leader of the global powers category, we don't know what does. And with that, our tour of the global heavy hitters comes to an end.

They are the navies that bring serious heat and long legs to the party. They've got carriers, subs, bases abroad, nukes, and crucially, the ability to show up pretty much anywhere. So that's everything.

Thanks for watching. Don't forget to smash the like button. No, we're missing one, aren't we?

Because there remains just one rung left. A rung from where global powers such as France and Britain look like mere specks, and where even China appears laughably small. It's a big, lonely rung, and you can probably already guess who sits up there like a lonely god.

And we'll give you a clue. It's not the Czech Republic. Rather, it's a guy with a star-spangled dress sense.

A guy whose name rhymes with... Sunkle man? There was only ever going to be one nation that took the top spot.

The United States of America, the only superpower to currently exist. Sorry, she, we know you're trying, but come on, this was a bit of a no-brainer, wasn't it? Framing America as the sole superpower isn't just flowery language either.

The gulf in capabilities between the US and any of the global powers is so vast that it is like comparing the culture to the crew of Red Dwarf. Put it this way, to get us started, where are the US's home waters? You'd assume the answer would lie in plopping a map of the nation down on a table and inking out some lines into the blue stuff that surrounds it.

After all, that would be what you would do for basically every other nation on Earth. But for the US, no. Instead pick any sea, any sea, or pick an ocean, any ocean, and that is the US's home waters. At least in real terms.

This in no small part is due to the vast amount of overseas bases they maintain, the most important of which are the forward deployed bases. Bases that are not just ports of cool, but proper home ports and long-term operating hubs complete with piers, dry docks, ammunition depots, fuel farms, housing, medical facilities, and command infrastructure.

And rather than listing where they all are, because there's quite a few of them, just have a look at this map.

That's the whole world covered, and that's before we even get into discussing friendly ports they have access to and lesser facilities scattered here and there and everywhere. As the Congressional Research Service themselves put in 2025, it is an immense asymmetric advantage no rival can match.

But of course, a navy cannot live by ports alone, let me just ask the British how those last holdouts of its empire scattered all across the world are doing for helping Britannia to rule the waves once again.

It needs ships to actually do the dirty business of rocking up on someone's shoreline and blowing things up in the name of hegemon preservation. And worry not, because the US Navy's got that s*** covered. Outwardly, China has them pipped, because the US's opponent in Cold War II does actually have more hulls than them as a gross.

But there's just a bit of disparity when it comes to quality. And also, remember when we said that China was only the second biggest by tonnage? Yeah, I mean, of course, the top spot goes to the United States.

And for an example of the disparity in quality, let's look at the creme de la creme, the 11 nuclear-powered supercarriers the US currently has in commission. Take note, we did say nuclear-powered supercarriers there too. Not the nuclear-powered but normal-sized Charles de Gaulle, of which France has only got one.

And not the conventionally-powered but supercarrier-sized Queen Elizabeth class, of which the UK has been able to cobble together two. No, it's got 11.

Go wherever they want, 100,000 ton displacing monsters, with both the 10 Alden Nimitz class and the 1 Gerald R4 class that currently make up that number. both being able to carry around 90 aircraft in their bellies.

Not that they're the only ships the U.S. has that can carry fixed-wing planes, because you also have to consider the seven WASP-class and two America-class amphibious assault ships that they have in their inventory.

Smaller than supercarriers, with a WASP displacing around 40,000 tons and an America displacing around 45,000 tons, these ships are normally meant to just be do-it-all platforms to support naval invasions, hence their type names.

But when needed, they can swap out their V-22 Ospreys and AH-1 Supercobras and go pure fixed-wing, acting as ad-hoc proper carriers.

I mean, in fact, f*** it. The U.S. just has too many surface ships for us to talk about them all at any length. So, for the rest, we're going to bullet point it.

So, in addition to those crown jewels, the U.S. Navy also has Ticonderoga-class cruisers, nine active, still the Navy's only ships, with 122 vertical launch cells apiece, and the last true cruisers in U.S. service.

Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, 74, in commission, the backbone of the surface fleet, with the newest Flight 3 ships carrying the powerful top-of-the-line Spy 6 radar. Zimbabwe-class destroyers, three in service, now being refitted to carry hypersonic missiles, finally giving them a defined role after years of limbo.

Literal combat ships, 26 in the fleet, split between the Freedom and Independence classes. San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, 12 commissioned, designed around aviation and modern landing craft, they're basically just slightly less fancy amphibious assault ships.

Whidbey Island and Harper's Ferry-class dock landing ships, six of the former, four of the latter still in service.

Again, to keep things simple, just think of them as slightly less fancy amphibious assault ships.

Blue Ridge-class command ships, two forward-deployed fleet flagships, including the Navy's oldest deployable warship, expeditionary sea bases and expeditionary transfer docks, five of the former, two of the latter in service, essentially mobile peers for loading and unloading at sea.

Expeditionary fast transports, 14 delivered, nippy little 45-not-capable craft for rapid deployment to shore.

Fleet Oilers, a mix of older Henry J. Kaiser and newer John Lewis-class double-hulled tankers, and no, that's not a reference to the British chain of very middle-class shops. The latter are now entering service to replace the former, 15 in service across both classes.

Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo and ammunition ships, 14 in service, carrying the food, fuel, and munitions that keep carrier strike groups and amphibious task forces on station. Avenger-class mine countermeasureships, eight left, forward-based in Bahrain, and Saataboh, built with woodcore hulls and fiberglass skins, built to survive mine detonations.

And all of that's just the battle force.

It doesn't include the ocean survey ships, tugs, salvage vessels, or the vast military sea lift command and ready reserve fleets that quietly make it possible for the U.S. to fight half a world away without ever running out of fuel, ammunition, or spare parts. Oh yeah, and then there's all the underwater stuff.

The U.S. Navy fields 48 attack submarines, 23 from the Virginia-class, three of the ultra-quiet Seawolf-class, and 22 showing their age a bit but still quite competitive Los Angeles-classes.

Further, they also have 14 ballistic missiles. submarines and four guided missile submarines for a total count of 66. The 14 ballistic missile submarines are Ohio class vessels, each carrying 20 Trident II D5 missiles, with as many as eight independently targetable 475 kiloton yield warheads a pop.

And the four guided missile submarines, their conversions of the same Ohio hulls, each packing up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

And one thing we haven't mentioned at all, all of those submarines are nuclear powered, meaning that their endurance isn't about fuel, it's just about food. And then, because in the words of Brian Butterfield, there's still more, there's the overwater of the stuff to consider too, specifically the US Navy's aircraft.

Because with over 3,700 of them in inventory, the US Navy is the second biggest air force on earth, behind only, rather amusingly, the US Air Force proper.

Its carrier airwings center on over 420 FA-18 Super Hornets, backed by 45 F-35Cs, and nearly 200 EA-18G Growlers for electronic warfare. Airborne early warning comes from about 83 E-2 Hawkeyes. For maritime patrol, the Navy field's 118 P-8A Poseidons.

Helicopters are ubiquitous, more than 500 MH-60 Seahawks and a handful of MH-53 Seadragons for heavy lift mine countermeasures, while CMB-22B Ospreys take over carrier on board delivery from the retiring C-2 Greyhounds.

And of course, how could we call the US the superpower without it not just having a global reach, but a go-wherever-it-wants-whenever-it-wants-to-multiple-places-at-the-same-time-reach? Start in the Indo-Pacific, where forward-deployed naval forces Japan make them at bend.

Yokosuka hosts a carrier strike group and the 7th Fleet's flag. Sasebo stages amphibs, mine hunters, and logistics. Iwakuni parks the carrier air wing.

White Beach and Okinawa pushes marines and ALCACs out the door. Hoppies to Guam, the unsinkable gas station. Apra Harbor and Anderson form a combined arms launch pad.

Slide down the first island chain to Singapore's Semboang Complex. Repair yards, ammo pier space, plus equivalent sites in the Philippines. Beyond them, Palau and the rest of Micronesia extend the lattice with dispersal ships, radar sites, and pier space under the compacts of free association.

Then south to Australia, marines rotate through Darwin. P-8s range across two oceans, and a submarine rotational presence at H. Masch-Dirling under AUKUS quietly makes Western Australia a front porch for SSNs.

The point isn't a line of dots. It's overlapping circles of reach that make far a scheduling issue. Not a feasibility one.

Now swing west. Diego Garcia sits alone in the Indian Ocean like a floating warehouse nailed to a runway. Fuel farms, magazines, and a maritime prepositioning force squadron that turns weeks of logistics into days.

Up back, Bahrain is the 5th Fleet's living room with patrol craft, MCMs, and staff ashore. Jebel Ali, Dukum, and Fujera are the convenient neighbors with big drive-a's. carriers and logistics ships need deep-draft piers for maintenance.

At the choke points, Djibouti's Camp Lemoneer all watches the Bab al-Mendab while expeditionary sea bases loiter as mobile piers.

Into Europe, rotors forward base destroyers and Naples's 6th Fleet HQ anchor the Med. Sigonella and Solda Bay feed ISR fuel and ordnance into everything from P-8s to MQ-4C Tritons. Gaeta keeps the fleet flagship within arm's reach of the Central Sea.

Across the North Atlantic, Keflavik is the Air Seagate, the UK and Norway offer yard space and caves full of marine kit, and the Greenland-Iceland-UK gaps stay stitched by patrol squadrons. Layer-on MSC tankers, dry cargo ships, and afloat sea bases, plus friendly access agreements from the Americas to Africa.

And well, yeah, you can probably see what we mean.

It's not even a fair fight. You could combine the fleets of the next several navies on this list and still come up short in almost every metric that matters.

Were China, France, Britain, India, and Russia to form an unlikely alliance and declare a combined naval war in America, Uncle Sam would simply laugh, adjust his stetson, and proceed to insert his star-spangled boot right into that force's rectum.

The US doesn't just have more of the big ticket items either, the carriers, the nuclear submarines, and the like. It has the logistical muscle, the global basing, and the aviation arm to actually use them anywhere on Earth at any time for as long as it likes.

Everyone else builds fleets to protect their patch of water, or maybe participate in the odd far-off war with some help.

But the Americans, as the current global hegemon, have built a naval war machine of abjectly terrifying, almost biblical degrees of power, specifically to make sure that they remain the superpower for the foreseeable future. And so we reach the end of our grand tour of the world's navies.

But as we lower the curtain, or strike the colors if you will, let's gaze over the horizon at where these fleets are headed.

Because the one thing naval power is not, it's static. A century ago, Britannia ruled the waves, undisputed as the naval superpower of her day, and now she's a middle-rate global power. Then there's Argentina, a carrier operating heavy hitter 40 years ago, now reduced to just about clinging in as a local power.

Like the tides, the balance of power is always shifting. So what might it look like in, say, 2040? It's a year far enough away to be interesting to speculate over, but not so far away that we're just blindly stabbing in the dark.

And let's begin by discussing the obvious elephant, or should we say panda? China. Their navy now fields more hulls than the US, and is only going up from there, with it currently being on track to be 50% larger than the US fleet by 2035, never mind 2040.

But will they fully crack the quality nut that so far they've opened up, but haven't quite yet split cleanly in two? Well, we'd bet a vital organ on the fact that, yes, they will. And probably without too many problems, either.

Take the Fujian, set for commissioning imminently as she is. She alone represents a huge leap in capabilities from both the Liaoning and the Shandong.

And yet, she too is really only a stepping stone, with the next class after her currently being just called the Type 004 and already under construction in the technology prototyping phase set to be a proper American-grade carrier.

Nuclear-powered, 110,000-ton displacement, stealth fighters aplenty in her belly, and full electromagnetic catapult launch systems. Oh, and also, since that'll be the point that technology-wise Beijing has caught up with Washington, they're also planning a class of four of them.

Looking at Fujian's 10-year and counting construction time, however, and taking into consideration the Type 004's big leap in technology, we reckon that come 2040, they'll have one launched, pending commissioning, and maybe at best have two more in various stages of completion, having yet to be launched.

Then there's the US, if it still exists as the global hegemon come 2040, a position which it finds itself ever more challenged in. We suspect the fleet will likely shrink in number, but remain on the very cutting edge of technology and capabilities far beyond what other nations can achieve. It's a simple historical trend.

Despite attempts seen to buck the trend by the likes of both Presidents Reagan and Trump, the US Navy was bigger during World War II than it was during the Cold War, and it was bigger during the Cold War than it is now.

However, the entire time, the quality of its ships has been getting better, a lot better, so we see no reason to assume that trend won't continue. All of which means that while China may come to dominate the numbers game, Uncle Sam's Navy will likely remain an apocalyptically powerful force.

As for India, it doesn't appear to be pursuing carriers with quite the same vigor as China, with their planned third one, the Vishal, having been put on hold in 2022. Will they eventually get a bill? Yeah, probably.

Will she be the bells and whistles boat that the Type 004 is probably going to be? Well, likely not. New Delhi has already dropped the idea of nuclear propulsion because they didn't realistically see themselves developing the necessary reactor within 20 years.

But we do still see their carrier fleet growing, like we say. So it's certainly not a regressing situation by any stretch. What will get much, much better for India is its sub-fleet.

They're still building their nuclear-powered Arahant-class ballistic missile subs and currently working on Project 77, a class of two confirmed, hopefully six, nuclear-powered attack subs. They're projected to hit the water in 2036, and frankly, we see no reason why they won't.

India has the cash, India has the know-how, and India has the political will to see them built.

For Britain and other European navies, the challenge is staying relevant as bigger fish swim ahead. There are navies investing in new Type 26 frigates, all eight due in service by the mid-2030s, to escort its two aircraft carriers and maintain an anti-submarine edge.

France is planning a new carrier for the late 2030s, and others, like Italy, are upgrading their fleets, too.

By 2040, European navies will remain highly professional and high-tech, but relatively small. They'll still punch above their weight as a team, thank you NATO, yet in global rankings, they may slip as Indo-Pacific powers. surge. Quality over quantity only goes so far when others are both.

That is, of course, if any of the big boys of Europe are spending on their militaries come 2040, because I mean, bloody hell, there's a lot of debt on their continents, and not exactly a lot of economic growth to eventually pay it all off, at least not in the nations interested in building up their navies.

Say what you want about Poland, with its booming stock market and dedication to growing its land forces, but maritime dominance just ain't a part of Warsaw's plan. And speaking of economic concerns, Japan.

If all those doomsaying headlines about the future condition of the Japanese economy don't come true, we expect more of the same. A large fleet of top-shelf vessels, and maybe the initial rumblings of their first proper built-from-scratch aircraft carrier since 1945.

I mean, sorry, not an aircraft carrier, a large vessel that carries fixed-wing aircraft for defensive reasons of peace, harmony, and universal friendship among all men.

But that's a big if, isn't it? Then there's South Korea, which is modernizing too, deploying Aegis-equipped destroyers, and even eyeing a light aircraft carrier of its own. They certainly don't seem to be showing any signs of slowing down, so still expect them acting as a regional player, but certainly a much better one.

We don't see them going down the foreign bases route overly and breaking into global power status, purely because of the more existential threat of their immediate northern neighbor. One of the surprising potential naval climbers, however, is Turkey.

Long a modest regional force, as we've seen, they are currently in the grips of an ambitious shipbuilding spree.

It has the Anadolu and has been constructing TF-2000-class destroyers to escort future fleets with hopes of a full class of eight. They're also working on the Mugm-2, a proper 60,000-ton flat-top carrier that will be diesel-powered, and maybe have as many as 30 aircraft in her belly.

So yeah, we do think we'll be seeing a Turkish carrier group by 2040, and in all likelihood, the beginnings of their ascending to the top of the regional power tier, and maybe, if they can figure out some overseas bases, even a low-ranked global power.

On the flip side, some navies may stagnate or decline. Russia's navy, for example, faces an uphill battle just to maintain its standing. It still fields formidable nuclear submarines and some Soviet legacy cruisers and destroyers, but many aging ships are retiring or getting forcibly upgraded to submarines by Ukraine's forces, with few replacements planned.

Basically, sanctions and budget woes have stalled plans for new capital ships. By 2040, we predict that Russia will remain a nuclear undersea heavyweight, but have become a real surface lightweight by comparison.

The by then 60-year-old minimum Cold War inheritances are bound to have either been scrapped or confined to port to act as a fleet on paper, Kuznetsov-style, with the actual surface fleet being made up of whatever more modern staff they've been able to cobble together, likely a modest amount of modern corvettes and destroyers.

Either way, whether our predictions end up coming true or not, you've seen in the last sixty-seven hours. Sixty-seven hours. hours, how the navies of the world look today.