---
title: "The World's Major Land Forces. Ranked."
description: "From Soviet-era struggles to modern military might, we rank the world's major land forces across five tiers. Discover why Poland is transforming into NATO's eastern powerhouse, how North Korea's army defies expectations, and what makes Ukraine the deadliest fighting force today. Geography, technology, and political will shape these surprising rankings."
url: https://fronts.co/videos/the-worlds-major-land-forces-ranked.md
canonical: https://fronts.co/videos/the-worlds-major-land-forces-ranked/
datePublished: 2026-11-02T20:15:00.000Z
dateModified: 2026-11-02T20:15:00.000Z
author:
  - name: Fronts Staff
    url: https://fronts.co/authors/fronts-team/
publisher: Fronts
image: "https://media.fronts.co/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,height=630,fit=cover,gravity=auto,quality=80,format=auto/images/video-library/warfronts-europe-nato-768.webp"
type: NewsArticle
language: en
access: members
isAccessibleForFree: false
tokens: 44117
---

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Today, we are taking a look at - and ranking - the world's major land forces.

Note that key word there. Major, these are the bad boys of global military

comparisons,

the forces that can throw their way around serious damage to opponents,

and just generally take the box of being super impressive.

But of course, even when looking at only the biggest and the best land forces

out there,

sorry fans of Luxembourg, there are still different factors to consider.

Factors that make both our job a little harder and these rankings are a lot

more interesting.

For example, what metric do we to use? Size alone?

I mean, sure, that'd make comparisons easy.

But it's a bit top trumps, isn't it? Where's the nuance?

Where's the analysis? Nowhere, that's where such an approach would take us.

So instead, while we will be looking at hard figures,

overall we're going to be sticking to the broad and nebulous lens of

effectiveness,

giving us wiggle room to jump around a bit and fully appreciate the unique

circumstances, indeed, story of each nation that we cover.

In fact, consider this episode a learning what the various land forces of the

world

are all about, peace just as much as it is a who's better than who one.

To keep things easier as well, we've also divided the nations up into tiers.

The local heavyweights, well, we're jumping in to the ones that absolutely

matter in

their local neighborhood and may even have some expeditionary antics as part of

wider

alliances and networks, but that's about it.

The advanced powers, same basic logic, but with more bite, more scale, more

funding,

more tech, enough to make them serious contenders both in their region and by

international standards.

Then we've got the major powers, the step beyond that, forces with the power to

define

a theatre through some combination of mass, technology, and increasingly at

this tier industry.

Things like that. And then there's the giants. This is where it gets real.

The big boys, with some combination of huge man power pools, huge technological

edges,

and huge warfighting capacity.

And finally, we'll actually have another one, the tier of its own.

No spoilers, but we'll be ending on one so absurd in its capabilities

that it cannot be compared shoulder to shoulder. It has to stand alone.

And we're sure that none of you watching this have absolutely any idea who that

could be.

It's not Luxembourg, by the way. So let's begin, shall we?

Starting with the smallest of our local heavyweights.

An archetypal local heavyweight, if there ever was one, Romania is not just a

holiday destination,

despite the gorgeous old European towns and impressive mountains,

but also actually quite the surprising military contender.

Is it a super bar? No, definitely not. Is it even strong enough to get that

troublesome

Eastern neighbour particularly worried? No, not at all. But is it strategically

useful,

actively rearming and ready and willing to hold the line at NATO's most

contentious border?

Yes, that it absolutely is.

The actual size of their army, for example, is currently 58,200 strong, split

between 35,500

regular, by full time troops, and a further 22,700 reservists, as per the

International

Institute for Strategic Studies. And then, no matter how you cut it, it's just

not that many

bodies in uniform. You don't have a frame of reference for that yet, of course,

so you'll just

have to trust me for now. And concerning that number, not only is it rearming,

as we earlier said,

but it is rearming well. And Loki getting itself some proper fancy kid. A small

army done properly,

that's the basic idea, as opposed to the immediate post-Chauchasko era's idea

of

"clothes of leftover cold war crap". Tanks in particular exemplify the change

nicely,

because when Chauchasko was killed in 1989 in communism fell, they had 2700 of

the things.

A big number to be sure, but it was a big number made up of Soviet gifted T-55s

and T-55As,

a base design that dated back to 1945, and TR-580s and TR-85s a Romanian-built

T-55 derivative.

Now, though, it's Abrams tanks from US Army stocks, specifically the M1A2 SEP-V

3 variant.

And how many of them they signed up for? Well, 54. That's it. Full delivery,

estimated to be

2028. It is a small number, admittedly, but Bucharest is already pushing the

next phase,

too, with a deal for another 216 SEP-V3s and 76 derivatives, likely support and

engineering

vehicles on the same chassis being sought out as we speak. Plus ammunition,

plus spares, plus

simulators, plus technical support, all of that good stuff. So you can probably

see what we mean,

then. Quality over quantity. That's Romanian schtick at present.

For proof that this is a force-wide idea, too, and not just something that is

seen with tanks,

consider their infantry equipment. The old commi-era AKs and steel lids,

they're on their way out, and gone, respectively, with SIG-516G3s and MO-2

Paskett-Star Kevlar ballistic helmets replacing them.

Then there's the body armor, which was basically not a thing at all in the

Romanian army, until

shockingly recently, and now they're rocking this bad boy, the mighty Stimpex V

ST-1.

It's locally made, and it's really, really good.

Training and Allied integration is improving, too, which is vital for Romania's

position

on today's list, again, giving it power beyond which its limited numbers were

suggested.

For example, Romanian units now regularly cycle through NATO exercises, like,

say, the Guardian

and Dacian Spring, working alongside Americans, French Poles, and others on

combined arms maneuvers,

live fire drills, river crossings, air defense, basically every facet of modern

soldiering.

Hell, they even had a combat stint in Afghanistan, only pulling out in 2021 and

suffering 27 kills,

and 200 wounded at all. This is only the headline rating, obviously.

We do not have time to overly dwell on any but the biggest of boys today, but

the shape of the

argument is clear. The Romanian army is small, but well-equipped, takes its

training seriously,

and throws itself into bigger ops and systems to the best of its abilities.

And if that doesn't make an army a local heavyweight, we don't know what does.

In the same general vein, too, you could easily replace Romania with any small,

punchy, rapidly

modernising European army heavily integrated into NATO. Bulgaria, Hungary,

Slovakia,

as well as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, they'd all work well as parallels

with

stories that would read much the same way. Not all European nations, though, do

note,

Ireland, for example, with not even 10,000 soldiers all in, is just too small

to be relevant in any

meaningful way. Then there's Moldova, which has even fewer soldiers still, and

whose material

really still is just whatever the Soviets left lying around. They've got an

internal police

force, which is good for stopping the transnestrians from getting too

enthusiastic about formalising

their independence, and that's about it. Both also aren't in NATO, but do

maintain close ties,

and actively cooperate with the alliance all the same.

Next up, still in the local heavyweight steer, but just putting a smidge of a

better performance

in is one of Romania's other neighbours, Greece. And in a nutshell, they've

earned their place

by having spent decades assuming that a major conventional war was a real

possibility.

With whom, you ask? Well, yeah, that'd be turkey. And that might sound a little

bit

mad to some of you if you're not clued up on the ever complicated matter of

which Europeans

hate each other, and why? Because aren't they quite literally allies? And yeah,

that's not wrong.

They are both members of the NATO alliance, and thus, through that, nominal

allies.

Keyword there, though, is uh, nominal, isn't it? It all goes back to 1453, when

the Ottomans took

Constantinople, smashed the Byzantine world, ruled Greek alliance for centuries, and then faced Greek

rebellion, independence, border wars, Cyprus, islands, expulsions, and fighter

jet diplomacy in

return. Fast forward to now, and while there hasn't been open conflicts since

the Greco-Turkish war

of 1919 to 1922, although things did get pretty close in 1974, there exist

multiple potential flash

points that could tear the old wounds right open. The Everest land border, the

Aegean islands,

Cyprus, airspace disputes, and maritime claims, just to name four. And as a

result of Greece taking

said flash points seriously, its Hellenic army currently boasts 93,500 active

personnel, and a

further 248,900 reservists according to the International Institute for

Strategic Studies.

It's also a number that's not only way bigger than Romania's as a gross, but as

a net, too,

because don't forget, Greece only has about half the population of Romania, 10.

3 million,

as opposed to 18.8. Greece also equips its troops quite agreeably. On tanks

alone, for example,

they're currently rocking 1,385 of them in all, 170 of which are proper,

leopard 2A6 Hells, and 183 of them which are still quite fancy, leopard 2A4s.

The rest are older,

but usable, 500, leopard 1A4s and A5, 375M48A5s, and 157M683s. It's a mixed bag, to be sure,

but one-year-old struggle to call outright bad, certainly compared to Romania's

54 and counting

Abrams. Their armored infantry offerings, as the obvious follow-on are a bit

worse with them having

169 IFVs, mostly BMP1s and 40 German Marta 1A3s, backed by more than 2,000

tracked APCs,

mostly the old Vietnam vintage M113. Not a comedy effort, but certainly lacking

that layer of the

top-shelf stuff, as seen in their MBTs. Where things pick up, though, is with

artillery,

602 self-propelled artillery systems, including 420 M109s and 24 PZH 2000s,

plus 439 TOW guns, 151 multiple rocket launchers, and 2,320 mortars.

Then, throw in the M270 multiple launch rocket systems, cornet and tow anti-

tank systems,

stingers, oasters, torium ones, iHawks, and a proper army aviation arm with 28

Apache attack

helicopters and 60 OH-50A DQO warriors. And, uh, yeah, the point becomes

obvious.

Greece is not the cutting edge go-anyway military. It is the military of a

nation with a

troubled economy that has quite sensibly spent what money it does have to put

together a perfectly

adequate force that is perfectly capable of doing the one thing asked of it

above all else.

Be ready for war with Turkey. You can see this in their training, too, as

national exercises, Parmenion being an example, rehearse exactly the kind of

thing that they'd

be doing if it kicks off with their eastern neighbor, mobilizing vast numbers

of reservists,

shifting units towards Avros and the islands, coordinating armor, artillery,

air defense

and aviation, and making sure a Turkish push does not get a clean first day.

So no, Greece is not a global war machine, nor even really a regional one, but

as a border-focused

conventional force, able to put a load of bodies and kit on a contentious

frontier and move them fast?

Yeah, it's absolutely that. Of course, there's also equivalent armies that

occupy

an equivalent space here, too. Serbia, Chile, and Morocco spring to mind as

examples, all of them

with a decent, if not mind-blowing number of troops, using a mixed bag of kit

and generally

being all about wrangling with one specific enemy, oh, which for them would be

Kosovo,

Peru, and Algeria, respectively.

Now we head east for our first Asian entry, Vietnam. And they're an interesting

one,

because on the one hand, they are a lot stronger than many people assume. As

for some reason,

people speak as if the People's Army of Vietnam hasn't come on a single day

since

its titular war back in 1975. But equally, neither is it quite the sleek and

modern entity

that others, such as this report that describes Vietnam as a military

powerhouse, would have you

believe either. Instead, the People's Army of Vietnam, that being both the name

of the

whole military and the land forces incidentally, because the nation doesn't

maintain an independent

branch for such things, is a reflection of the nation more broadly. Having made

huge strides

forward since the 70s, but still objectively having quite the way to go before

it could be

barely described as advanced. First, size. Vietnam's land forces currently

stand at around 400,000 strong in active troops, and the reserves, well, they

've got 5 million of

them. Though shockingly, that gives them neither the largest army as a gross

nor even the largest

body of reserve manpower. The thing is for Vietnam, you'd struggle to call such

numbers

paranoid, because actually there's a particular neighbor of theirs that they've

had some tension

with, and if you don't know already, it's almost certainly not the one that you

think.

It's China, another supposedly communist nation. And TLDR, they've been cl

ashing for centuries,

with recent incidents being things like the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, the

Johnson-South

Reef skirmish of 1988, and the 2004 Hay Yang Shi'o 981 oil rig standoff. We don

't have time to go

into the specifics of them today, of course, but they still served to evidence

the point that

both of them be in communist doesn't make a difference. China is the enemy that

Vietnam

plans for. And what is the plan? Well, basically, it's to make the war

impossible to isolate,

impossible to finish quickly, and impossible to keep neat. In other words, her

noise entire

plan in case of another war would be to make sure that the phrase "This is

China's Vietnam"

would be both pleasingly literal and metaphorical. Their vast numbers are

naturally a huge part of

that too. Vietnam, in their own doctrine, calls it "all people national defense." But it's actually

a quite simple idea. You can't steamroll a nation if it has 400,000 soldiers

ready to go,

and you really can't steamroll a nation that has a further 5 million it can

quickly call up.

But what are soldiers without kids? And on that front, Vietnam's efforts are

nothing if not mixed.

Let's start with the good. Hanoi has tried to drag its armor into the modern

age,

via the purchase of 64 Russian T90s, both S and SK variants, delivery of which

was completed in

2019. But they are very much the tip of the spear, with the mainstay, instead

being things

like T62s, PT76s, and even T55s and Type 59s, those last two being tanks that

ultimately trace

their design back to the 1940s. Plenty of these have been upgraded. They have a

lot of them,

around 1,300 non-T90 types in all, and as both Russia and Ukraine have proven,

knackered old clankers can still have plenty of battlefield utility if you're

smart about how

you use them. Still, top of the line, or even really middle of the line at this

point?

Objectively, no, they are not. Artillery and air defense follow a similar

pattern as well,

because Vietnam has a lot of it. BM-21 rocket launchers, 2S-1 Gavoz Dico, and 2

S-3

Akkad see a self-propelled guns, D30 and D20 howitzers, and manpads like the St

rela 2,

Egla 1, Egla 2S, and Vietnam's TL-1. But as the Git nerds among you will

already have twigged,

all of that stuff is old. There is a new stuff that has come in, or is coming

in, though,

South Korean K9A1, self-propelled howitzers, and spider mobile air defense

systems to give

two examples. Just like the earlier mentioned T90s though, they're being

brought in in modest

numbers, 20 units for the K9, and at most, six batteries for the spider.

Because the unfortunate

reality? Vietnam just can't afford much more than that. Like we said at the

beginning of this

section, Vietnam has come a huge way economically in recent years, but it is

still fundamentally

not an advanced and wealthy nation. So why put them above Greece then? After

all, the two nation's

stories are weirdly similar, a single border of focus, big man power pools, and

an effort to

provide kit as good as national budgets will allow, but shouldn't Greece pibbed

Vietnam

given that it has fancier kit? And certainly we could see why one would make

that argument,

but for us it comes down to a simple matter. Big numbers. Interestingly, there

aren't really

any immediate parallels for the Vietnam either. Genuinely huge forces with

slightly s***ed kit,

but the odd little bit of something pushing in around the edges. Some would say

North Korea,

but hold their thought for about an hour or so, because you may well end up

surprised where we

placed them. South Africa has gotten a lot right in recent history, letting

Nelson Mandela out of

prison and doing away with apartheid, for example. Big thumbs up for that, guys. The end of that

era of South African history, however, hasn't exactly been sunshine and roses

from a military

perspective. Quite the opposite, in fact, it's proven to be something of an ab

ject disaster.

Because 40 years ago South Africa was a leading land power. No hyperbole. If we

were writing this

back then, in the days when YouTube was in black and white, and each video

ended with me singing

the national anthem, South Africa would probably be as close to the top of this

list as it currently

is to the bottom. Their army, for example, was about 550,000 strong, with

roughly 150,000 regulars

backed up by a much larger reserve component of 400 or so thousand, trained to,

more or less,

British, i.e. high standards, and using indigenously produced good quality kit,

the 155mm G5 hearts,

for example, a 50% longer range than most equivalent pieces of the day.

Consider also,

the Roycat, a really good, fast, nippy, 76mm gun platform, perfect for the

exact kind of warfare

that's expected down that way. And then there's the Ratel, the first wheeled I

FE ever, an all-round,

quite handy thing. Hell, you can even see this just in the small things. As

apartheid South Africa

created what is hands down, the single greatest piece of infantry kit ever, the

pattern 83 battle

jacket. Seriously, this thing has a cult status to this very day. And while it

's not an army,

or even land forces thing either, as a broader point, it's not worth forgetting

that South Africa

was an actual nuclear power in that era too. Africa's only one ever, in fact.

Now though,

South Africa is just not a major land power in any serious sense. Not because

South Africans

suddenly became cowards or anything of the sort, but because the entire machine

built around the

old apartheid era South African Defense Force, and therein the South African

army, was dismantled,

defunded, and then never replaced with anything even remotely equivalent. To

begin understanding

exactly how, you first have to understand that apartheid South Africa was

essentially a total

war state, i.e. one in which politics, industry, science, conscription, border

security, policing,

and the arms industry were all bent around the same basic assumption that the

country was surrounded,

hated, sanctioned, and thus would have to fight for its survival more or less

alone.

Remove apartheid, and you remove the Keystone justification for the entire way

of doing things.

The sanctions end, the Angolan war ends, and conscription ends. Not that that

necessarily doomed the South African army though, we only have to go back to

Romania to see how a

small, handy, done-proply army can be quite the agreeable thing. Pretoria,

however, didn't do it

properly, they neglected their army instead. Defense spending collapsed in ways

that would

make post-Cold War Germany blush, dropping from around 4% of GDP in 1990 to 0.7

% in 2024.

And from there, everything else went with it. The professional element, for

example,

shrunk from around 150,000 as previously alluded to, to 35,200 today, and the

reserve element,

with both the lack of funding and the end of conscription, it is now a mere 12,

250.

Those incredible industries and inheritance that should have been a hell of a

tool both for keeping

the army competitive into the future and providing precious high-school

manufacturing jobs in the

post-departide era, they were allowed to wither instead of being nurtured. And

as a result,

Littleton Engineering works, Sandok Orstrel and Roimek OMC, manufacturers of

the G5, Ratel,

Roycat, respectively, have all gone. And the amazing machines that they did

make back in the day

either just cut out right to save money or not replaced as they aged out, again

due to a lack

of finances. The Roycat, for example, was quite the bit of kit in 1919 and it's

now showing its age,

having shrunk from an inventory of 240 in 1999 to a mere 50 today. Same deal

with the Ratel,

they're 1,296 of them in 1997, as per dotting up the numbers in this 2009 paper, and today,

534. Despite all of those issues, however, enough of the old way of doing

things the

vibes to justify giving South Africa a well-deserved place in the upper-middle,

local, heavyweight tier, particularly when you look at what the standard in its

local actually is.

Because the uncomfortable reality is that the armies around it aren't exactly

trailblazers either.

Lesotho and Eswotini, for example, their armies are essentially small internal

security forces,

and even Namibia and Mozambique, they have numbers in the low 10,000s,

but they're equipped with truly, truly terrible equipment.

Even Zimbabwe itself in a similar position as South Africa, thanks to its

Rhodesian inheritance,

ain't all that, because take South Africa's issues, turn them up to 11, inject

them with steroids,

and you pretty much have the top and bottom of it.

Consequently, while the South African Army may have its issues, 47,450

personnel on the books

and a decent smattering of armoured vehicles is significant down that way.

Then factor in the fact that they have proper artillery, proper engineers,

proper signals,

actual airborne troops, and a real institutional memory of operating beyond its

own border,

and, yeah, you can absolutely see how South Africa deserves its place on this

list.

What's normal? If you're after parallel countries, i.e. ones that used to be

something,

but we have seen their capabilities collapse in recent years, to the point of

being an upper

middling local tier power, you're not lacking for options. Afghanistan, for

example, its Afghan

National Army was big, well-equipped, and Western trained, only to collapse in

five

minutes when the Taliban offered a no-hard-feeling surrender deal in 2021.

And now its army is just the Taliban, but loaded with pinched Western kids.

Argentina too, because after Britain won the Falklands War back in 1982, the

Argentine regime

collapsed, the economy collapsed, and the army collapsed with it, yet to

recover.

Then there's Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, to pick one. The specifics

of why vary with

each one, but they all hit the same beat.

And now we find ourselves on the other side of the Atlantic for a look at

Brazil.

Yes, Brazil, a nation of nearly 214 million people, the 10th largest economy on

Earth,

and an industrial economy at that too, which is home to quite the notable

aerospace sector

thanks to companies such as Embraer and Avabras Aerospaceial. Add that, of

course, it's also

massive, with all the natural resources an aspiring military power could ever

want.

So, why is Brazil only hitting the local heavyweight tier? The issue is that

Brazil has

all the ingredients needed to be a big boy power, but not the recipe.

Cast your mind back to our past entries, and they all had something proactive

behind their efforts,

didn't they? Romania has the fear of Russia, a hostile nation currently

invading its immediate

neighbour. Greece had the fear of Turkey, centuries' worth of political and

ethnic tensions pushing

right up on their eastern flank. And South Africa had its apartheid inheritance,

systems and people that even if the memories are starting to get a bit grey and

fuzzy,

know how things are to be done. And Brazil, it has nothing, really.

Venezuela is probably the neighbour they are most hostile with, and even then,

it isn't

exactly tanks at the border. One wrong sneeze blows it all up. It's just not

like that.

It's more strongly worded letters about the refugee inflow, and let's keep some

troops in the north,

just in case Caracas does anything silly in Guyana. That sort of tension.

As a result, the Brazilian army has become less appointed spear, and more a

broad state presence

force. It is, for example, present on the borders. It's present in the remote

depths of the Amazon,

it's present during civic emergencies. Basically, any time the federal

government needs a Chappicamo

to execute a matter of state in the middle of nowhere, the Brazilian army is

there.

And in Brazil, it really can be the middle of nowhere, too. We're talking about

a country here

with more than 17,000 kilometres of land water. That is 4,327 kilometres

broad between its furthest points. The infrastructure along much of that border

it's not so much poor, it's just basically non-existent. Seriously, say

something happens

right here that requires boots on the ground. It could be anything big or small.

And then consider that that location is 450 kilometres as the crow flies from

the nearest

meaningful settlement, the tiny little town of Cerro de Navio, with a

population of barely even

five and a half thousand people. The challenges in trying to get the army there

aren't massive.

The nearest paved road of any kind is over 100 kilometres away to say nothing

of the

logistical train needed to actually be able to get there in the first place.

And helicopters? Pick one the Brazilians use, do any one of them? From the Isqu

ilu to a Black Hawk,

it can only just about cover the distance from Cerro de Navio to the border on

a single

tank of go-juice of carrying a combat load. So again, the logistics needed just

for something

as simple as a patrol are terrifying. And given the Brazil finds itself in

quite a friendly neighbourhood,

which is the more pertinent need, a big or singing and dancing conventional war

machine or an

unconventional war machine that can actually dependably operate effectively

along the frontier.

It's the latter of course, which is why Brazil spends a lot of money on

projects like Sisfrom,

the Integrated Border Monitoring System. In simple terms, it's a giant army-run

border

surveillance and command network. Radars, sensors, communications, control

centres and data links

spread along Brazil's land border, designed to help the army spot what is

happening,

understand it quickly and then send the right people to the right patch of

nowhere before the

problem, whatever it is, has already vanished into the trees. None of this

however means that

Brazil proactively neglects its conventional forces because it absolutely doesn

't. It's a

pragmatic prioritisation. That's all. On numbers alone, for example, the army

itself

has somewhere around 215,000 to 220,000 active personnel, according to the most

recent figures

that we could find, as well as a further 1.3 million reservists. And enjoy that

last figure in

particular too because bloody hell did the Brazilian government make it

difficult to track down.

Good thing we took the time to track it down though, isn't it? Because doesn't

that just prove the

point? Unconventional priorities, they may have, but a comedy force, they quite

evidently are not.

The caveat is that Brazil's unorthodox way of doing things, justified and

sensible,

though it may be, doesn't change the objective reality of the matter, that as a

conventional

fighting force, the very thing we're measuring today, siphoning resources off

does take away from conventional war fighting capabilities.

Just take Cistfron alone, with its total projected cost of $2.4 billion in a

different world,

with different geography, that had by Brazil a lot of tanks. And they could

really do with them too,

because currently their stocks consist of 292 MBTs, all of them Cold War clunk

ers,

specifically 220 Leopard 1A5BRs, 41 Leopard 1A1BEs, and 31M60A3TTSs.

The names, guys! Just off of what we've already seen, never mind what we're

going to see later,

it's not exactly brilliant, is it? It's worth having a look at army aviation

too,

purely because they really are, like, a title of Brazil's whole approach.

Lifton reconnaissance helicopters, for example, big tick, with a 95-strong

split between 35

HA1As, 34 HM1As, 4 HM2s, 8 HM3s, and 15 HM4s. Don't worry if you don't

recognize the names,

they're just indigenized designations for AS550 Fenix.

AS565 Panthers, UH60 Black Hawks, AS532 Cougars, and H-225M Caracles

respectively.

So many names, so many numbers. But then, dedicated attack helicopters?

No, big red cross, thumbs down, because they don't have any of those.

They did have 12 MI35Ms, rechristened the AH2 in Brazilian service,

but they have not been replaced since they were retired in 2022.

So, local heavyweight it has to be. Brazil does not have a bad army, and

certainly not a small one.

It has a force built around Brazilian problems and conventional capability

for a big peer-to-peer war. Just isn't one of them.

Now we leave the local heavyweights behind and move into the advanced powers.

Armies that can do more than merely hold the line, bully one neighbor,

provide a few battalions to a multinational operation, or keep the state

present.

In difficult terrain.

And what's more, we're starting off with one that might not have been expected,

Algeria. It's understandable that this should be surprising,

because who, when pontificating on "martial matters" ever brings Algeria up?

Even we're guilty of this, because there isn't a lot of Algeria going on in our

bad catalog,

is there? And that's a shame, because while we aren't putting Algeria as "the

African power",

there's another one coming up later taking that spot, they are genuinely

significant.

In fact, they're a state that doesn't just have a good army and the

capabilities to match,

but a state in which the army is one of the central pillars of the whole

political system,

a regime guardian aboard a force, a regional deterrent, an internal security

backstop,

and a conventional war machine all rolled into one.

Frankly, they have good reason to be a bit paranoid too. To the west, they have

Morocco,

not just a rival, but a nation they have proactive enmity with,

closed borders since 1994, full severing of relations and mutual closing of

airspace in 2021.

The works, in other words, save for actual war between the two.

Tunisia, they're cool with though, as ostensibly, they are also with Libya.

The problem with Libya, however, is that while the nation's leadership are on-

site,

they are leading a failed state chock full of jahadis, and a lot of those jahad

is do not like

Algeria. It gets worse though, because Algeria also has its own domestic jihadi

problem,

with jund al-Kilafar in Algeria, as well as the old stalwarts of ISIS and al-

Qaeda also putting

in a showing. So yes, like we say, frankly, the Algerians have good reason to

take their military

real serious like. Not that it's too big though, because actually the Algerian

People's National

Army currently

has only around 110,000 regular troops, and around 150,000 reservists, although

we can

also throw in an extra 187,000 from the Jean-Doury and paramilitary

establishment too, since they

oftentimes serve as de facto auxiliaries to the army.

Isn't that, then, how come we haven't placed Algeria down in the top end of

local heavy

weight along with, say, Brazil?

Well, two reasons, actually.

The quality of their equipment imparts.

And on that matter, the Algerian Army currently has 1,485 MBTs in stock, and

some of them

are actually pretty good, such as their 600-T90SAs.

For reference, you'll remember that Vietnam only had 60-40-90s, others such as

their 325-T-72s

and 290-T-62s are fine, they're old, they're perfectly usable, though, and

others such

as their 270-T-55s are, well, I mean at least they are working tanks, I suppose.

It all equals out to make a tank stock, which is, useably average.

And really, that's exemplary of Algeria's wider material situation.

Not to make exquisite, beautifully-standard polish, and all modern high-end

fighting force,

but practical usable, and above all else dangerous.

The Squaty Taxi situation tells the same story, too, because Algeria rocks just

shy

of 1,000 BMP IFVs, specifically BMP2 variants, with maybe a few older BMP1s

still clinging

on at the edges, as well as a further 600 APCs in the form of the amusingly-

named "Fooks",

specifically, the "Fooks", too, a variant which Algeria is the only serious

operator

of.

Again, it's not top-tier stuff, but it's enough to move a lot of infantry under

armour

across a lot of space in the kinds of operations Algeria is actually likely to

conduct.

There is a catch, though, because none of what we just listed was Algerian mate.

And that's a bad thing, because when the world starts getting dangerous,

properly dangerous,

overseas supplies of gear just dry up.

There are efforts for indigenous production here and there to make no mistake,

with trucks

typically coming from SNVI, an indigenous Algerian manufacturer, and there's

also licensed

production of some foreign designs, with the QW2 Manpad and some of the

aforementioned

"Fooks" being examples, but that's about it.

As for combat experience, we're generally talking about a giant list of anti-

insurgency

wars and operations.

Far too many to list out, in fact, but the top and bottom of it is that Algeria, in one

form or another, has been locked in anti-insurgency struggle with jihadi's for

basically the

last 40 years.

And given that Algeria hasn't exactly gone the way of Libya in that time, quite

evidently,

they've been performing well, haven't they?

So that's Algeria, then.

Not a nation that comes up much in military discussions, but one that should,

thanks to

its scale, decent levels of equipment, and surprising amount of experience

under fire,

a well-deserved, advanced power without a doubt, in our humble opinion.

Next up, Australia, and we can hear it through the screen, scratching your head

in a bemused

way.

Because yes, the Australian army is truly tiny, and they're 27,701 regular and

22,146

reserve troops as of the time of writing.

But what they lack in quantity, they make up for with quality.

Basically, take the general vibes and themes of Romania, but then bigger the

budget to

adjust for the fact that Australia didn't have its economy devastated by

communism for

half a century, and you've pretty much got the idea.

And indeed, even in the sense of having a big, bad bear of a neighbour, shaping

huge

amounts of what they do, the Romania parallels sticks, but for the Aussies,

their bear eats

bamboo, speaks Mandarin, and gives you 1,000 metre death stare if you jokingly

compare

it to Winnie the Pooh.

We'd never do that.

Having said that, though, we should now take a step back, and look at what the

Australian

army actually is in the here and now, because historically, it was a bolt-on

force able

to defend its own realm, yes, but with any overseas operations always being

done under

someone else's umbrella.

First, it was the British, with even their gear being the same in both world

wars, save

over the addition of a rather dapper slouch hat, and then the Americans, with

Australia

going into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, twice, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Syria, under

Washington's

auspices.

And while that dimension to the Australian army absolutely does still exist,

hence ties

to NATO, hence ANZUS, hence ORCUS, and hence international exercises such as

talisman saber

and supergaruda shield, the first part of their historical role, the

territorial defence

one has become way more pressing with the recent rise of China.

It is here that Australia gets interesting too, because shockingly, would you

believe

it, Australia, with a population of 28.5 million people, has decided not to go

toe to toe with

China on size.

Instead, much like Romania, once again, they've had to think smart about it,

accept their

situation for what it is, and become as lethal as they can within those

confines.

As a result, an army which is surprisingly long-legged, as flexible as a yoga

instructor, has playing

field-leveling missiles, and a huge focus on amphibious warfare.

We know what you're thinking too.

Amphibious warfare.

As a major focus for the army?

What?

But yeah, while unconventional, it totally is the Australian army's focus.

Their own 2024 defence strategy document spells it out in black and white,

stating that the

army is to quote, "optimise for literal manoeuvre, with a long-range land and

maritime strike

capability, help defend Australia against long-range attack, enable the

projection of

military force, and help maintain stability in Australia's near-region."

And you know what?

It's a good thing that the Australian army is taking this approach, because

what they

are doing is not getting bogged down by convention, or falling into the old

generals pitfall

of being so absorbed by the last war that they remain blind to the next one,

and instead

pragmatically thinking about what could be done within the confines of their

modest size

to make sure they are as lethal as they possibly can be when the time comes.

Accordingly too, the Australian army is currently undergoing a full restructure

to fit this vision.

The first brigade in Darwin is becoming a light combat brigade, i.e. the quick,

agile,

get their fast formation for northern and literal work.

The third brigade in Townsville is becoming an armoured combat brigade, the

heavy-punch

built around tanks, IFVs, breaching kit, and all the other tools.

The seventh brigade in Brisbane is becoming a motorised combat brigade, wheeled, mobile,

and easier to throw around the region at speed.

And the tenth brigade in Adelaide is becoming an artillery brigade, long-range

rockets, air

defence, targeting everything that lets the army hit things very far away.

Of course, the restructure is being accompanied by new gear too, with the tenth

brigade currently

receiving high mass launchers from the US, a first batch having arrived in 2025, and a

second batch being in the works to bring the brigade up to a total strength of

42 units.

And to come out of their business end, GMLRS and Precision Strike missiles.

The former being the normal high mass munition, roughly 70km of GPS guided, day

-ruining equipment.

And the latter?

Well, that's the fancy option.

It's got a 500km range.

Next comes movement, because if your army is meant to operate across coastlines

and islands,

it needs floating lorries.

And what would you know it?

This very year, Australia signed a $2.82 billion deal for eight new, indigen

ously produced

heavy landing craft, each of them able to carry more than 500 tonnes, and thus

move tanks,

high mass, boxer reconnaissance vehicles, and redback infantry fighting

vehicles around

the littoral battlespace.

Speaking of tanks, Australia currently doesn't really have any kind of baby.

They did have some, specifically 49 2007 vintage M1A1 Abrams, but they donated

them all to

Ukraine back in 2025.

And to replace them?

Abrams again, but 75 of the M1A27V3 model with improved armor, communications,

reliability,

sustainment and fuel efficiency, plus all digital systems, a remote weapon

station, a commander's

independent thermal viewer, and programmable airburst ammunition.

Australia's own Defense Department said that 46 of them have been delivered

from the US

by November 2024, without being unable to find any confirmation as to the

status of

the remaining 29, so yes, they do have some, but just don't ask us to put a

perfectly

clean number on it.

As for the quality of their troops on a one-on-one basis, their actual sold

ering skills, well,

they're historically excellent, and there's no reason to assume that they won't

remain

so.

As General David Petraeus, an American retired four-star general, and former

commander of

coalition forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, who commanded Australia's troops, put it

"I think it's accurate to say Australia has long punched way above its weight

class

in terms of what it has done, and also the enormous contribution that it makes."

All in all then, have we been potentially a smidge generous putting Australia

up in

this tier?

Possibly, as their army is still fundamentally tiny.

But even so, their professional, allied to the hilt, reorganizing around a

coherent

China-shaped problem, and buying the exact kind of long-range artillery, air

defence,

armour, and landing craft needed to make sure that China has a really bad time

of it if

they ever come knocking.

So yes, crocodiles, boggins, and all.

We're proud to place Australia here in our rankings.

Now, Iran, and right away, slam on the brakes, full reverse thrusters, and

record-scratch

sound effect, because up to this point, a nation and its army have been

basically interchangeable

semantically because, of course, nations only have one of them.

Not Iran, though, because they have two, and not in a reserve-versus-active way, both

being huge, therefore needing to be looked at individually.

They have two command structures, two recruiting pipelines, two logistical

chains, totally

independent of each other.

First you have the Artech, which could be their normal army.

But then you also have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.

Like the Artech, the IRGC is a bona fide army with infantry, armour, and

artillery,

all the stuff that you would expect.

But where is the Artech defends the nation?

The IRGC defends the Islamic Revolution, specifically.

There are two sides of the same coin, and do, if you're pedantic about it,

serve the

same masters, and thus the same goals.

But the distinction still matters.

And further, it's worth noting that both forces aren't exactly what you call

insignificant,

with the Artech boasting around 350,000 active troops and the same number of

reservists in

the IRGC ground forces, the explicitly army component, as it does have an avian

air force

too, having somewhere in the region of 100 to 150,000, depending on whose

estimate you trust.

A giant, neon illuminated, visible from space disclaimer too.

Those figures come from before the onset of the Iran War, so obviously they

will have

ballooned under mobilization.

But frankly, only Al-Arne knows what the current figure is as to Iran.

Definitely isn't telling us, and neither Washington nor Tel Aviv is releasing

their estimates

on the matter either, so we'll have to stick with the old ones.

And indeed, the current going's on also allows to segue nicely to the unifying

emo of Iran's

disparate land forces, the fact that the nation is really, really difficult to

invade, just

thanks to geography alone.

It's huge, it's mountainous, it's full of deserts.

Off the back of that, the aforementioned emo becomes a simple one.

Work with what nature has given to frustrate and ultimately defeat any invasion

attempt.

Shockingly too, it was neither Israel nor the US that created this fortress

mentality.

It was Iraq, because DLDR, Iraq invaded in 1980 and for nearly 8 long years,

Iran was

subjected to a war that was nasty.

Local weapons used on a scale that puts World War One to shame, trench warfare,

child soldiers,

and perhaps as many as 600,000 dead, just in Iranian military casualties.

And that experience, quite understandably, left the Iranians with a single

takeaway.

Never again.

Thus, Iran's strategy going forward became all about depth, redundancy, dispers

al, mobilization

and making every attacker pay in blood, money, time, and most crucially of all,

political

capital.

At home, that means a so-called mosaic defense.

Local commands, tunnels, mountains, and not needing every unit to wait politely

for Tehran

to answer the phone.

That last one is something we saw play out across the Iran war.

I mean, America and Israel killed an insane amount of Iran's leadership, as

well as destroying

God only knows how much of their military material ripped to the last flag, F-

14s, and

yet, well, the war didn't exactly end in Iran's surrender, did it?

On the contrary, the Islamic Republic appears to have emerged from the conflict

with massively

inflated self-confidence, plus a new, shiny, tall system over the Strait of H

ormuz.

Okay, they may have sacrificed a supreme leader or two along the way, but in

the end, their

mosaic defense did exactly what it was meant to do when it mattered most.

And really, could there have been any other outcome?

Israel and America's joint plan was always doomed to failure without a ground

invasion,

and yet fighting off a ground invasion is precisely when Tehran's land forces

would

have come into their own.

This is the sort of kit they're building.

T-72s and T-72Ms, at the better end, Karaz and Zafikaz, a local T-72 sprucer,

and a weird

modernised M-60/T-72 blend, respectively, trying to drag the fleet forward,

then chieftains

M-60s, Sefir-74s, M-48s and M-47s, filling out the rest of the ranks.

The battle taxis follow the same trend, BMP-1s, BMP-2s, Borakt, BTR-50s, BTR-60

s and M-113s.

Nothing that modern, but still good enough to block roads, sit behind ridg

elines, reinforce

passes, move men through bad terrain, and make an attacker chew through

prepared ground

the slow way.

They do have some standout areas, however, with their artillery and things like

that

being a glowing one.

There's some old stuff, admittedly, like M-109s, D-30s, M-46s and BM-21 grads,

but also,

there's ballistic missiles such as the Zafugar and the Desfuels, the K-Barschen

kär, the

Shahid-136 loitering munitions, and Mahata-6 strike drones.

And all of that is enough, isn't it?

It's enough to make the Americans, the Israelis, at pretty much every Arab

state, to be fair,

give it a second thought, before trying anything.

We'd say it's an unorthodox pick for the advanced power tier, but is it?

Because what have we seen consistently in this tier?

Not armies that lay down the hurt per se, but armies that are adapted well to

their strategic

circumstances, and have a little something extra going on to sharpen their

teeth.

And Iran is exactly that, a vast, ugly, cruel, resilient, missile and drone-s

aturated fortress

brutally well adapted to its geography, its history, and above all else its

enemies.

We may wish it were another way, but as the war earlier this year showed, the

Islamic

Republic was able to take on the world's superpower and walk away with

something that

looks a whole lot like victory.

Remember back when we were discussing Algeria, and we said that there was

another African

power above them coming?

Well, we're there now, and it's Egypt.

We'll keep coming back to Algeria throughout this chapter, too, because really,

for this

ranking, Egypt is best understood as Algeria, with the volume knob turned all

the way up

to 11, hitting many of the same beats as its western neighbour, but with

greater strategic

weight that comes from being more prosperous, as well as frankly more accepted

by the United

State Security Establishment.

Not loved, mind you, to say that would be quite the stretch, but certainly

accepted, plugged

in and useful, a partner in the hard fall for American Middle East order in a

way that

Algeria just isn't.

As for the similarities, both Egypt and Algeria are built on a similar military

political combination.

Big armies, heavily securitized states, the military is a core pillar of the

ruling order,

significant internal security functions, and generally just a national system

in which

the army is not just a thing the nation has, but a thing that the nation is

actively built

around.

There are parallels in their both having immediate threats, but as per the

overall theme of

this chapter, Egypt's are just a bit more.

It has its jihadi nutters, of course, with ISIS, the soldiers of Egypt, and our

Murabatin

founded by a rogue Egyptian special forces officer, incidentally, being the big

gies.

But then there's Egypt's external concerns, and these are in a different league

to our

areas, because where Algeria only really has to contend with the Moroccans and

a bit of

overflow from the ever hellish goings on in Libya, Egypt has the Israel-Pal

estine war

in its eastern border, Sudan and its ongoing civil war to the south, a growing

dispute

with Ethiopia over an inconveniently placed dam that could go hot one day, and

again,

Libya on its border.

Oh, and just for a bonus, let's also sprinkle on top, having quite possibly the

world's

single most important waterway by sexting it in the Suez Canal.

Not to worry, though, because Egypt has responded to that myriad of potential

concerns by constructing

a serious army, 310,000 regular personnel with roughly 375,000 reservists

behind them.

Not bad numbers by any stretch, but as a notable difference to many of the

larger forces we've

seen so far, Egypt's numbers are equipped well.

Not cutting-edge admittedly, but equally not needing an asterisk or a qualifier

put beside

the claim either, just genuinely pretty well-equipped.

Armor shows the difference quickest, whereas Algeria has its solid core of 600-

D90s, Egypt

has Abrams, and not the handful that Romania has either, but around 1,200 of

them.

And look, we'll stand at T90 on this channel till the cows come home, because

you won't

find much without a better weight decay ability ratio, but the fact remains

that an Abrams

is better as an overall system.

Because even the A1 variants that Egypt has, while they might be lacking the

commander's

independent thermal viewer, all digital architecture, improved power generation

package, and wider

survivability upgrades of newer variants like the M1A2, SEP-V3, they still come

head and

shoulders above the T90 in one crucial area, crew survivability.

The Abrams you see stores its main gun ammunition, behind armored blast doors

in a separate turret

bustle with blow-off panels above it, so that if the ammunition cooks off, the

blast

is meant to vent up and out rather than straight through the men inside.

The T90 family by contrast still revolves, unintended, around a carousel autol

oader and

zon any T90 that we are aware of said autoloader does not have blow-out panels

or any kind

of equivalent provision.

So that's 22 rounds, sat loose, where the crew just are, waiting to be hit.

We're sure you can see the problem here.

Anyone want to know something else too?

As if having 1,200 M1A1 Abrams tanks wasn't wild enough at this day, they're

getting

better as we speak too, with Washington having approved a package to refurbish

and upgrade

555 of them to the M1A1SA standard in 2024, bringing driver vision enhancers,

thermal gunner

sights, smoke launchers, fresh engines and transmissions, as well as more

boring but equally

essential things like spare parts support and depot assistance.

The rest of Egypt's tank selection, however, is less impressive, with it being

things like

M60s, T62s and T55s, stuff from the mid to early Cold War, basically, 1,150,

500 and

840 of them currently being an infantry respectively.

But what about being accepted by the US security establishment?

Didn't we say that that was a big part of Egypt's story?

We just spent the whole time waffling about tanks, so what's up?

Well, hold that thought, ladies and gents, because it's all about of all into

place,

as Washington didn't so much just allow Egypt to buy Abrams tanks as it bought

tanks

for them.

For the most part anyway, we'll spare you the full explanation as there's about

a

million different programs and schemes to factor in, but we ran the numbers and

by our

calculations all in for Egypt's Abrams tanks, Egypt themselves put in about $

663 million

and the US put in roughly 6.8 billion.

There's loads more we could talk about for Egypt, as indeed there is for every

nation

that we discussed today, but this gives you the top and bottom of their

capabilities and

where they're at.

And again, it's Algeria, but more, a disproportionately huge tank power with a

bit of combat experience

thanks to anti-insurgency efforts all tied up with the extra bonus of being a

very much

favoured partner of Washington.

For our penultimate advance power, it's China, but not that China.

We mean the Republic of China better known simply as Taiwan.

And really they are the true archetype of the tier, effectively no expedition

ary footprint

at all, save for the odd training exercise, and power projection more broadly,

just not

being one of their concerns at all.

That doesn't matter however, not here at this tier, and certainly not for

Taiwan specifically.

Because such things, frankly, are beyond the nation's concerns are present.

Instead, what it is concerned about, what it needs to fear and prepare for more

than

anything else, is the day that the other China, the People's Republic of China,

comes

knocking, seeking to reunify the realm at muzzle point.

And if we may be so bold too, it really is a matter of when, not if, Beijing

rolls the

dice.

Because for starters, there's rhetoric, such as "We will continue to strive for

peaceful

reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort, but we will

never promise

to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures

necessary."

And then there's Beijing's actions, which, as they say, speak louder still than

words.

However, as an example, the construction of the Szechuan, the first Type 76

amphibious

assault ship, the first from the Kia Lab drone carrier ever capable of

launching a whole

unmanned air wing over and ground contingent onto Taiwan.

The Type 75 is a work in progress class of eight normal amphibious assault

ships currently

under construction, as before, but with helicopters instead of drones.

The acquisition of a lot of landing craft, with us identifying at least 15 Type

72's,

10 Type 73's, 10 Type 74's and 66's air-cushion landing craft of multiple types.

So yes, given all of that getting troops across the ocean capacity coupled with

Beijing's

own rhetoric, we do think it is fair to say that Type A cannot afford to treat

invasion

as a fantasy scenario.

And that actually gives Type A's army one job.

Stop them when they do come.

Not defeat them in some grand cinematic flags flying clash more reminiscent of

the last Chinese

Civil War, but stop them getting an initial foothold, stop them moving inland,

stop them

from seizing ports, and stop them from unloading their heavy armour.

In other words, then, nip the invasion in the bud on the shore, and with such

vigor as

though civilisation itself was at risk.

Because for Taiwan, it is.

Numbers then.

The Republic of China's army's regular contingent currently said somewhere

around the 92-100,000

mark, a number which isn't exactly terrible in context given that Taiwan only

has a population

of 23.3 million, but that is, as a gross figure, rather slim given some of the

other

numbers that we've seen.

The problem is that they just can't afford a large standing army either in the

immediate

burdens of the treasury or in the long-term economic calamity from pulling

millions of

skilled labourers out of the workforce kind of way.

So instead, they conscript, then they keep in reserve.

One year's active service, or four months of solid training, that's all they

demand.

And conscripts are demobbed, sent home, and kept on the books as reservists.

As a result, they're ready to go, save for a quick skills refresher and having

a rifle

thrown at them, and thus, if the Szechuan appears on the horizon, Taipei can

raise an

army of millions in no time at all.

It's not a novel way of doing things, as many nations have done it before, but

it is

an effective one.

Oh, and we also weren't exaggerating when we said an army of millions either

because

the International Institute for Strategic Studies ran the numbers and came to

the opinion that

a fully-mobilized Taiwan would have about 1.5 million troops at its disposal.

Just off that alone, suddenly it's looking a bit dicey for Beijing, isn't it?

No matter how many amphibious assault ships and landing craft they knock

together.

And when they take a look at the gear that Taipei gives its troops, it's an

even worse

because it is good stuff, for the most part.

Take tanks, as ever, to prove the point.

Currently, they have 108 Abrams, specifically the M1A2T, a unique to Taiwan

variant based

on the M1A2 set fee-free.

And if it wasn't clear enough from when it came up in our Australia discussion,

as

we didn't say it outright to be fair, that's THE Abrams variant right now.

108 isn't all that many, though, is it sure enough, it has other types on the

go.

The CM11, an indigenous hybrid of an M60 chassis, an older but upgraded M48

turret, and modern

Abrams' fire control systems, and M60A3s, as delivered from the US back in the

mid to late 90s,

later retrofitted with new digital fire control, full electric gun control, and

high resolution

site systems.

Competitive is the word for them, because are those two types world leading?

No, they're not.

But is the full trio enough to give Beijing's serious pause for thought when it

comes to taking

Taiwan?

Well, we personally believe, yeah.

That same general theme of enough runs through the rest of their inventory, too.

Take their armoured troop move as their CM32s and CM33s, they're perfectly

decent indigenous

A by 8s, not draw-dropping, not box-a-tier, but mobile, supportable, and

absolutely fine

for shifting infantry between beaches, bridges, ports, and urban choke points.

But then on top of that, you get the CM34, which, frankly, appears to be...

CART.

A locally built, co-developed in Ireland, of all places.

IRV that sports a 30mm Bushmaster II autocannon,

proper up-to-date day and night sites, and armour that were not exactly tank-

proof

as it is only an IV after all, is meant to be good with details beyond good,

being none of our concern, apparently.

And is that cocktail enough?

Well, yeah, certainly is.

To us, at least.

Artillery and miscellaneous, long-range ordnance delivery solutions, too.

Taiwan's effort is enough.

The baseline, for example, is serviceable rather than spectacular things,

like the M109A2 and A5 self-repelled heartses,

older M11OA2 203mm guns, and M114 and M101 towed heartses,

with the indigenous thunderbolt 2000 rocket system that gives Taiwan

effective firepower out to around 45km or so.

But then you get the top shelf stuff.

High Mars, 29 launchers ordered and on their way,

and javelins that, given their procurement date presumably,

have the later actually works software and not the original,

just f*cking ignore the tank filling the track,

gates and blurb a rabbit the next field over instead software.

And what conversation about Taiwan's big guns would be complete without

mentioning their old 1940s-made 240mm M1 howitzers?

Not necessarily a good or a bad thing.

They are old, but still adequately fill the niche of hardened coastal

counter-landing and deterrent fire from Kimmen and Matsu.

So yes, 1940s siege guns aside, the White Point Stats.

The Republic of China's army is not flawless,

and nor is it a uniformly modern and cutting-edge one either.

At equally, neither does it have any meaningful overseas footprint

or meaningful strategic lift.

And that still doesn't matter, does it?

Because that is what Taiwan needs.

A budget-friendly, finely-honed and specialized force

for royally f*cking up an invading force.

That's what they need, and well, that's exactly what they have.

So, advanced power it is.

You're probably shocked that the UK came up so soon in this episode,

because we're talking about the sixth biggest military spender on Earth.

The nation that, within living memory, put a third of the entire world

under its boot through sheer, bloody-minded martial prowess.

And yet, how the mighty do fall,

because our UK is very different to that UK.

And now, while the nation is certainly still in the advanced power tier,

able to deploy professional high-end formations

and plug very effectively into NATO operations,

the whole effort, quite frankly, is held together with duct tape.

And that tape is starting to look awfully strained

and close to its final breaking point, too.

The tank fleet shows the problem quickly,

because how many do you think the UK currently has?

Sixth biggest military spender on Earth, remember?

And the nation that literally invented the bloody things.

And whatever number you thought of, you're wrong.

It's way less than that.

With the UK, at the point we're recording,

having 288 Challenger 2s in inventory.

That is it.

No light tanks.

The British Army hasn't used them

since the scimitar was pulled from service in 2023,

and none of any other type of tank.

And it gets worse, too, if you can believe it.

Because of that 288ed piers,

as though a shockingly small number of them are actually in service.

We don't know the number for certain,

but then Minister for the Armed Forces, James Hepey,

told Parliament in 2023 that the British Army's active fleet

was only 213 Challenger 2s,

with anything beyond that either stored non-operational

or otherwise not in use.

The ugly possibility comes from France's Tusser,

editor of Defense Analysis,

and general British Defense commentator of some note,

who wrote in the Independent in 2025

that after pervasive and long-lasting malign neglect,

the Royal Armoured Corps has not been able to deploy

a full 59 tank Challenger Regiment for years,

and the actual number of in-service units

has fallen to the 20 to 25 kind of mark at the very best.

So yeah, let's just repeat that.

Big as yeah, in-service units 20 to 25.

Not to worry though, because the Challenger 3 is coming.

Right?

And as lethal as it is promising to be,

it's kind of a shame that they're only ordering 148 of them,

and even then they aren't expecting to hit that full figure until 2030.

That is the modern British Army in a nutshell.

Shortages.

Just not enough bloody gear for the job that gets asked of them.

Otillery tells the same dream story.

The UK donated its entire 68-strong supply

of AS-90 self-propelled houses to Ukraine,

and we're not even going to talk about

how slim a number that was to begin with,

because to replace them,

it's going to be 72 RCH-155s bought from Germany.

And again, we aren't going to talk about how small a number that is either,

because in the meantime,

the line is being held by a mere 14 archers from Sweden,

as the first RCH deliveries aren't expected until 2028.

So yeah, the situation's pretty f***ing bad.

A few more quick-fire examples do make the point.

Sky Saver, the Army's ground-based air defense system,

seven of those.

The same.

Fuchs that we met when discussing Algeria

with the Brits using theirs as CBRN reconnaissance vehicles.

Ten of those.

The M270 multiple launch rocket system.

43.

The AW159 wildcat.

The Army Air Corps go to reconnaissance helicopter.

34.

The AH-65E Apache helicopter.

47.

That is the reality.

In multiple key areas, the UK is darly short of gear.

And sure, not every multiple rocket launcher is made equally.

But just from our earlier chapters,

before we even get into thinking about what is to come,

you can already quite clearly see

that the highlighted shortages are, frankly, weird.

Again, sixth biggest military spender on the planet.

And it only gets weirder still, too.

When you consider that Whitehall isn't exactly blowing the budget

on a huge body of manpower, either.

In fact, they've failed to meet

every single year's recruitment quota.

Since 2010, this resulted in an army

that, as per the most recently available data,

has 74,110 regular personnel

and 23,740 reservists for a grand total of 97,850.

That is it.

Recruitment also brings us nicely to the Y of the matter.

Because now we're going to say a word

that will induce a trauma response in every Brit

who has ever served in or wished to serve in

his Majesty's Armed Forces.

Capita.

For those of you not in the know,

Capita happens to be a business process outsourcing company.

And in 2012, some genius in the Ministry of Defense,

who presumably had never actually worn camo in their lives,

had the genius idea of taking the pre-existing,

multi-century established recruitment system

that existed within the army and giving it to Capita.

The cost?

495 million pounds, or $667 million.

The result?

Well, yeah, you've already seen it.

Recruitment targets still not being met.

Since 2010, still though.

At least they streamlined the process

and made it easier, right?

Well, no, actually.

And if you're in the audience,

having recently been through the process,

well, let us know your experience in the comments below

for everyone's benefit.

It'd be appreciated.

But for those of you who don't feel like scrolling down,

here's a statistic that evidences the point.

From September 2024 to September 2025,

108,020 people submitted an application.

8,422 of them actually got in.

And this is the crux of the matter.

Somehow, the British commitment to outsourcing

has seen the government hurl money

at incompetent contractors,

no matter whether they deliver the goods or not.

As a further example, consider Ajax,

the procurement disease in miniature.

A reconnaissance vehicle program so well managed

that it was meant to enter service in 2017,

ended up years late,

and became infamous for noise and vibration issues,

serious enough to injure the crew

with the whole project's termination being a possibility

that still has not been ruled out.

The cost?

Yeah, five and a half billion quid,

or about seven and a half billion U.S. dollars.

But wait, there's more such blood as that we can point to.

The Warrior Capability Sustainment Program,

an upgrade package for the Warrior IFV,

meant to add a new turret,

40 millimeter cannon,

improved electronics,

and keep the platform viable into the 2040s.

Over half a billion pounds,

or 801 million U.S. dollars,

had been blown by the time the project was scrapped in 2021.

The Morpheus, a planned next-generation tactical communication system,

meant to replace Bowman and give British land forces

a proper digital battlefield network,

nearly 800 million quid,

as around all 1.08 billion U.S. dollars,

blown by the time the initial contract was canceled in 2023.

Watchkeeper, the sales-built tactical reconnaissance drone program,

meant to give land forces their own persistent battlefield i-star program.

It cost a smidge over 1.3 billion pounds,

or roughly 1.8 billion dollars.

It took around 14 years to reach full operational capacity,

and is due to be scrapped.

After less than a decade's service,

due to its tech being just a bit shit,

and it costing an absolute fortune to operate.

And also, it just breaks.

All the time.

Failures on that scale only occur with such regularity,

if there is something seriously wrong with an organization's back-end plumbing.

And it's a shame,

because in the actual skills of soldering,

the British Army remains full of skilled,

talented, lethally effective soldiers.

There's a reason British Special Forces, for example,

remain respected across the globe.

But the rank and file get failed

on nearly every level by the systems around them.

Failed so badly,

though in an unnamed senior U.S. general remarks

that the British Army is no longer a tier 1 fighting force,

barely tier 2, in fact, is hard to disagree.

Thus, the uncomfortable point is this.

If a big war came, the British Army is just not ready.

It doesn't have enough troops,

it doesn't have enough kit, end of, simple as.

Still, though, an advanced power,

they clearly do remain as far as we're concerned,

because for all the issues that we've discussed here,

there's a hell of a lot they can still do.

For example, Britain still leads NATO's forward presence in Estonia

through Operation Cabinet,

keeping a proper armoured battle group on Russia's doorstep,

rather than just sending thoughts, prayers to strongly worded letter.

And it also runs the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps,

a serious, deployable NATO headquarters

that can command multinational formations globally.

Then there's Operation Interflex,

where Britain has helped train tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops.

It's not glamorous, admittedly, but it's really important.

Then throw in 16 air assault brigade combat team,

the Ranger Regiment, very capable engineers,

serious logisticians, proper medical support,

high-end intelligence links,

and of course, the SAS,

and you start to see why the British Army still places where it does.

At least it does, for now,

because if there's one thing modern Britain still seems good at,

it's taking stuff we used to be proud of,

and making it progressively sh*t up.

Trains, the NHS, prime ministers,

you name it, the general trend seems to be downhill.

At least Greg's still does a good steak bake.

And with that rant out of the way,

let's get on to a nation traveling in the opposite direction,

ever on up.

Yes, of course, we're talking about one of this channel's favorite countries,

Poland.

And with that, we are done with the advanced powers,

and we can begin looking at the major powers.

These are the ones that, if you remember,

have the power to not just meaningfully participate in a regional war,

but to define one.

Big enough, coherent enough,

industrialized enough, or combat tested enough

to become a central character in any conflict they enter.

We're starting, with one we bet many of you didn't see coming too.

Poland.

I mean, okay, maybe the Europeans in the audience saw this coming,

and maybe some of you long-haul viewers did too,

if you happen to be particularly keen.

But still, the fact remains that Poland is an objectively surprising entry,

really,

because don't forget, 40 years ago, they were behind the Iron Curtain,

so you know what that means.

A neglected comedy economy with a neglected comedy army to match.

But you know how many of the post-Soviet and post-Soviet bloc nations

have had a difficult time of things since securing their independence?

Yeah, not that for Poland, because actually, Poland is booming.

Not doing well for a former communist state, it's booming, properly.

They've gone from rationing and eternal shortages of basic goods

to a trillion-dollar economy, the 21st century's biggest on Earth, in fact.

Taking the 35th spot on the HDI index,

and in what is probably the most impressive soundbite of the lot,

they're projected to overtake the UK and GDP per capita

at purchasing power parity in the next decade.

And here's the thing about the polls.

For those of you not in the know, there are three things they love.

Jabka Stors, vodka, and of course, above-even life itself, Poland.

Complainful on the last one too, if you're not been, it's really worth a visit.

Now for our purposes today though, Poland's economic rise and the unmuscling of

the national

identity, working in duality, has created a peculiar situation.

One where, in practice, the Polish army asks for something, and actually gets

it.

Not without good reason too, because have a look where Poland finds itself on

the globe,

Belarus to the immediate east, Russia to the less immediate east,

Ukraine to the east and down a bit, and Russia to the north in the form of Kal

iningrad.

And no, we didn't misspeak there, Russia to the north as well.

Zoom in on the map, and you'll find a Russian exclave wedged between Poland and

Lithuania.

Long story short, it used to be Konasburg, and as a long Germanic history,

until it was gifted to the Soviets at the end of World War II.

Yet somehow, you never hear Vladimir Putin giving indeterminable history

lectures

about it rightfully belonging to Berlin, do you?

No wonder why.

Anyway, in part because of what we'll hereby be referring to as the Republic of

Konasburg,

Poland has been going shopping of late, not at Shabka, but among the world's

armories.

The armor shopping list is where Poland's transformation becomes undeniable,

because frankly, Warsaw has gone a bit feral here, in all the right ways.

Twenty years ago, for example, it was left over Soviet T-72M1s and the PT-91,

a locally upgraded variant of the same T-72, and a tiny spattering of leopard 2

A4s holding the line.

Now, increasingly, not that.

The property 72s are gone, the PT-91s are getting increasingly fewer in number,

most of both ironically being sent to Ukraine to fight the former masters,

and instead, they're being replaced with Abrams, with 116 of the older M1A1 in

inventory,

as well as 250 of the big sexy M1A2 set V3s being delivered as we speak.

The leopard 2 fleet has swelled as well, with now 105 2A5s and 102PLs on the

books.

But all of them, shockingly, are going to look like utter crap in the near

future,

because Poland has South Korean K2s in the pipeline by any sane ranking one of

the best tanks

currently in production. That's not good for Korea, that's not good for Poland,

that's just good good. Period. You can see why we rave about it too.

120mm L55 smoothbore gun, autoloader, three-man crew, excellent thermal sights,

modern fire control, hunter-killer target engagement, advanced composite armor,

that famously clever hydro-neumatic suspension that lets it kneel, lean,

and abused terrain like most tanks simply can't, and of course, who can forget

trophy,

the hard-kill active protection system that shoots incoming rounds out of the

sky.

The piece de resistance, though, well, that comes out of the business end in

the form of the KSTAM,

a 120mm round fired from the main gun, but instead of just hurling itself

straight into

tank like a normal sabote, it arcs out to as much as eight kilometers, drops

over the target area,

and descends under parachute, scans for arbor with its own senses, and then

fires an explosively

formed penetrator down through the target's roof armour. That's a genuine sci-

fi shit, holy crap.

Not that we know for sure Poland's actually getting its hands on that round.

Seriously, we spent a long time trying to find out, and as close as we came to

an answer,

either way, was Poland's own Ministry of Defense contract language talking ne

bulously about

procuring 120mm ammunition, and a reporting from ZBM rattling off all manner of

different rounds

fired in exercises, but KSTAM, not among them. Round aside, though, how many of

these incredible

machines is Poland getting? Surely I'm more than 100, right? Because say what

you like about an

economic boom and a revitalised national identity, but the UK is only managing

148 of its challenge

of threes, so it'd be utter madness if Poland went beyond that. Right? Well, it

is a bit more than

148, actually. It's 180 of the ones that are made in South Korea, and then

Poland signed on for

another 180 on top of that, with Polish production at Glivitsa coming in from

2028. And in case that

was not impressive enough, Poland has a wider framework ambition for up to 1,

000 K2s in total.

The same pattern shows up across the wider force, too, because Poland is not

just buying a lot,

it is buying a lot of the right things. Take artillery. The AHS crab, an

indigenous 155mm self-propelled

house, so the first dented service in 2016, has been doing well in Ukraine,

while undergoing the

mother of all trials by far, providing accurate, reliable, mobile, and above

all else, deadly far,

thanks to its NATO standard, 155mm L52 gun, K9-derived crack chassis,

topaz digital fire control system, and the fact that it can be firing in under

a minute,

and zooming off again, no sooner than the smoke has wafted free of its breach.

And how many cramps do they have? We'll put it this way. They ordered 96

initially,

then another 48 in 2022, then another 96 in 2024. Not bad, is it? Especially

when you

remember that our go-to should be doing better punching bag this episode,

the UK currently only has 14 of its equivalent system, the Archer.

Then, to sit alongside that, Poland also has South Korean K9s coming in serious

numbers,

212 A1s in the first contract, made in Korea, and another 152 in the second,

with the latter moving toward the PL standard, made in Poland.

And the appeal there is obvious, the K9 is one of the most successful modern

self-propelled

how it's on Earth, tracked, mobile, reliable, widely exported, able to shoot

and scoot,

and crucially available right now, while most of Europe is still dithering

about,

unable to even make a batch of ham sandwiches, without at least 17 working

groups,

and a block-wide referendum that gets blocked by Belgian farmers.

Army aviation makes the point even faster. Poland is replacing its aest

hetically pleasing,

but utterly shagged and clapped out, commie inherited MI24 fleet with 96 ap

aches,

specifically the AH-64E variant. And when they are all procured,

that figure will make Poland the second biggest Apache operator on Earth,

behind only the United

States. From there, the point is simple. Poland is not merely buying kit, it is

building a doctrine

around that kit. Forward defence, mass artillery, layered air defence,

territorial resilience,

and most importantly of all, NATO integration. Because Poland is no longer just

a NATO member

on the Eastern flank, it is becoming THE Eastern flank, the only land route

into the Baltic states,

the main logistical hub for Ukrainian aid trends, the place that America and

allied forces rotate

stock power command, refuel repair and reinforce through. Finally, cherry on

top, don't worry,

we didn't forget it, manpower. Poland's army already numbers north of 220,000,

with ambitions

to reach 300,000 by 2039, and that is just active personnel. Reservists

currently in number 50,000,

with them wanting to hit 200,000 by 2039. Is that the biggest number we've ever

seen?

No, is it a serious number? Yes, and whilst more throughout this episode, have

we seen this number

of troops be so well equipped? No, we haven't, have we? And rather than signing

off this section

with something witty, concise, or diplomatically sterile, let us instead do it

with some frankness.

Well done, Poland. Awesome effort. Now let's export some of that spirit and

NATO's laggards,

like Spain. Shall we?

Next up, what may be a surprise entry considering it's a country that has pacif

ism

written into its constitution. The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force,

they aren't allowed to call it an army officially, see World War II for details,

is a serious force built around two serious problems. The fact that Japan is,

in the grand scheme of

things, isolated in its location, and has nightmarish geography from a defense

perspective,

or what with the nation being made up of 14,125 islands. As a result, Japanese

army, as we'll

call it for the sake of brevity, is not a force built for projection per se,

although it maintains

elements of their capability in its role as a formal NATO partner, but instead,

one built around

defense. Here's the thing though. Defense, when translated into Japanese, doesn

't mean sitting

around on the beaches, saving private round style, and shooting up the Chinese

from hardened static

positions that stretch the entire length of the coastline. No, instead, as per

the defense of

Japan 2022 white paper published by the Ministry of Defense, it means

flexibility. Not waiting for

them on the beaches, but meeting them there, racing in from central positions

when it becomes clear

where they will actually be landing, digging in double quick, and then laying

the firepower down.

It's a frankly genius approach that stops the Japanese taxpayer from pissing

money away on

fortifications down the coast that'll never come under fire, and allows that

same kit that got in

quickly to then be able to get out quickly if the Chinese did manage to get a

foothold and thus

reposition as needed. So, with the basic vibe established, the obvious matter

becomes,

what do they do it with? Well, with 195,111 soldiers as per the funding figures

for the 2026

financial year split between 149,111 regulars and 46,000 reservists.

Certainly not a bad figure, but equally, it isn't exactly blowing our minds

either,

especially given Japan's nominal population of 123 million. Instead, they try

to pair man power

up with technology. That's indeed every nation does. But Japan, in quite the

stereotypical manner,

really goes to town with its efforts. That's dance at Scotty Level 2 with the

Type 20,

a modern, railed-up saltwater-resistant assault rifle, chambered in the exact 5.56 millimeter round

that you'd expect, coming in to replace the older Type 89 at the time of

writing.

Just that saltwater-resistant quality alone shows that someone in an office in

Tokyo really puts

some thought into the matter. And thus, before you get to the fact that

according to most accounts

out there, it's quite a tidy little broomstick, reliable, accurate, and without

stupid design

flaws that make it a pain in the arse to use. The British SA80 and the absolute

genius of how

its recoil assembly will launch itself off over the horizon if the rear trigger

mechanism housing

pin is even 1 millimeter too far depressed during stripping. That same task

specific thinking

carries on through most of Japan's kit too. Small little tweaks and spins here

and there,

just a better suited for fighting on the home front. The Type 16 mobile combat

vehicle is the

obvious example, not a tank, but a roughly 26 ton 8-wheeled armored vehicle

that sports 105

millimeter gun, and can just about hit 100 kilometers per hour on the road if

the driver

bounces the engine off the rev limiter. And the fact that it's not a tank is

actually a good

thing because tanks, or at least proper MBTs, could take a punch, but they're

slow. The Type 16,

what being capable of a 100KPH, is something of a rocket ship as far as armored

vehicles go.

So for racing direct fire around roads, ports, through tunnels over rickety

bridges over high

mountain routes, or just needing as many cannons on that tiny island over there

ASAP, so they need

to be light to be crammed onto boats. It's got you covered with a tank adjacent

cannon in fact.

That shouldn't be taken to mean Japan doesn't do proper MBTs though, because it

absolutely does,

and it does them well. Enter the Type 10. This thing is light at only 44 tons,

perfect for transporting en masse between the islands, and modern in all the

right ways.

A 120mm smoothbore gun, auto-loader, pretty nippy being capable of 70KPH on the

road in both

forward and reverse, hunter-killer fire control, and a proper C4i battlefield

network that

lets tanks share targeting and position data. A K2. It is not. It'd need a hard

kill APS and

some kind of sexy physics spending case damage as in round for that degree of

praise. Still,

a very competent and formidable machine remains all the same. The same logic

keeps turning up.

Type 19 wield 155mm guns. Not the world's best artillery, but road mobile,

light,

easier to scatter, and perfect for shoot and scoot-fars between ports, tunnels,

and island roads.

Type 2420mm, maneuver more to combat vehicles, mobile indirect fire for

precisely the sort of

get there now and make that beach start exploding now sort of job that is the

bread and butter

of Japan's doctrine. Type 25, reconnaissance, and combat vehicles. Same

platform, but specifically

set up for reconnaissance and surveillance instead. AMVR, personnel carriers,

finish-built, nothing too fancy, just a modern APC done right. A by 8 mobility,

proper troop protection, modular design, good road speed, and a path to local

ised production,

which will be handy since Japan is currently planning to acquire 810 of them.

The kit, however, is only half the story. As the real reason Japan earns this

spot is that

its army is a rare thing in this episode. A properly coherent thing built to

provide

a properly coherent answer to a particular problem. Posture shows it clearly.

Japan is not vaguely sprinkling units around the map and hoping for the best as

our earlier

summarisation of their doctrine may have left your thinking. Instead, it is

shifting weight

southwest toward Okinawa to Kyushu, i.e. to exactly where China would be most

likely to try and get

ashore. The 15th Brigade is also being expanded into the 15th Division with a

new infantry regiment,

specifically to enforce the defence architecture in the southwestern region.

And they are also establishing a special operations brigade, because the

Japanese big

hat was at around a few years back, wondering how best to fight on the small

islands and

happened upon the history of the Falklands War, where they found the story of

the British

SAS recapturing south Georgia with no casualties, lessons from which became

immediately apparent.

Logistics shows the same thinking too, because in early 2026 Japan established

a grounds

material command to centrally operate depots and a new logistics school, by

merging ordnance,

quartermaster, transport and logistics training.

And finally, manpower realism.

Japan knows that manpower is always going to be an uphill battle, hence the

introduction

of little things around the edges to make sure they get the most bang from

their bodies.

Remote camp surveillance intended to save about a thousand people's worth of

guard duty

per day, automated Amazon-esque supply warehouses, that sort of thing.

And that is Japan, specialized, mobile, tech-heavy and painfully manpower-aware.

Not a superpower, but competent, and able to lay down some serious defensive

punch if

needed, an archetypal, clear-cut major power.

Yes, your eyes, if you haven't got us on in the backgrounds while you do other

things,

LA there, do not deceive you, we are placing North Korea in the major powers

tier.

Oh, war fronts, how could you say something so bold and brazen, because it's a

North

Korea-accomedy country with a comedy army?

I mean, we've all seen the ends of you, haven't we?

Well, it does that actually not so much now.

Twenty years ago?

Thirty years ago?

Yeah, different matter.

Their economic sphere.

The communist world had all worked collapsed by the time that the 1991 calendar

was being

taken off the wall, and then, on top of that, a few years later, famine.

They don't even try to pretend that it wasn't horrible back then either, or you

DPRK bots

in the comments.

For example, freely admitting on multiple occasions that this famine, the ardu

ous march

as they call it, killed 220,000 people.

The actual numbers believed to be way higher than that, but still point stands.

And of course, the Korean people's army ground force reflected those broader

economic

conditions.

It looked like this, and this.

Now, though, on the down low, Pyongyang is starting to get its sh*t together.

Now, don't get us wrong, South Korea, their economy is not, but policies like

the socialist

enterprise responsibility management system, which introduced very, very light

market-ish

reforms, have started to create actual real growth.

And as a result, no two ways about it, the days of luminous plastic-leaf

camouflage,

and whatever the hell that rifle was even meant to be, are in the past.

Because here, now, this is what the Korean people's army ground force looks

like.

It's a bit better, isn't it?

The issue is that, while that statement is beyond doubt true, we don't know how

much

it is true.

Because would you believe it?

The international press doesn't exactly have free rein in North Korea.

These images could be representative of the wider state of things, or they

could be carefully

curated to tiny glimpses that completely hide a highly rationed, elite unit-

only rollout

of new kit.

We just don't know.

I'm sorry, but anyone who claims to have an authoritative answer either way is

lying

to you.

For clicks.

For what it's worth, though, we are inclined to give North Korea some benefit

of the doubt

here, because when you look at the country more broadly, there is real evidence

of that

improved economic situation, and thus a realistic leap in logic that the Korean

people's army

ground force would also be benefiting, too.

The Pyongyang Metro, for example, where, ten years ago, the rolling stock was

made up of

dusty, second-hand Berlin BVG-class D Dora cars and elderly Chinese-built DK-4

stock that

didn't exactly look cutting-edge.

Now, increasingly, it's domestically built underground electric vehicle No. 1

manufactured

at the Kim Chong Tae, electric locomotive works, and little things like the top

-matrix

signs that can be spotted at multiple stations, they're a little bit different.

Whole districts of Pyongyang are being rebuilt, most notable of which would be

Hwasong District.

New hospitals have been appearing left, right and center, such as Pyongyang

General Hospital

opened in November 2025, Kangdong County Hospital, also opened in November 2025, Kousong City

Hospital opened in December the same year, and Riongang County Hospital also

opened in

December.

Hell, even car ownership is starting to get notable.

Those famous empty boulevards?

In Pyongyang, at least, they're on their way out.

So with all of that said, because literally any take about North Korea, which

isn't,

those guys have, like, one starving soldier with a toy gun, requires an

annoying amount

of prefacing.

But what do these changes mean for the Korean people's army ground force?

Well, let's start off with small arms.

The venerable Type 88, a derivative of the Soviet AK-74, seemingly remains the

service

rifle.

But there have been some changes around the edges, new optics, those helical

magazines,

things like that.

Further, there's also some new gats floating around.

This thing, for one, with optics that look weirdly similar to the South Korean

PBS 11K.

This bullpup thing, for another, with the distinct whiff of the groser about it.

Then for our final example, this, a combi rifle and grenade launcher,

reminiscent of

the failed American objective individual combat weapon program.

Then there's individual armor.

The old steel lid, the copy of the Soviet SSH-40, is rarely seen anymore, and

replacing

it is, and apparently, proper modern ballistic fiber lid, and there's even some

fast-style

ones floating around the special forces.

Live-vision equipment, too, seen all the time, and the plate carriers?

They actually have them now.

And then there's new vehicles, too, with the headline grabber being the "Chonma

2",

the new MBT.

As presented, it's all right as well.

A low angular turret, era-looking armor blocks, smoke launchers, commander and

gunner sights,

twin turret mounted and anti-tank missile tubes, and a hard kill active

protection system.

And we know what you're thinking, such a thing, on a North Korean tank,

nonsense.

It has to be cardboard bolted on for the camera's benefit.

But here it is, working.

This is exactly the issue with analyzing the Korean people's army ground force.

We know basically nothing about it, but just enough that we simply cannot

dismiss them

out of hand as a comedy carb or prop force.

They make sure we know that much, in fact.

The objective individual combat weapon rip-off, for example, is easy to dismiss

that as junk,

isn't it?

And they're prop for parades.

And it could well be, but the APS worked.

Those plate carriers?

Probably just full of plastic, right?

Yeah, might well be.

But the APS worked.

Those night vision goggles?

Could they well just be hollow internally?

Yeah, but the APS worked.

A bit of cool kit alone, however, does not a major power make, hence Romania.

And indeed, the Korean people's army ground force is not just that.

So let's talk about manpower.

We do not actually know for sure, either, naturally, but put it this way.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies gives the figure, from a

nation of

only 26 or so million of 1.3 million, just for the regular component.

Already an insane figure, both as a gross number and proportionally, and it

only gets

more insane still because, you see, North Korea is the single most militarized

society

on Earth.

Because the Korean people's army broadly, not just the ground force on, is the

North

Korean state.

They themselves call it "songoon politics," literally military-first politics.

And under this system, the military administers, and forcibly reserve eyes is

huge swaths

of the economy.

A bit of a simplification, but it works for this discussion.

And as a result, from a population of 26ish million, again, don't forget North

Korea

has around 6.3 million reservists, literally a quarter of the entire population

underarms

one way or another.

Be it in the traditional sense of giving up your weekends to throw some camo on

and reserve,

as with the so-called reserve military training units, or through the worker

peasant red guard.

That's a kind of vague and nebulous civil defence organisation.

Frankly, we could end the chapter there as far as we're concerned, truly insane

numbers,

and seemingly kit, which is getting ever less.

But we shot, because there's more to discuss here, namely artillery.

Because South Korea's 2022 defence white paper concluded that the North had

around

8,800 conventional artillery systems and 5,500 multiple rocket launchers.

Sounds bad enough.

Well, hold that thought, because according to Rand, a US non-profit policy

research corporation,

North Korea maintains nearly 8,000 artillery systems within range of major

population centres.

The clever swords have modelled the damage they would cause in the opening salv

os of

a second Korean war, as, well, with Rand again running 5 artillery strike

scenarios in 2020.

They got casualty estimates ranging from 4,500 to 200,000 depending on target

and duration,

all for maximum an hour of firing.

So then, hopefully, now, we don't look entirely mad for where we've placed them.

Because yes, we don't know if their new kit is any good, how much of it is even

out there,

or even how much of it is even real, but one way or another, they are getting

new kit.

And it's going to the most militarised, most fortified nation on earth, a

nation that,

if it had to, could also put 7 million troops into the fray, in shockingly

short order.

So yeah, that does sound like a major power to us.

Okay, I haven't just done North Korea the next logical step is South Korea, not

just

for thematic reasons either, they genuinely are, in all likelihood, the next

step up from

their Korean neighbours anyway.

Why?

Well, in a nutshell, think of the Republic of Korea Army, that being the South

's one,

just to be clear, as Japan, but with DMZ anxiety and everything that comes

there from.

Because they have the same basic stuff going on, they're rich, technologically

serious,

built around one obvious enemy, built around a defensive first doctrine, and

have a strong

penchant for indigenous kit, over just buying whatever Uncle Sam is peddling.

But where is Japan has them East China Sea's worth of breathing room, South

Korea has four

kilometres worth, and their enemy is staring at them through binoculars, and

there's millions

of them, and they're wearing ever more fancy kits.

Because say what you like, but the latter situation is just a smidge more

immediate

than the former, isn't it?

If you remember too, it isn't just the actual troops at the border, as much as

they're very

much the visible face of the situation, because Seoul is in artillery range, 60

kilometres

close in fact, since we didn't give you a figure in the last chapter.

And let's contextualise that number.

Remember the opening stages of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when the Russians

dived

for Kyiv for Belarus, and got the outlying settlements scarily quickly, even

with their

bungled invasion and collapsing logistics?

Well yeah, Kyiv is around 90 kilometres from the Belarusian border.

Therefore, even if our benefit of the doubt analysis of the Korean People's

Army ends

up being completely wrong, and it does in fact turn out to be a comedy army

with parade

props, pretend-kin tanks, and night-vision goggles made of painted toilet roll

tubes,

there's still reason to be rather concerned.

And that of course is before we consider the 6,000 North Korean artillery

systems believed

to be in range of major population centres, and believed to be capable

depending on target

and duration, of causing perhaps hundreds of thousands of casualties in the

first hour

of a war.

No wonder then that South Korea has put on a good showing with its army,

because it has

to.

By way of specifics, though, let's begin with manpower.

And yes, sure enough, it's got more than Japan.

More than 100,000 more, in fact, as the South Korean Army currently boasts 324,

000 regular

troops as of July 2025 and 2.65 million reservists.

However, we do need some context on those figures.

Because firstly, those reservists are mostly people who've done their national

service

and are just still on the books to be called up.

They do get reserve training, but it is periodic annual mobilization training,

off discharge,

to keep their basic skills fresh, not a proper giving up their weekends to run

around the

woods in some camo, part-time army sort of thing.

South Korea does have the latter type, though, the standby reserve, as they

call it, and

it's 3,500 strong, a weirdly small force, all things considered.

The standby reserve element isn't the only bit that small either, at least as

far as

sole is concerned.

Because to them, their 324,000 strong body of full-time soldiers is small to

the point

of low-key being an ever-worsening national crisis.

Because, you see, they had 429,000 in 2019, and now, even using conscription,

as South

Korea indeed does, there just aren't enough people coming through the pipeline

to fill

the uniforms.

The reason?

Because South Korea's birth rate has been an absolute freefall since the 1970s.

Of course, the government is drawing all manner of schemes to get that number

up, and not

solely for military reasons either, but in the meantime, how are they coping?

Well, what they're doing is putting their industrial weight to good use.

Because South Korea has money, serious money, not things used to be genuinely

hellish, and

now we've got a few bucks sort of thing like North Korea, but they've got well-

established,

banked, and compounded money.

Thus, their kit became really fancy, and locally made, of course.

Take tanks as our ever-dependable measuring stick.

Rather, the South Korean K2 that we gushed over when discussing Poland, well,

guess which

MBT South Korea uses?

Yeah, no prizes for this one.

Current numbers remain modest, though, with only 260 of them currently in

inventory, and

eventual plans were a feat of 410 by 2028, so instead, the actual mainstay of

the fleet

at present is the K1 family, around 1500 K1, K1E1, K1A1, and K1A2 variants.

Older and worse than the K2?

Yes, obviously.

Still competitive enough tanks?

105mm, 120mm guns depending on variant, modernised fire control, thermal sites,

domestic upgrade

pathways, and enough numbers that the South Korean army can actually take mass-

arm tactics

seriously.

So, yeah, pretty good.

And then there's the K21 IFV, tracked amphibious, and armed with a 40mm cannon,

plus anti-tank

missiles.

The fact it's amphibious is more pertinent than you may first think, because

South Korea

is full of rivers, reservoirs, broken ground, and wet gap problems.

So an infantry fighting vehicle that can swim, keep up with armour, shred the

kind of older

vehicles North Korea has by the shed load, and is commonly available thanks to

466 units

having been procured, well, yeah, that's really good.

Like their estranged northern siblings, too, the South Korean army goes hard on

artillery.

We already know the K9.

Having met it when discussing Vietnam and Poland, and thus already know it to

be a proven, workmen

like self-propelled 155mm howitzer, and South Korea has somewhere in the region

of a thousand

of them.

Poland, if you recall, only had 364, including under-livered orders.

Further still, they also have 450K-10s, a rather natty little ammunition resupp

ly vehicle

designed to keep the K9s topped up under enemy fire.

Frankly, this pairing alone hugely ups the strategic value of the regular K9,

because

outwardly average it may be, but when it can be topped up without having to

withdraw to

a safe zone, well, big deal.

And this is to say nothing of towed systems, too, with South Korea having

literally thousands

more KM101A1s, M114s, and KH179s.

Much of this stuff is older, sure, but it is still a vast pool of extra tubes,

handy given

the number of troops Pyongyang would be putting into the field.

Then there's the matter of indigenization, because, as we say, a lot of South

Korean

kit is South Korean mate.

We've already explicitly said that the K9 and K2 are, of course, but further,

just

from what we've already discussed, so is the K1, K10, K21, and KH179, although

given

the nomenclature, we suspect that a fair few of you have already tweaked on to

the fact

that those were Korean-made, did the K give it away.

And we can keep going, too, because zoom out, and there's even more.

Their service rifle, also called the K2, by the way, South Korean-made, they're

shined

in UK-15, like machine gun.

Yeah, it's South Korean-made, their K808 and K806 wheeled APCs, South Korean-

made, their

K30 short-range air defense gun/missile system, made in Japan.

No, no, that one's also South Korean-made, their K600 Rhino Combat Engineer

Vehicle South

Korean-made.

And while we've only touched on the importance of indigenous production in

passing thus far,

Algeria's import problems, being the obvious earlier example, rest assured, it

is a really,

really big deal.

Because in a major war, or even just in its prelude, overseas supply routes

tend to just

stop.

Because every nation immediately turns to prioritize its own survival over that

of its friends.

And this brings us back to our overall theme for South Korea, because yes,

Japan, too,

is a nation that massively prioritizes indigenous production.

For example, the Type 10, made by Mitsubishi, which we've already met, the

Subaru UH-2

Utility Helicopter, which we haven't already met, the Kawasaki OH-1 Observation

Helicopter,

the Toyota Mega Cruiser, the Toshiba Type 81 surface-to-air missile system.

All told, the Republic of Korea Army has Japan's defensive seriousness, but

with more mass,

more tubes, more urgency, and as we have seen, more of basically everything.

Like we say, Japan, but more, that South Korea.

What do you get?

Like South Korea, i.e., a wealthy, technologically serious nation with a huge

conscription-based

manpower pool, but your father-starting pistol on its existential conflict.

What you get is Israel.

Not that said existential conflicts got off to a particularly glorious start

for them to

be quite frank, in fact, if you recall, Hamas Loki made the Israeli ground

forces the land

arm of the Israeli Defense Force look like a bunch of clowns back on October 7,

2023.

This failed.

Israel had Hamas's broad invasion plans and years of evidence that they were

rehearsing

for it, but remained wedded to the belief that Hamas had been deterred.

Warning systems failed.

Suspicious activity on the night itself, including Hamas operatives switching

on to

Israeli mobile networks, was noticed, then explained away and excuses made

instead of

triggering mobilization.

Border defenses failed.

Drones blinded cameras and weapons stations, while explosives and bulldozers

opened more

than 60 attack routes through a barrier designed to face, at worst, around 8.

Local command failed.

The guards' division was overrun, commanders were killed or cut off, key road

junctions

were seized, and reinforcements arrived without a reliable picture of where

they were needed.

And as a result of that cacophony of failure, for nearly 24 hours, an estimated

6,000 Hamas-led

attackers operated across the near Gaza region with relative impunity, killing

an estimated

1,195 people, as per the latest figures published by Human Rights Watch, with a

further

251 abducted and taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages, some of whom later died.

Normally, such a humiliation would likely see us shoving a nation way down on

our list.

But for Israel, it's now become undeniably apparent that October 7th was but a

blip.

They had a long history of punching above their way before then, and now, at

risk of

rather understating the matter, it's safe to say that the shoo is on the other

foot,

isn't it?

And in no small part, that turnaround is because of numbers, because, yes,

Israel may

only have a population of 10.2 million people, which is pretty tiny, but the

Israeli ground

forces has a 126,000 strong active component and a 400,000 or so strong reserve

arm, and

within 48 hours, 300,000 of them had not been called up, but were on base ready

to go.

For a bit of wider context, when we talk about reservists here, we're talking

about

people who have completed full-time conscript service, then been assigned to

establish reserve

formations, often alongside the exact same commanders, crews, and specialists

that they

trained with during their full-time service.

In peacetime, units are recalled periodically for refresher training and

operational duty,

and during war, an emergency to starve eight order bypasses the timetable and

sends them

directly to their unit's mobilization center where weapons, vehicles, and

stored equipment

are issued, exactly as happened on October 7th.

But what of the system Israel's soldiers, be they full or part timers, plug

into?

Well, it's a bit of all right, to be honest.

Their go-to MBT, for example, is this, the Makava, specifically the Mark IV, in

a scattering

of sub-variance, and if there was any tank on Earth, that in our opinion could

give the

beautiful, ordained by God himself, K2, a run for its money, it is this one.

A lot of it is much of a muchness, 120mm smooth, more gun, thick, composite

armor, blah, blah,

but a lot of it is all the more unique, room for a passenger compliment of six

or so if

they dumped some of the spare rounds, that 120mm gun being ever so shorter than

that

which you'll see on some other top shelf MBTs, and the trophy active protection

system

pretty much as standard, not as a yes, we've given it to five of them, and we

're hoping

the whole lot will have it sometime before the century is up sort of deal, and

all of

that makes the Makava perfect for Israel, takes the comparatively short gun,

normally

as with most things in life longer is better, but when odds are, Israel is

going to be going

westward into Gaza or northwards into Lebanon, both of them highly urbanised

areas, suddenly,

actually not getting your barrel snagged on urban flotsam is way more important

than being

able to snipe a T55 at a bajillion kilometres, same with a passenger compliment, normally

it'd be downright unhinged to compromise the core design to squeeze a few bonus

bodies

in, but when your enemy is barely going to have any armour, suddenly doing so

and making

it a bit taller to squeeze them in isn't such a bad idea, as now you have an

emergency

battlefield ambulance or an in a pinch infantry fighting vehicle if needed, and

with trophy,

well, hard kill APS is always a good thing to have, but when you're going to be

going

into Gaza, where every single pile of rubble or alley you could be hiding

someone packing

an RPG, suddenly it's a very good thing to have, in fact the Makava is, as MBT

so often

are, representative of the entire wider situation, in this instance,

representing a force insanely

focused on how its wars are actually going to be fought, not ignoring

conventional war

entirely, but specialising heavily in the urban, subterranean and hybrid

warfare Israel

repeatedly finds itself fighting.

As for what that idea looks like when it's put into practice, it looks like a

full ecosystem

of hyper-specialists, yahalom combat engineers for breaching, demolition, and

bomb disposal,

yahalom's SMOR teams used specifically for finding, mapping, and destroying

underground

routes, archets, dog units, sent ahead to sniff out explosives, weapons, hidden

fighters

and tunnel entrances before infantry get the chance to blunder into them, due

to an undercover

counter-terror operators, often wearing plain clothes, the blend into urban

areas before

conducting arrests, raids, and targeted attacks, egos, commandos for guerrilla

and anti-griller

warfare, as well as camouflage and close combat in complex terrain,

particularly along Israel's

northern frontier, Israeli tactics are just as specialised too, breaching

through walls

rather than booby trap doors, dogs and robots going in before people, isolating

and cutting

off entire city blocks quickly, thereby carving up nasty urban sprawls into

small manageable

chunks whose defenders cannot help one another, closing the circle, as they

call it, finding

the target, passing the location down the chain, assigning the nearest suitable

weapon, killing

the target, all done at a lightning pace before it can move, and all of that,

the tactics,

the specialists, even the Makava, as a stand-in representative for the high

quality of Israeli

gear, is not some rare, only wheel it out for the camera's capability either,

it is embedded

into the wider ground forces as a matter of course, but the proof, as they say

is in

the pudding, and Israel's, however badly occurred on October 7th, has since

come out

with a hell of a lot more substance than many expected, first, the immediate

reversal, as

we have already said, the October 7th attack itself had been broken in around

24 hours,

but there was a bit more to the process than just the initial defence, border

communities

had to be swept and locked down, holdouts had to be dealt with, and the Gaza

envelope

had not just to be retaken, but re-fortified and re-stabilised.

That wider process, it's hard to put an exact date on when it was done, because

the various

objectives were met at different times, but still, we think it's fair to call

it done

by the 12th of October, when the last recorded firefight inside Israel took

place.

Then came the first offensive, over the border, into northern Gaza, en masse,

encircling Gaza

City and seizing an east-west axis south of it that would become the "Netsareem

Corridor",

then closing the circle to the north, block by block, district by district.

From there, the campaign rolled south, the 98th Division took the lead in

pushing through

Khan Eunice, Hamas's southern stronghold, while the 162nd Division later pushed

into

Rafah, seizing the crossing and taking control of the Philadelphia Corridor

along the Egyptian

border.

Around Rafah in particular, the war went underground, border tunnels, weapons

stores,

command posts, rocket positions, all of them were prime real estate for the

defenders,

and all of them, at least they were identified, were dealt with.

The slow, methodical tempo continued, and by the war's first anniversary, the

IDF was

claiming more than 40,000 targets had been struck, 4,700 tunnel shafts have

been located,

and around 1,000 rocket launching positions have been destroyed.

Now, look, we obviously need to caveat all of this with the fact that

operations in Gaza

have been "controversial", which seems like too light of a word.

Civilian casualties have been notable, and even by their own standards, the

ground forces

have made horrific mistakes, such as the time they shot and killed three

escaped Israeli

hostages who were waving a makeshift white flag.

Then there's the fact that, despite Gaza being leveled, Hamas as an

organization still

exists.

And all of this is before we even touch on the fiasco that was the Iran war.

But the point of these ranking is not to give gold stars to the nicest milit

aries, it is

to try and give an objective overview of which militaries are best at doing the

things they

are intended to do, defending the homeland and killing enemies.

And by those standards, the Israeli ground forces cannot be called anything but

a well-oiled

war machine.

Because Israel was catastrophically surprised by October 7th, absorbed the blow, mobilized

at an insane speed, retook its border, invaded Gaza, gutted Hamas' battalion

structure,

mauled its tunnel network, killed much of its leadership, and operated across

multiple

fronts while doing so, all while invading Lebanon in October 2024.

That's why we placed it above South Korea.

Seoul's army may be bigger, but Israel's has actually been tested.

And now for another army that has been tested in the field with results that

surprised everyone.

Not least, the former colonizer, who was stupid enough to invade it.

And so we get to our final major power, Ukraine.

And they are here at the top of tier one for a simple reason, that they have

become masters

of that most essential martial function, killing.

Because let's not do ourselves the intellectual disservice of pretending

anything to the country.

Killing is fundamentally what an army exists to do.

The uniforms, the medals, the marching, the universal, see the world and make

friends

for life tagline all of it is secondary to and in support of that one core task, death.

And the Ukrainian ground forces, thanks to a mix of a hideously bungled initial

Russian

invasion, buying them some civilization-saving breathing space, plenty of

foreign assistance.

And of course, sheer bloody-minded determination and invention on a national

scale, they have

become the most lethal army on earth.

Not the biggest, not the richest, not the most polished and certainly not the

most self-sufficient.

But the most dangerous?

Right now?

Yeah.

That civilization-saving breathing space point matters too, because we really

want to stress

just how quickly the current state of affairs came about.

As in 2014, when Russia, under the castle's belly of a very questionable

referendum simply

marched into Crimea and took it, there was flatly nothing that the Ukrainian

army

could do by way of hard power to stop them.

Its kit was still largely Soviet leftovers.

It had about five dudes in uniform,

and its command had been heavily infiltrated

by Russian sympathizers.

Hell even in 2022, after eight years of preparation,

knowing that an escalation of the conflict

was a matter of when and not if,

they still weren't truly ready.

They had better leadership,

they were better motivated and better equipped, certainly.

But they were still desperately short of modern armor,

top-shelf air defense systems,

modern long-range artillery pieces,

and are properly established and efficient kill chain.

But the Russians dropped the bag and messed it up, didn't they?

Their goal for us swooped down on the capital,

felt flat on its face.

The logistics were terrible, the equipment was terrible,

and all of this bit them on the arse so much

that they didn't reach the heart of Kiev,

they were stopped and turned around in the outlying towns.

That the reformed Ukrainian army could deal with, just.

And now, having put that breathing space to great use,

the Ukrainian army has transformed again,

not into something perfect, mind you,

God knows they are far from being that.

The kit, for example, is a hodgepodge of whatever the hell

they could scrape the cash together for,

and whatever the wider world wanted to donate.

But the plumbing it's all plugged into,

that is a pure, refined, pointed, killing ecosystem.

Drones are a huge part of it,

probably won't come as much of a shock to hear that.

The little ones too, the FPV and small UAS type ones

that have become synonymous with the Ukrainians at this point,

were barely a thing pre-2022.

ISIS, of all people, trailblazed them a bit,

then Azerbaijan had a play in the Nagorno-Karabakh War,

but it wasn't until the Russians went into Ukraine

that small drones went industrial.

Now, they are an industry.

Ukraine's own Ministry of Defense says they received

more than three million FPV drones in 2025 alone,

up two and a half times from the previous year's figure.

Many of them, of course, come from abroad,

such as the switchblade, loitering,

ammunition, and Phoenix Ghost Tactical UAV.

But less are appreciated,

is the absurd lengths Ukraine goes to

in order to churn them out domestically.

Industrial enterprises of any size,

be they whopping great fume-churning factories,

or Uncle Vassol's tyre repair shop,

500 in all, all having been turned into drone manufacturers.

The result, Ukrainian troops now engage

more than 2,000 targets a day,

with drones being a part of the kill chain

for basically every single one of them.

The doctrinal shift goes further,

because Ukraine didn't just get a buggerload of drones

and bolt them onto existing doctrine.

It rewrote doctrine around them,

recognizing them for the war-changing bits of kit

that they were no sooner than the Russian boots

stepped over the Belarusian border.

I mean, there's a reason the Gulf nation scrambled

in the wake of the Iran war to sign drone tech deals

with the Ukrainians, and it wasn't out of sympathy.

Just look at how Ukraine's drone forces have evolved.

The 414th separate regiment was reformed

as the 414th unmanned strike aviation brigade in 2024,

and up to 10,000 strong detachment,

tasked solely with hunting the Russians via joystick.

That same year too, the unmanned systems forces

were established, a totally separate branch,

just for drones, and the first of its type ever made

with land, aerial, and sea-based unmanned systems

all coming under its purview.

Layered onto that is Delta,

a NATO-standard battlefield management

and situational awareness system

that came online in August 2022,

had the total rollout of drones

amongst all levels of combatants, infantrymen,

and tankers using DJI mavics, logistics using rattle aces,

all of them common as a helmet or a rifle.

And speaking of rifles, what a great segue

into us clarifying that despite all of that effort,

drones are still just a part of the Ukrainian kill chain,

not its entirety.

They are important enough to have a whole branch

dedicated to them, yeah.

But you'll also still need a dude with a rifle

to storm a trench and unload a mag or two into the invaders,

an MBD to snipe something solid from three kilometers away,

and of course, artillery to make things

that are out of the line of sight blow up.

And that last point in particular matters,

because for all the high-tech cutting-edge kit

and pioneering tactics,

the war in Ukraine is still an artillery war,

with Ukraine typically firing somewhere

between two and 7,000 rounds a day,

depending on supply and strategic needs.

From that however, do not picture World War I

coded mass blasting of any troops,

because sure, Ukraine goes through a lot of rounds,

but they use them more as a hammer,

able to bring down precise and pointed blows on targets

where drones lack raw punching power,

rather than as a volleyed and imprecise bludgeon.

In particular, we're talking about heavily dug

in defensive positions, fortified command posts,

buried drone pilot hideouts and armored vehicles even.

They're the kind of target that artillery

tends to be used on.

And then there's mines, a truly ghastly instrument,

certainly, but also a very effective instrument,

if you want to dictate the enemy's movement,

or just simply make sure that they're down a few men

by the time they go within shooting range.

The headline model is the Soviet TM62 series, it is old,

but it's effective.

It's a big, dumb, brutally effective anti-vehicle blast mine,

usually carrying about six and a half

to seven and a half kilos of explosive

that's triggered by pressure or magnetic influence.

Then comes the directional fragmentation types,

like the Mon-50 and Mon-90,

i.e. the Easter block version of the claymore,

fired by wire or trip bar across trenches,

tree lines and approaches,

and used on squishy human beings

rather than hammered arm and plating.

That's enough of the mine points,

they have a lot of them and they put them to good use.

And now let's talk about tanks.

This is gonna take some explaining too,

because yes, we know it's a subjective matter,

but if you ask us the reports on their demise

have been greatly exaggerated,

because actually what the Ukrainians have found

is that yes, despite the rapidly evolving nature

of the battlefield, they absolutely still have a place

in the kill chain, just a new fast board shaped one.

For example, grand sweeping strategic actions

and sharp concentrated spear tips during grand offensives,

you do not see Ukraine using them for that.

And in no small part, this is due to a lack of numbers,

because shockingly, Ukraine is only believed

to have in the region of around 1,200 or so in inventory

at any given time, with a further 1,424 documented

as having been lost per the current tallies.

Instead then, they get used largely as self-propelled artillery.

A Ukrainian tech will creep out from cover

under drone overwatch and with plenty of infantry support,

put a few rounds into something solid and immovable,

then a reverse and get the hell out of there

before every Russian drone operator

and artillery commander in the area

starts scrambling to counter-attack.

Notice to that we didn't mention tank contact combat there.

That wasn't an oversight on our part either.

It just doesn't really happen, at least not often.

And when it does, it's usually brief, it's usually ugly.

For example, in December 2022, near Novoseltkir, Lajansk,

a Ukrainian T-64BV from the 92nd Mechanized Brigade

drove straight down a road at a Russian T-72B

and killed it with a single long distance shot.

The Russian vehicle cooking off almost immediately.

That was it.

Over before it had even really begun.

Then in September 2023, between Dutcheny

and Novosekir Kamyanka in Hessen,

another Ukrainian T-64BV,

this time from the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade,

got into a head row distance knife fight

with a Russian T-72B3 and put it down at close range.

And such incidents really are about as intense

as the tank contact combat ever gets.

So yeah, tank duels do happen, but they are rare,

they are quick, and they're usually decided

by whoever sees, aims, and fires first.

So that in summary is how the Ukrainian army

made itself lethal.

It sees, it shares, and it strikes.

There is a caveat, however,

a glaring elephant in the room, and that's manpower.

More specifically, a lack thereof.

To be clear, this was always going to be an issue for Ukraine.

It had a population of around 52 million at independence.

And now, after nearly 35 years of peacetime emigration,

wartime refugee outflows, a collapsing birth rate,

territorial losses, and of course, war debt,

it's now believed that somewhere between 22 to 29 million people.

The former figure, 22, coming from Ukrainian

social policy minister Denis Ellutian

and the latter from the Petuka Institute of Demography.

And population collapse of that magnitude

when you're locked in the war of attrition is very bad.

A 2026 OSW piece titled Ukraine's Mobilization Crisis,

the new minister, all challenges.

The OSW being a Polish think tank that specializes

in Eastern European affairs,

or went deep into exactly how bad and painted the picture

of an army that is so short on manpower

that it is starting to fray at the seams.

Crucially too, they also state that, yes,

the Ukrainian army currently stands at about 880,000 strong,

but they also point out that Ukraine has apt to rotate

exhausted and destroyed units out, train new recruits,

find time for refit and reconstitution,

and all manner of other things, all of which means

that they don't literally have nearly 900,000 people

tangling with the Russians at any time.

Ukraine simply put then, is running out of bodies

to put into uniforms, but that's a future concern.

And one, ultimately, there has no bearing

on Ukraine's placing in the tier list.

Because here, now, the Ukrainian army remains utterly lethal.

Undeniably, the top of the major powers tier

as far as we're concerned.

At the time of recording, they're even advancing

on the battlefield for the first time in a while,

while also devastating Russian oil production

with serious long-range strikes.

While this is a war that is swung back and forth

between Kiev and Moscow multiple times before,

it's really saying something about Ukraine's drone price,

that an undermanned force with a recruitment problem

is holding back the nation that historically relied

on overwhelming manpower to win wars.

Anyway, since we're at the end of this tier,

let's also give a shout out to Turkey, France, Pakistan,

and Germany, all of them deserving a place here,

but just not having made the cut due to time constraints.

But briefly, Turkey, NATO-scale manpower,

serious industry, and recent combat experience.

France, compact, deployable, high-end,

and industrially self-sufficient.

Pakistan, huge, India-focused, heavily armed,

and battle-hardened.

Germany, rich, industrially deep,

and central to NATO's European spine,

if flirting with some UK parallel issues here and there.

So apologies to all the Turks,

Frenchmen, Pakistanis, and Germans in the audience.

I look forward to your calm reaction

in the comments to your nation being left off the main list.

And with that said, we can now look forward toward the giants.

As a bonus too, since there are so few of them,

we can actually look at all of them,

rather than just cherry-picking us,

spread of the most interesting ones

as we've been doing before now.

The first of the giants is the Russian army.

And actually, it's smaller than you might imagine.

Put it this way, an army always imagined

as being nebulously large from a nation

with a nominal population of just over 143 million

that is currently entangled

in an all-hands-on-deck total war in Ukraine,

that army is around 550,000 strong

as per the International Institute

for Strategic Studies 2025 estimate.

And admit it, that is a smaller number

than you expected, isn't it?

Hell, it's smaller than the Ukrainian army.

Smaller than expected, however,

does not mean small as a gross,

because after all, 550,000 soldiers

is still roughly the entire population of Malta in uniform.

It's around five times the size of the entire British army,

and it is still a force bigger than almost every other one

that we've discussed up to this point.

Oh, with the only trial-liers being North Korea and Vietnam.

Though really, it's not so much

that the Russian army has 550,000 soldiers,

it's that it has 550,000 soldiers left.

Because most authoritative open-source estimates,

the Ukrainian and British MODs,

as well as think tanks like the Center for Strategic

and International Studies,

all place Russian casualties in Ukraine

at around the 1.2 to 1.3 million mark by early 2026.

Ukraine, by contrast, is typically believed

to have suffered somewhere in the region of 500 to 600,000.

And you know what?

Those casualties are exactly why Russia sneaks in

as a giant, just.

It sounds weird, we know, but think of it like this.

We know that its war machine is quite evidently

not slick, elegant, or efficient, certainly.

But how many armies could absorb such losses

without totally collapsing?

Not many at all, we suspect is the answer there.

Clearly, then, the Russian army has something going on,

something that allows it to absorb catastrophic losses,

regenerate force, and keep grinding away

long after any normal army would have collapsed.

That said, though, let us be crystal clear

about something vital.

Russia has not performed well in Ukraine.

Moscow was going for a lightning-fast decapitation campaign

back in February 2022.

A giant armored thrust in from Belarus,

bounced straight for the temptingly close

to the border capital of Kiev,

grabbing hostile airport in the outskirts

to establish an air bridge too,

all the while troops poured into the Donbass

and Southern Ukraine to begin taking giant visible

morale-crushing chunks out of the map.

Except that didn't happen, did it?

Postumel, having been taken in short order

by crack V-D-V paratroopers,

was retaken in a matter of hours,

and by reservists, not even by a particularly shiny

or fancy part of the Ukrainian army.

But the larger Kiev front meanwhile collapsed

and came to a dead halt around 150 kilometers

from the border, barely into the capital's

outlying towns before eventually pulling back

on the 29th of March when the situation became untenable.

Only in the east did the Russians have any success,

taking Maripol on the 20th of May,

and then making some further gains,

only for their advanced grind to a halt shortly after.

And there were many reasons for this failure.

But for this ranking, we're far more interested

in what came next.

In how the Russian army adapted from its humiliation

and rebuilt, not into the fast,

professional NATO-equivalent force,

its propaganda had pretended it was,

and that many believed,

but into something much cruder and much harder to kill,

an attritional machine built around mast artillery,

layered minefields, electronic warfare,

drones, glide bombs, fortified lines,

and the simple willingness to spend men and metal

at a rate that would just politically destroy most states.

And while Moscow never came out

and cleanly said words to the effective,

well, that's gotta be shh.

As a bit lads, sorry for a rethink.

You can plainly see the pivot in thinking

and how events played out.

On the 25th of March, 2022, for example,

seven days before the final withdrawal from the Kiev front,

Colonel-General Sergey Rudskoy, then first deputy chief

of the general staff of the Russian armed forces,

announced that overall the main tasks

of the first stage of the operation have been completed.

And that from then on,

the goal would be to concentrate the main efforts

on achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbas.

And sure enough,

given the aforementioned withdrawal from Kiev,

that's exactly what happened.

Next came the mobilizations.

Not one clean, conscript everyone button that was pushed,

at least to the time of writing,

but a series of ever-escalating moves to,

by one way or another, just get more manpower.

The first came in July, 2022,

when Russia began forming regional volunteer battalions,

85 planned in all, one for federal subject,

usually around 400 men each,

for a hoped for 34,000 extra troops.

More than 30 regions were recruiting by August

with roughly 40 units being formed,

no experience needed either,

because don't worry,

full training would be provided a whopping 30 days worth.

Although for what it's worth,

sign up bonuses of 200,000 rubles,

as well as a day rate of 2,000 rubles a day,

that's around $3,400 and $34 US dollars respectively,

were offered to try and bait more volunteers in.

So what a treat by yourself, something nice.

At the same time came prisoner recruitment,

Wagner pipelines, and finally the big one,

the partial mobilization announced on the 21st of September,

with Sergei Shuygu, then the defence minister,

saying 300,000 reservists would be called up.

And while this desperate claw for manpower,

did not stop there, for us today, if functionally does,

because the transformation was complete.

From a supposedly modern, fast-moving, professional army,

that expected to collapse Ukraine through shock and speed,

into a mass manpower, a traditional war machine,

built to bleed.

Logistics had to transform too, of course, partly due

to the vast material demands that came

with having an army designed to suffer,

and partly because the Russian army's logistics

were, well, pretty sh...

They could get stuff to the border, no problemo,

rail convoys, vehicle parks, exercise camps,

and rear area kit all stacked up and Belarus,

under the fig leaf of Union Resolve,

a joint Russia-Bella Russian exercise

that served as the ruse for moving kit

and troops to the border.

But then, the second they stepped foot into Ukraine,

the whole system just revealed itself

to have no operational depths at all.

Put it this way, the advance on Kyiv got as far as here.

And yes, that exact spot.

Oh, it's been far longer than we ought to have checking

with the Kemarovo, a paramilitary policing detachment,

basically reaching the points on the morning

of the 25th of February, 2022 at about 8.12 a.m.,

before being sent packing that same morning

by a Ukrainian bridge ambush.

Lead vehicle blown, BTR hit, and the rest chewed up

by machine guns and mortars in a fatal funnel.

And you want to know something else about that spot?

It's roughly 150 kilometers from the Bella Russian border

as the road goes, i.e., a roughly 300 kilometer round trip,

i.e., about what you would expect most Russian logistics

vehicles to get out of a single tank of juice.

Sure, the Euro 4320 and Kemars 5350 are theoretically capable

of more, as per their spec sheet.

But in the real world, in real war,

so much of that range disappears thanks to idling,

mud, detours, or flooring the pedal

because Ukraine is launching artillery at you.

And we don't believe that it's a coincidence

that their advance stalled at that point either.

So important are logistics, because think about it.

If the Russians had even just one more layer

in their logistical snowball,

the exponentially growing layers of stuff you need

in the supply chain to get material

into an ever longer line of communication,

they could have had more blokes on that bridge.

And perhaps they'd have pushed through.

A few more and maybe they'd have had mass sufficient

to properly penetrate Kiev.

A few more again and perhaps even the government building.

So how did they fix logistics then?

Well, actually, that's the interesting part.

They didn't, not properly anyway,

because the problem was just too big to solve

in the middle of a war.

So instead they did the next best thing they gave up on Kiev

and narrowed the war to just the east,

because there rail could be depended upon

to do the heavy lifting again.

Huge hubs were established in Belgorod,

Valuki, Rostov, Jankoy, and Melitopole.

Trains to the rear trucks for the shorter final hop.

Then where they could improve without that framework,

here and there they did.

Depose push 70 to 80 kilometers back

after high mass started deleting them.

Giant ammo parks split into smaller caches,

stocks hidden in woods, factories and civilian yards,

and bridges patched with pontoons, fairies and barges.

On the supply side though, they did turn things around.

Hugely so in fact.

The 2023 State Defense Order,

the annual State Procurement Plan for weapons,

ammunition, equipment and defense services

was pushed up by nearly one and a half times.

Civilian plants were dragged into subcontracting

and the repair side expanded too,

with new armored repair plants ordered

at Ram and Skuyer and Kamensk Shatinsky.

So broken tanks of trucks could be patched

rather than simply abandoned and replaced

from an ever diminishing stock of Soviet surplus.

Existing giants like Urav and Gonsavot

and Kurgen Mashtavot were shoved onto a war footing as well,

moving to squeeze in extra shifts

and thus turning out and refurbishing T702s, T80s, D90Ms,

BMDs and BMDs at a tempo not seen

since the days of the Soviet Union.

Shell output climbed too,

with 152 millimeter production encompassing types

such as the 300F45 high explosive fragmentation type

and the 300F64 high explosive type

rising from an already not insignificant quarter million

in 2022 to roughly one million in 2023

and 1.3 million in 2024 and so on and so forth.

Then throw in the North Korean ammunition deals,

specifically for 152 millimeter, 152D

high explosive fragmentation type rounds,

identifiable from images such as this

and you can see plainly.

Yeah, it's a bit mental,

just how much they increased shell supply

and that's before we even get on to drones.

Now look, if you follow the Ukraine war,

coverage of Russian prowess tends to swing between.

- You foolish westerners, Russia is barely getting started,

just wait till the Kremlin really rolls into action

in year five of this war.

- And also, a comedy drug Russian soldiers

could have with a fight with licked and stied, please.

But the reality of course is somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, the Russian army has performed abysmally

given its pre-war reputation.

Yes, it has expended men and material at eye watering rates

to gain very little that it didn't already take

in the initial thrust of the invasion.

But it has also evolved in ways

that are frankly somewhat impressive.

Don't believe me?

Just go and look at what Ukrainian soldiers

on the front lines are saying

because the narrative in Donbas

is not that the Russians are inevitably losing,

it's that they're still grinding forwards.

Talk to Ukrainian drone pilots.

And the narrative is not that the Russians suck at drones,

it's that elite units such as Rubicon

are almost equal to their Ukrainian counterparts

and at times even overtake Kiev's forces in ingenuity.

This war may be a disaster by most measures,

but the fact is that Russia is adapted.

And once the fighting stops,

it will be in a better place to reconstitute

the many in NATO might like to admit.

Now, this video is being recorded at a time

of hope for Ukraine as long-range strikes

devastate Russian oil production.

Given it takes a long time to edit

and release these super long episodes,

good Lord, I just looked at the timer.

That mood might have completely changed

by the time you see this.

Oh, hey, maybe Kiev will still seem to be on the upswing.

The point though is that neither the boosters,

nor the doomers have a monopoly on the truth of this.

Barring some outright Russian collapse or a palace coup,

the Kremlin will likely emerge from this conflict battered

and in poor financial shape.

But still able to field an army

that will remain a threat to Europe for a really long time.

So yeah, the Russian army is a giant,

a highly dysfunctional one, granted,

and one that yet may lose a war against its smaller neighbor.

But at the time of recording it remains a giant all the same.

(keyboard clicking)

And now for our second entry to the giant tier

and likely a less controversial one, India.

Unlike Russia, whose giantness was less

about their army's actual size

and more about endurance under punishment,

India is done deniably literally giant.

How darned exactly?

Well, according to the Observer Research Foundation

in Indian Think Tank,

they currently have a total army manpower pool

of over 2.1 million troops in all,

split between 1.2 million regular troops

and 960,000 reservists.

And you don't need a qualifier for that, do you?

That is serious mass, simple as that.

Further still, you might be inclined to think

that for India, such a number was almost accidental.

The geographic fluke of having a smidge under

the 1.5 billion people crammed inside of it.

Big population, big army, right?

Well, actually, no.

You'd be wrong to think so, at least in part,

because while sure having the largest population on Earth

certainly didn't hurt the effort,

having such a large army is actually a very intentional move

on New Delhi's part as India sits

in quite the difficult neighborhood,

not difficult in the Greek sense either,

of having board attentions that have cooled

but may explode back up again.

No, in the sense of having board attentions

that do blow up regularly.

To the West, for example, there's Pakistan,

a nuclear-armed neighbour, permanent Kashmir antagonist,

an all-round recurring headache,

with Pawarma in 2019, Balakot thereafter in the same year,

and the 2025 Pahalgam crisis,

all just being a recent incidents.

Then to the north as China, with Doklam in 2017,

Galwan in 2020, and the Eastern Ladakh

stand off in 2020 as well, all being notable flashpoints.

Even with Bangladesh to the east, the immediate big neighbour,

which India is mostly chill,

is still not white picket fences

and kids coming around for lemonade and apple pie, either,

with Tista water-sharing, board-offencing,

and killings, migration politics,

and the diplomatic frost after Shaker scene

have fled to India in 2024,

all working to keep things rather tense.

Hell, they have even had beef with Nepal,

over Kalapani, Lipulek, and Lipi Yadura.

These are territories that Nepal put into its 2020 revised map,

and even onto some new banknotes,

despite India rejecting the claim.

Still though, at least they're pally with Bhutan.

I mean, every cloud and all that.

And all of that creates quite the complicated

strategic situation for India.

A multi-headed hydra that it must face off against at once,

every head having different sized teeth,

and coming at it from a different angle.

Mountains are the other problem,

because save for the Eastern frontier with Bangladesh,

India is enclosed by them,

meaning that almost every serious fight

becomes an immediate logistical nightmare,

because roads are few and far between,

weather closes passes, helicopters struggle for lift,

engines choke, batteries die faster,

and every round, ration and sleeping bag

has to go on a mini-expedition before it can be put to use.

So, what does the Indian army do

about that myriad of difficulties?

Well, first it keeps real troops

in real high-altitude hellholes,

most notably Saya Chen,

where India has held the Sattoro Ridge

since Operation Magduut in 1984.

Second, it treats roads as weapons,

with the border roads organization

building around 4,595 kilometers

of forward-area roads between 2020 and 2025,

including 769 kilometers in 2025 alone.

It also pushes heavy kit into places

that it has no natural right to be,

with over 500 tanks and armored vehicles

being deployed in Eastern Ladakh alone,

as well as maintaining proper repair facilities at Neoma,

a Dalat Beggoldi, both over 4,400 meters up,

i.e. the height of the summit of the Matterhorn

in the Alps or Mount Rainier in Washington,

just to give you two examples that you might have heard of.

Then we get to kit,

because, of course, the Indians have put together

all manner of specific,

really, really well-thought-out star

for high-altitude mountain warfare,

start with the M777A2,

a 155-millimeter ultralight howitzer,

only about 4.2 tons,

light enough to be moved by Chinook,

and, therefore, exactly the sort of gun you want

when the firing position is halfway up a mountain,

because it could actually get up the mountain.

Also consider the Cheetah, Chetak,

and Chetahle helicopters licensed versions

of the SA-315B, SA-316B, and SA-315B.

Again, respectively.

None of them are exactly cutting-edge,

fresh off the CAD-cam bits of aerospace design,

nor the most outwardly capable helicopters,

but they are light and therefore good,

because that means they're far less likely

to go slamming into the side of a mountain

when clawing up wafer-thin air for lift at 4,000 meters up.

And since we drifted onto the matter of kit

and don't have an ongoing war to pull apart

for insight as we did for Russia,

let's dissect what they're packing further.

Let's start with armor, and actually here,

we start to see why,

although India is undoubtedly a giant power,

it isn't at the top of the tier,

because the backbone of their force is the T-72,

specifically, 2,500 units of the Ajayja,

a localized Indian variant.

And is

the T-72 a bad tank?

No, as we said when discussing Algeria's stock of them, it is serviceable, but

it is nowhere

near top shelf.

Even with the Ajayja's specific modifications, ERA bricks, GPS, and thermal

imaging, far-controlled

nightfiring upgrades, this still remains the case.

Because as with all T-72s, they suffer from cramped, free-man ergonomics,

weaker sight

and roof protection, and carousel ammunition storage that, yes, does

occasionally launch

the turret into orbit when around hits it.

Then above that, they have 1,090s, the Bishma variant, again locally done

Indian variants.

And again, calling back to Algeria, we know that the T-90 is a perfectly good

tank, however,

it is not a challenge of three, and Abrams SEP-V-3, or now our darling tank,

the beautiful

one crafted by God himself, the K-2.

Consider also this thing, the Arjun.

India's top shelf, headline-grabbing bit of kit, that actually isn't all that.

Is it proactively bad?

No, definitely not, but for equivalence, we aren't going to the K-2 or the SEP-

3, but

that way.

We're instead going back to the T-90, being wedded to yold, rifled, 120mm gun,

while

everyone else has standardized around smoothbores and the fancy stereotypes

that they allow

you to set down range.

Having no hard-kill active protection systems, no megaspare camera lens suite,

in other words

then it's good, it's just not great.

Oh, and they also only have 124 of them are present, which just isn't that many.

And because tanks always represent the wider material picture, what do they

represent here?

Well, that'd be the fact that the Indian army's equipment can rarely be

described

as bad as it generally isn't, but it doesn't tend to be top shelf, either.

Serviceable is the word.

For example, the IFE situation is essentially BMP-2's, both the normal and ser

ath variant,

the latter again being a locally done spinoff.

We know the BMP-2's story now as well, courtesy of Algeria, data but usable,

although India

does have at least 2,500 of them.

And then the small arms, because this is the current service rifle, the INSAS,

or Indian

small arm system.

Also, there's this, the AK-203, as also is this, the SIG-716.

Basically, the INS had an absolutely disastrous rollout, and frankly might be

the worst modern

service rifle besides the British L85, specifically the A1 variants.

If you know, with its suffering from reliability issues, polymer mags that like

to crack in

the cold, and a gas system that likes to gunge up the moment you stick so much

as a single

low pressure round through the barrel.

Not to worry though, because it's being replaced by the AK-203, an assault

rifle, just

like the INSAS, but won the FAS the 7.62x39mm round, you know, the original one

used by

the AK-47 and the AKM, before the Soviets, and everyone else in the AK world,

broadly

switched to the 5.45x39mm in the 1970s.

And flatly, we have no idea why they did this.

We looked.

But it is perfectly functional, if a bit kicky, so I guess whatever.

Then throw into the mix the SIG-716, a full-sugar battle rifle, chambered in

the 7.62x51mm cartridge,

used up in the mountains, where distances between combatants can be large, and

… well,

you've got the whole weird situation explained.

They have one, junk, go-to, that they're replacing with something better, and a

specialized

longer-range one for where geography demands it.

Is the mix broadly workable?

Yeah, sure.

And it'll be good when they've got rid of the INSAS, because basically all

modern rifles

are functionally exactly the same anyway if they're reliable, and can bang a

half-decent

optic on top of them.

And that really is the story of India's army.

It's not the cleanest, it's not the slickest, it's not the most modern in every

category,

but it's broadly competent, and competent at a scale where that metric multipl

ies into

something terrifying.

Now, we've already seen plenty of armies reinvent themselves this episode, it

probably

being a coin toss between Ukraine and Poland as to the most impressive, but all

of them

pale and comparison to the efforts of one particular aspiring superpower in the

Far East,

and that of course is China.

Like Poland, and indeed Ukraine, as much of it fell below the abstraction layer

in their

chapter, they had their period of communist neglect, and for decades the PLAGF,

the People's

Liberation Army Ground Forces, was less a modern army than a vast political

manpower

machine.

Huge on paper, but stuffed with outdated Soviet-derived kit, week on radios,

mechanization,

logistics, professional NCO culture, and still shaped by doctrines like People

's War, where

mass, endurance, and national mobilization mattered more than speed, precision,

or slick combined

arms warfare.

And certainly that approach could make an invasion of China a truly hellish

prospect, but as

a modern land force it was bloated, backward, rigid, and desperately in need of

reform.

In fact, as they were then, they'd probably be placed somewhere around the

Vietnam or

Greece position in our list.

So what changed?

How come there now markedly not shit to the point of coming in second place

despite keeping

the hammer and sickle?

Two words, or three depending on how you transliterate his name, den shauping.

He came to power in China in 1978 with a whole shtick about socialism with

Chinese characteristics,

which to summarize amounted to, turns out, carbox, you absolutely nothing about

how the

real world works, so what if we bin off literally every single economic idea he

had, keep the

hammer and sickle as a facade of ideological continuity and just implement

proven ideas

that actually work instead?

How about we try that?

This approach, of course, brought vast growth and riches to the people's

republic, see

any cliched before and after shot of Shenzhen for proof of that, but for this

episode the

important detail is that that wealth trickled down to the PLAGF.

Slowly though, very slowly because Deng and the revitalized technocratic party

state he

built around him didn't just flick a magic "fix everything" button, no, they

spent

years, decades, even, going item by item, line by line, system by system, and

improving

things.

As a result, when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the Type 56 rifle, a weird

blend of

the Type 3 and the later AKM that is, had become the Type 95, a compact bullpup

assault

rifle chambered in a proprietary cartridge that also incorporated polymer

furniture.

The Type 884 backpack radio, a short-range analog set that just about delivered

barely

encrypted comms at the platoon level, had become the TBR-142 encrypted tactical

radio

at that same level and had been joined by the TBR-115 at the individual soldier

level,

fully plugging the ordinary Chinese infantryman into the tactical

communications network.

The GK-80 helmet, a simple steel lid, had become the QGF series, Kevlar

composite construction,

and I spat it to be fair, it used just to help it after all, as well as to body

armor.

Where once there was bugger all, there was now the Type 4 and Type 6 systems

floating

around, bringing the Chinese infantryman to a protection party with their

western counterparts.

And of course, 2012 was a long time ago now, and the slow but steady

improvements have

only continued onward, meaning that now, well, the PLAGF is here in second spot, isn't it?

Staying with Kip, but zooming out from the individual soldier level reveals

that the

clapped-out Soviet derivatives and the indigenous spin-offs they're from (think

the Type 69

for the former and the Type 88 for the latter) are gone from frontline units.

Instead, replacing them is a genuinely modern, and in places, cutting-edge

selection.

The Type 96, for example, is the cheaper, more numerous gap filler, being

vaguely on

parity with early leopard twos in terms of capabilities and performance.

Next comes the Type 15 light tank for mountings, plateaus, jungles, at just

about anywhere

that a full, fat MBT may prove to be too big and girthy to operate.

We're talking a rough equivalence to the M10 book for this one.

Then comes the Type 99, the main event, and posited as an analogue to the

Abrams, specifically

the M1A1 variant for the original model, an M1A2 SEP V2 for the Type 99 A

variant, and

a SEP V3 Abrams for the newer, only unveiled in 2025, Type 99 B variants.

And then there's the Type 100, only unveiled in 2025, again, so we frankly don

't know

that much about it yet, but from what we can infer from looking at it, an

unmarked turret,

directed protection systems, radar-linked sensors, 360-degree awareness, and a

crew seemingly

buried down in the hole rather than sat in the turret waiting to be converted

into paste.

It appears as though we're talking about more of a South Korean K2 analogue

here, i.e.

everything that an MBD is capable of in the year of our Lord 2026.

And how many of those do they have?

Well, actually, we don't know if a certain as China isn't exactly what you'd

call forthcoming

with such information, but the clever sorts of the International Institute for

Strategic

Studies believe that the numbers are roughly 2,500 Type 96s, all variants, 600

normal Type

99s, 700 Type 99As, some for the Type 99Bs, and indeed the Type 100s, given

that both

were unveiled about 5 minutes ago, and around 500 for the Type 15.

However, do you remember a few hundred words ago when we said that the old

stuff was gone

from frontline units? Well, sure enough, the old clunkers are still in service,

but they're

among training units, middle-of-nowhere units, and second-line units such as

the Xinjiang

and Tibet military district border formations.

And they're getting rare too, as the PLAGF slowly ratchets towards full modern

isation,

with the International Institute for Strategic Studies believing that only 400

Type 59s,

200 Type 79s, and 300 Type 88s remain in service as of today.

Trauma, again, captures the wider situation, because this genuinely quite good

kit mostly,

just not quite fully rolled out universally, yet situation is broadly how it is

for the

other gear to.

Take IFVs and APCs, for example. As per 2026s, the military balance, a yearly

open-source

assessment of global military capabilities published by the International

Institute for

Strategic Studies, China now has roughly 8,060 such vehicles.

And while, sure, there's the older stuff, 600 Type 86s, 650 Type 86As, 550 Type

92s,

and 600 Type 92Bs, all of them meet the Chinese BMP-1 derivatives or early-whe

eled designs

from the Thin Metal Box with the Gun School of Design. They are now all of them, legacy

systems, and being actively replaced by things like the Type 04, 400 of them.

The Type 04A, 2,000 of those, Type 08, 3,250 ready to go.

And while we don't have time to go into the full design specifics today, trust

us with

those three new types having things like modern thermal day and night sites and

network far

control of battle management systems, which their forerunners absolutely do not, well,

yeah, let's just say that they are a, uh, upgrade.

We'll end the kit talk there for this chapter, believe us, we wish we could go

on, because

if you can't tell, we quite enjoy this stuff, but it'd just be more of the same, and we

want to give some lip service to logistics as well. This video is already super

long.

Because it is the area, logistics that is, more than any other, where we start

to have

our PLAGF-related doubts. A face value, to explain, it looks like they've been

putting

the hours in, with a piece to resistors being the joint-logistic support force.

It handles

these strategic and campaign level stuff, i.e. moving ship loads of fuel,

ammunition, medical

supplies, and whatever the hell else might be needed.

In practice, that means very serious theatre level reach across China and the

first island

chain, plus an emerging local logistics footprint through Djibouti, Reem-type

access, and ad hoc

commercial infrastructure abroad.

But as the name, rather gives away, the joint-logistic support force is a whole

PLA thing. It's

only when those supplies need moving beyond vast national level depots and rail

heads

to the actual troops in the field that the PLAGF takes over. And there comes

the issue.

Because the machinery looks good. They have theatre depots, rail links, support

brigades,

field fuel systems, recovery vehicles, ammunition handling it, medical modules,

and increasingly

digitised logistics networks that you'd expect from a serious modern land power. They have

everything in other words.

But when was China's last proper war? It wasn't in 1979, specifically the sign

of

the Vietnamese war that we mentioned way back earlier in this episode. Beyond

that, it's

just been border clashes. Johnson's South Reef, 1988, the Taiwan Strait, 1995,

Doklam,

2017, and so on and so forth.

As a result, we just have no idea whether or not their logistics will actually

hold up.

There are too many cogs in the machine, too many handoffs, and too many links

for us to

ever save a certain purely from speculation.

Because Russian logistics look fine, it looked good even. And then they went to

Ukraine.

That same caveat applies beyond logistics, too.

Because on paper and in exercises, the modern PLAGF is doing exactly what a

serious army

should be doing. Reorganising around combined armed brigades, practising joint

operations,

linking drones to artillery, folding electronic warfare into manoeuvre,

training air assault

units for night and over water movement, and trying to make tanks, rockets,

sensors, helicopters,

engineers, and command posts actually behave as a single integrated system.

That is the caveat. Almost all of it remains unblooded.

But then again, who doesn't have this issue at the minute? Because there aren't

many

nations today that have experience fighting a proper, full-scale conventional

war at

the institutional level.

Still though, if you ask us what we believe to be China's biggest Achilles heel, they're

unproven logistics, is it, even if they aren't alone in it as a critique? And

we haven't

even mentioned numbers for China yet. Hell, silly of us. Yeah, 965,000 regulars, 510,000

reservists. It's not the biggest number, but basically all of them are using

good kit

at this point, certainly better than India's, and fighting as part of a broader

machine

that gives no shortage of reason to be optimistic as to its war fighting

capabilities.

So yeah, China? Easily deserving of being called the strongest of the giants,

as far

as we're concerned. As well as the lost of them actually, because Russia, India

and

China, that's it. They're the only three nations that we feel we could justify

putting

in this tier. Sure, there's plenty of other nations whose armies are good, are

dangerous,

but there is a clear gulf and capabilities between major and giant, isn't there?

Ukraine, as we have seen, just cannot absorb the losses the way that Russia

does. Poland

sports some absolutely incredible kit. But so does China, and China absolutely

mercs

them on numbers. And we've seen plenty of big and agreeable kit type armies

throughout

the episode, haven't we? But have we seen any as big and as uniformly agreeable

as India?

No, we haven't. And with that said, we do still have one last tier to go, don't

we?

And wow, I wonder who that superberg could be, occupying that tier all by

itself. Come

on, Luxembourg.

Now, look, stop as if you've heard this one before. We know, because this

nation has

taken top spot in literally every one of these ranked episodes that we've done.

But our

winner today is, of course, the United States.

And believe us, we wish we could break the mold here and be edgy little contr

arians as

there's a version of expectations would be great for engagement, and thus all

of us here

would be paying our mortgages. But since we want to remain evidence-based, yeah, it's

not going to come close.

The US Army takes the lead to a near comical degree. Let's start with sheer

mass. On the

front, the numbers are enormous. Not the biggest, mind you, that accolade goes

to North Korea,

but serious mass all the same with the US Army for the 2026 fiscal year being

funded

for 455,000 regular soldiers and a further 5,000 reservists, exactly split

between 328,000

in the National Guard at 172,000 in the Army Reserve.

And those numbers together get you 954,000 soldiers, serious mass by any sane

standards.

And that's just in the US Army, of course. That's not even the Marines, Air

Force,

or any other formation sneaking into that tally.

The US Reserve system also works just a bit differently to many of its

international equivalents.

The British Army Reserve illustrates the contrast. They absolutely can and do

deploy. 22 of

the 362 Army personnel killed in Afghanistan were reservists to give you an

idea, but the

British Army Reserve, fundamentally, is an augmentation force, one that bolts

on around

the edges, and just boosts the normal kind of trains that can be kept sharp

with 28 days

a year in training. You don't, for example, get reservist pilots in the Army

Air Corps.

You do get reserve Challenger 2 crews, with the Royal Wessex yeomanry being the

only reserve

regiment trained on the type, but apparently they only get to touch one about

once a year

if they're lucky and actually do most of their exercises on landrovers that are

pretending

to be tanks instead. But we digress. Then, by contrast, look at the US Army's

reserve

components. We're talking about both the actual Army Reserve here and the

National Guard,

and what you'll find is quite literally a parallel army just part-time, not a

vaguely

nebulous pool of manpower that can fill in for the easiest skill sets to

maintain on

an occasionally practiced basis. And yes, that also means pilots. And since we

've drifted

into the realm of kit, what step removed, let's now focus on it properly,

starting with tanks.

The Abrams is their go-to. Obviously, with them having roughly 2,650 of them in

active

service and about another 2,000 of them either sitting in storage, depot

reserve, or in training

service, numbers pulled from the International Institute for Strategic Studies

2025 Military

Balance Report. As for variants, it's a mixed M1A1s are about as old as it goes, with

the M1A2 SEP-3s coming in as the new hotness. In fact, since the Abrams has

come up throughout

today's episode, now would be a good time as any to give you a quick explainer,

just

in case all the variants are. Word soup to you, we don't blame you, it's a lot

of

variants. Basically, it entered service in 1980, with the M1 referring to both

the entire

series and the first production variant specifically itself just called the M1.

And straight away,

the basic formula unchanged for 45 years now, except for the weird niche

variants that

we don't need to worry about, was established. It was heavy, around 54 tons

originally,

made her swelling to a smidge over 65. Fancy, Chobham Composite Armor, a multi-

fuel turbine

engine, a decent fire control computer, separate ammunition storage featuring

blowout panels,

and no autoloader. And then you had the M1A1, which swapped out the original

105mm cannon

for an as standard do this day, M256 piece, and the M1A2, which zhuzhued up the

original

digital brains via better comms and independent thermal viewer that allowed the

commander

to line up a new target, or are they going to kill another, and added proper

battlefield

networking.

Then the last one you need to know about is the M1A2 SEP, and its SEP V2 and SE

P V3

spin-offs. They all got a bit better each time, basically. But hard kill APS,

the trophy

system specifically, then enters the picture, being played with a bit on the SE

P V2 and

then becoming a fitted to the lotter than component as of the SEP V3. That'll

do to

give you an idea. There's a million different variants, but those are the main

ones, both

that came up today, and for the Abrams story more broadly. Oh, and you remember

the South

Korean K12? Yeah, it's an Abrams derivative, too. No, though, derivative, not a

variant.

That said, where were we? I guess we were discussing… stuff.

The Bradley family gets us back into it. The US Army is currently sporting 4,

200 of the

things, split between 3,000 M2s and 1,200 M3s, both attract, armoured, therm

ally-sided

beasts armed with a 25mm autocannon. But they differ in the former, having

accommodation

for passengers, being an IFE, and the latter carrying only the crew and serving

as an armoured

reconnaissance vehicle. Then there's the striker, the Bradley's

middleweight equivalent. Like the Bradley, it comes in multiple flavours, all

of them

sticking to the same core 8-wheel-based design. There's way too many to list,

but the one

to remember is the M1126, the normal, totally standard APC variant. As for how

many there

are all variants, not just the M1126, 4500 is the number typically given. Go

lighter still

and you'll find the JLTV, 20,000 units, and then the Humvee, 120,000 units in

an inventory,

as per basically the only figure we could find. And that's just for the Army.

So you might be seeing the pattern emerging. It's big numbers.

And indeed, the emerging pattern only strengthens when we look at fast support.

About 745 M109

pallid in 155mm self-propelled hearts as currently in service, backed by

roughly 890 M777 155

millimetre-toed guns, 520 M119 105mm light guns, about 410 high mass launches,

and about

385 M270 MLRS launches.

Air defense then adds another layer. Roughly 50 Patriot batteries. Thad above

that for

ballistic missile defense, Avenger and striker M Schorad below it, but the

short-range problem,

plus Sentinel radars and counter-drone systems to spot and swat those annoying

bastards out

of the sky. Army aviation then adds another layer with

a Congressional Budget Office as of 2023, placing the fleet at about 3,900

aircraft split between

roughly 2,100 blackhogs, 700 Apaches, 500 Lakotas, and 400 Chinicks.

And it's not just rotorcraft either, as they dip their toes into the fix-wing

World

II, operating roughly 200 fix-wing aircraft, the bulk of them, a C-12 Coron

passenger and

utility transports.

Although there's also a tiny handful of Gulfstream C-20 and C-37 VIP transports, as well as specialist

intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, such as the RC-12 guard

rails and

Dash-7s thrown in there too.

And all that thought as well, because here's a sound bite for you.

So many aircraft does the US Army have, that it is a bigger air force than many

actually

dedicated air forces. And we're just counting fixed wingers here, not rotor

craft, with

that 200 number giving the US Army more airframes than Belarus, Sweden, Finland, Malaysia, Denmark,

Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Georgia, New Zealand, Hungary, Sri Lanka, Czech

Republic, the Netherlands,

and Norway.

Good Lord.

Admittedly, the US Army doesn't feel expensive fast jets like many of those

smaller nations

tallies do, but still, the sound bite is, uh, technically correct.

However, it isn't just that the US has loads of kit, it's that generally

speaking their

kit is good. They've got quantity and quality.

We did want to explain this to you all properly too, but it turns out

explaining the quality

of an entire army's gear, rather than the odd piece here and there, as we've

pulled

apart prior to this point, is not only quite difficult and abstract, but also

quite long

winded in an already long video. And we don't have time for that today.

So instead, let's just lean on the authority of Rand, who, in their research

report, comparing

US Army systems with foreign counterparts, outright called the US Army "the

best equipped

army in the world." And then we come to logistics. Yes, we know, the US Army

does literally everything

better than everyone else. That's the premise of this entire chapter.

But even among framing like that, it's logistics where the gap genuinely gets

silly, having

not just logistics formations, but a logistics machine. And we mean that more

literally than

you might imagine too, because whereas the British Army has its Royal Logistics

Corps,

and the Polish Army has its Voyska Logisticna, the US Army actually has to

split the responsibility

across three separate branches. The Quartermaster Corps, the Transportation

Corps, and the Ordinance

Corps, because the operation is just too big for any one entity alone.

And the scale gets ridiculous fast. Take preposition stocks, as an example.

Those being

huge stores of vehicles, weapons, ammunition, spare parts and support equipment

positioned

outside of the states, all around the world, just so that when it's needed, it

's already

on hand. Just in Europe alone, preposition stocks are

maintained in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Poland. And we're

not talking single

sheds or depots either.

As Zoot and Al in Belgium has close to 92,000 square meters of humidity

controlled warehouse

space, Livorno in Italy has 69,500. Oh, and just to be really safe, also adding

a cheeky

extra 139,000 square meters of space outside for things that can deal with a

bit more exposure

to the elements.

So what does this vast machine look like when the time for action comes? Well,

in Ukraine,

it looked like the army's Joint Minitions Command, or JMC. The army command

that produces

stores, distributes and demilitarizes conventional munitions for the Department

of Defense, suddenly

turning itself into an ammunition conveyor belt. Because from February 2022 to

May 2023,

JMC requested more than 3,500 protected ammunition trucks to move munitions

from eight US installations

to six airfields and one seaport for shipment to Ukraine. And it got them. Just

like that.

And using them in that 15 month period, it executed more than 500 special

assignment

ammunition airlift missions for reference in a normal year they do about 80.

The machine

was already there. The machine was already running. They just turned it up. And

that's

the point with logistics. No other army does it better. And that logic carries

across the

rest of this chapter two, because if you pick a metric, any metric, the odds

are the US

is the clear and undisputed master of it. Just in the last 40 years, the US

Army has

fought two conventional wars in Iraq, Desert Storm in 1991, and the entire

drive on Baghdad

in 2003. It also fought the opening campaign in Afghanistan, which was not

quite a classic

tank and core conventional war, but it was still a regime toppling ground

campaign built

around special forces, light infantry, aerosol, local partners, and

overwhelming joint support.

And then crucially, two of those victories curdled into something much nastier.

Iraq

became an occupation, an insurgency, a sectarian war, and then a vast counter

insurgency laboratory.

Afghanistan for its part became a 20 year grind of patrol bases, raids, ment

oring, mountain

fighting, IEDs, village politics, and Taliban attrition. And in Somalia, Panama, Bosnia,

Kosovo, Syria, anti-ISIS operations, African advisory missions, and recent base

defense

wars against drones and rockets. And you get the idea. Barring Ukraine and

Russia, there

is no one on earth who even comes close to matching the US's recent combat

experience.

And for industrial capabilities, well, put it this way. The American situation

is an imperfect,

bloated, expensive, and occasionally maddening one, but they are able to throw

serious money,

spares, software, contractors, depots, production lines, and political weight

at a problem until

it just goes away. For example, the Abrams line, Lima, for example, still turns

out upgraded

and 180 set-feet-freeze with Aniston tearing down and rebuilding the very same

tanks.

Then there's water lathe which makes their barrels, and the barrels for all

manner of

other cannons, too. Scranton forges 155mm shell bodies, Iowa loads, assembles

and packs

them, and let a Kenny keeps Patriot, Highmars, Thad, and missile sport gear

alive. Red River

handles Bradleys and tactical vehicles. In fact, even with its size and vast

arsenal,

so industrialized is the US war machine that it's a genuine weird outlier when

used for

a made gear. Keyword there, though, foreign made. Because licensed, but

domestically

produced foreign gear, loads that. Both the M240 and M249 machine guns, for

example,

are actually Belgian, FN mags, and Minimes, respectively, but produced by FN, a

plant

in Columbia. The M119 Howards are two, actually a British-designed L119, but

manufactured at

the Rock Island Arsenal. And for a third example, their current service

pistol, the M17, Swiss designed originally as the P320, but manufactured at Sig

Sars

New Hampshire factory. For actual, bona fide, bought from abroad, and given to

the lads

examples, you have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel. There was a 2024-

84 order from

Saab in Sweden, the Beowulf ATV, also made in Sweden, and the M11-0A1 rifle

manufactured

by Heckler and Koch in Germany. And they're about the only examples that spring

to mind.

To start bringing this chapter to a close, then you get the idea. The US Army

is just

too big, too well-equipped, too self-sufficient, and too well-sustained for

anyone else to ever

have a chance of comparing, truly, in a tier of its own.

So there we have it, the world's major land forces. And let us be clear, this

is a very

subjective matter, so not only do we accept that many of you will disagree, but

we want

you to disagree. Because this is unlike our deep dive into navies, where it

really was

just a matter of totting up a few hard factors, number of ships, quality of

ships, distance

reach, etc, with the best bed being decided by who got the bigger numbers

across the board.

Now land forces are way more nuanced and multi-layered than that, and loads of

this remains up

in the air. So if you would order it all differently, let us know in the

comments below. For example,

we fully suspect our placement of North Korea to be a contentious one, as if

you disagree

with our base notion that the nation is slowly starting to get its economic act

together,

a whole chain of logic gets rendered moot. Likewise, no doubt many of you will

think

we've been too harsh on the UK. If you don't place as strong emphasis on raw

numbers as

we do, and a greater emphasis on extra border capabilities and operations, then

of course

for you they would be placed higher. Or hell, it could be something as simple

as you just

believing that a serious all bells and whistles MBT is non-negotiable for

getting into the

big boy leagues, at which point India being in the giant here suddenly doesn't

sit right,

whatever your version would look like. Let us know in the comments below.

And finally, as always, very long video. Thank you for watching.
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