That’s a lot cheaper than what I had in mind. For the above price I wouldn’t mind if we even doubled our carrier fleet. That’s like chump change for the image they project, who gives a shit if they aren’t as effective as one would think (i.e. big, slow, possibly destructible, blah blah)
Putin’s Russia can try but again history tends to repeat itself. They don’t have the economic or political stability to compete but after China have the best shot. Lets not confuse Turkey’s economic growth with military might. My going nowhere comment was for a military pov. Any country that parades its military weapons every year can’t possibly taken serious.
Ok.
If I were to rank on current strength of militaries I’d say:
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US
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Russia / Eurozone (tie)
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UK / Japan (tie)
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China
If I had to rank on warfighting ability (taking into account production)
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US
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China / Eurozone (tie)
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UK / Japan (tie)
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Russia
15 years from now, this picture could look significantly different with China being the largest potential mover. But so much can happen in that period, I wouldn’t even take a guess at it. In my mind, India just doesn’t seem to get it, so I didn’t really include them.
You are giving China way too much credit. It is not nearly as powerful or advanced as people think. Same for Britain. You’ve forgotten France.
EDIT: I just saw Eurozone. Japan?
Here’s another site that does rankings:
http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp
I think I ranked China adequately. I think Japan makes the rankings because of their experience and Navy as well as technological sophistication. But obviously, I disagree with the list in the regard as they have Japan much lower, and S Korea and India much higher.
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Bottom line is the liklihood of a “hot” war between two nuclear countries is very low because it is essentially pointless. Each can destroy the other. I mean why even bother sending carriers against China if it could escalate to nuclear war.
Conflicts are much more covert now and involve a lot more diplomacy and cloak and dagger stuff. Cold war is over and China and the US don’t have the same clash of ideologies the US and the Soviets did. Sure, you could say that in a new cold war scenario we could make Taiwan the next Vietnam, but that seems highly unlikely, especially as the CCP is replaced with younger leadership (key political difference from Stalinist USSR).
Last dogfight between nuclear countries was over 40 years ago in Vietnam.
Japan? Are you kidding? Japan’s military abide by same rules US citizens do regarding weapons; Only semi automatics and 6 rounds max! And, swords of course.
Seriously though, how can another nation be a military treat to anyone if they are under occupation?
Not if you unexpectedly bomb first. I don’t know why people keep repeating this garbage. This is like saying two people with AKs can’t engage in a gun fight. It was a regular practice in the past to duel. Some might argue it’s mutual destruction but we know that is not the case. There were victors and losers.
That’s just false. If you’re going to make a statement like this why not take the 30 seconds and google it first?
Notable operations include bombing the hell out of Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (where a single sortie would last 30-50 hours), Libya, and the B2 was considered for killing Bin Laden but officials decided on covert ops instead. And those are just the ones we know about.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit#Operational_history
Do your DD and cite your sources folks.
Plantir is usually pretty good about this stuff in fairness.
But I do hear you STL, the reason I frequently get testy is I tend to feel like there’s a lot of blatantly misinformed arguments that waste my time by forcing me to do their research for them.
Ok, why haven’t nuclear weapons been used since WW2? Because countries’ governments have a little bit more to lose than two guys with AKs, like, you know, the entire world or at least a sizable portion of it. Nuke is a bit different from small arms.
Also, however unexpectedly you bomb, you are not going to hit every nuke the other country has and they will retaliate. Everyone is f’d.
Edit: now that I think about it, conventional war between two nuclear countries is kind of like two people with ARs settling things with a fist fight.
what the hell is the Eurozone military? A german officer shouting orders to french troops equipped with italian-made combat supplies and weapons manufactured in slovakia, defending greek territory from invasion? If you rank just based on aggregated stats and without qualitative assessment of their ability to coordinate a warfighting effort, they may look like a formiddable power but that’s just like a computer-generated stock screen with no analytical insight, to put it in proper CFA context
what the hell are UK and japan doing on that list?
hell even the pakistani army could mother both of them.turkey could probably give japan a good go too…
Pretty cool link. It’s interesting to see the considerable difference in how the US and Chinese militaries are equipped. The two countries land forces are very similar, but their navies couldn’t be more different. I was also surprised to see how few aircraft China has.
w.r.t UK, you’re thinking like a traditionalist, imagining it’s a numbers game. Pakistan us using 3rd-4th gen jets. UK and Japan are on 4th -5th gen. The kill ratios between generations are staggering. In a multination mock exercise a few years ago, F22’s (5th gen) were scoring 50 some kills to 1 loss against 4th gen opponents operated by Canada, Germany and the UK. The same goes for battle tanks. Pakistan is rocking old technology whereas Japan has current gen and the UK Challenger II’s are freaking baller. The ratios there are astronomical as well. Not to mention the fact that both Japan and the UK have solid Navies.
swiss guard ftw
Fine…i’ll give you UK.
pakistan is sitting on approx 60 nuclear warheads…japan on a grand total of zero.
found a nice clip…not relevant to the thread but hey :
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&feature=player_embedded#!]