Now cross reference that with military spending...
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Personnel is much more apples to apples. Comparing spending between two nations muddies the waters.
I assume you're commenting on US spending, but consider that other countries don't have to pay US wages and benefits to it's soldiers, contractors, and manufacturers. If we could buy our weapons from India, recruit our soldiers from China, and build ships in S.Korea our defense budget would be much smaller without having to ration a single fighterjet.
Did you know that we spend almost 4X as much on social programs than we do on the military today?
What's stopping the USA from building (some) ships in South Korea? Many navies all over the world use foreign designs or foreign builders.
This feels wrong. And doing by personnel is also a shit metric.
I thought it was interesting. Strange to see some ofnyge much larger armies like Vietnam and Koreas.
Both Japans and the USA were larger than I expected.
I don't think anyone will be confused to think this metric is the most important for the might or usefulness of the force.
I think there are lots of people who will confuse this for the might of a force u can see this exact thing in this comment chain.
Doing by personel is another way of stating we got more men than you got bullets
You know how much Hess countries spend on defense? The US could buy enough bullets to kill everyone in the world 10 times over and miss 50% of the time.
That's why artillery was invented.
How is it a shit metric? They said the largest army. What do you think an army is? It's soldiers, it's people. The graphic wasn't what's the largest Arsenal or the largest navy or the largest Air Force Etc..
Now, this is based on slightly outdated statistics but let's roll with it for a second.
Vietnam's Reserve, according to this chart, is 5M give or take.
Vietnam's 2018 Defense Budget was 5.5B USD, give or take.
If somehow we spent that entire budget on the Reserve, we would end up with an expenditure of $1,100USD per Reserve Soldier.
Counting Uniforms, Food, Weapons, and Ammunition for training, how much quality training do you think you can accomplish for $1,100USD per Soldier per year? Even taking into account currency conversion, $2.3M VND per month isn't a lot when you're talking military budgets. At that point, we should just count draft card holders as "Reserves" for the US.
An army is a tool for accomplishing goals in defence from and enactment of violence on actors of significant capability. Personnel are just one of the few raw resources said tool consumes. Conveniently said personnel can be used in place of other resources in this calculus but usually at significant inefficiencies. This can even mean that militaries with inflated personnel may even indicate that said military is lacking in other critical areas which must be plugged with disposable personel ie look at the Russian military and its meat wave attacks.
You can't use numbers of people to make comparisons between countries because they are misleading. Some countries use their soldiers for construction work (China) or have whole industries owned by the military (Iran). A person working on a defense industry assembly line isn't a member of the military in most countries.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards were put in charge of creating what is today known as the Iranian military industry. Under their command, Iran's military industry was enormously expanded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed_Forces
Using numbers of personnel to compare China or Iran to a country like Belgium would make Belgium look like a pushover. Belgium has a tiny military but uses it's location in Europe to ensure security through diplomacy and membership in NATO.
I promise you would be harder to invade the headquarters of NATO than either of those countries.
I don't know what being harder to invade has to do with anything. The question was largest army. The fact that you're trying to put all these extra criteria on top of that is a problem with you not the question. Also construction work and other logistics are very much part of an army and no one would be foolish enough to ignore their importance. That's been true for thousands of years. Certainly true for the US Army we have the US Corps of Engineers and the Seabees as well as other units. They're just as much soldiers as anyone else and frankly maybe more important.
I don't know what being harder to invade has to do with anything.
Sir what is the primary purpose of a military?
dick waving.
But the US doesn't literally use soldiers as construction workers to build random roads and bridges. They use private contractors for most things like that. The groups you mentioned just help out a little to practice for wartime. Most construction is done privately.
Size of the "military" on paper is meaningless from a defense perspective, which is the main purpose of a military. What matters is the amount and quality of troops that you can deploy and support in the field, and the speed at which that happens. Someone paving a road in Hunan or building drones for export in Tehran shouldn't be counted as a "soldier" because they are not able to be deployed.
The US doesn't count it's construction workers or factory workers as "soldiers".
I go over a bridge every day that was built by the Army Corps of Engineers. There's numerous cities in this country who rely on levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers. Army Corps of Engineers does way more than you think they do.
If you want to continue to add all these extra criteria that's fine, that was never the criteria of the graphic. It seems silly to spend your time complaining that a graphic with very specific criteria doesn't contain a lot of other random criteria. If that's how you choose to spend your time good for you though.
I'm just explaining to you that all the "largest armies" on there are outliers. Wikipedia lists Iran as having only 600K active personnel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed_Forces
The list is just incorrect, and I explained why. South Korea has only 51 million people. Do you really think that 7.5% of all people are in the military? No, that includes "reserves" who actually do not work as soldiers.
In that sense, every male in the US signs up for selective service at 18. Should every male aged 18 to 40 be counted as a member of the military?
Sir facts and logic have no place pointing out cherry picked data on propagandised infographics.
Given that Service is mandatory in China, that number seems kind of low.
Its VERY low, China has mandatory service, however due to high number of volunteers, the mandatory service is not enforced.
I think we need to update the Russian numbers. If they're not defecting, they're going into a meat grinder....
Imagine if all those resources were put into something more productive and progressive?