In the ranking of armies, Russia has shifted the US
It is worth noting that for comparison of military power the authors Global Firepower Index use a complex method of calculation, the results of which the army receives an assessment. There are additional conditions: take into account the geographical features of the countries, as well as the number of weapons and equipment. In addition, landlocked states do not receive penalty points for the absence of an Navy. When calculating the rating, the nuclear potential of states is not taken into account. But economic indicators are taken into account, including the availability of resources (for example, oil) and the material and technical base.
The indices for the USA (0,0897) and for Russia (0,0964) are very close. The ideal is 0,0000, but according to the authors, such an index is impossible to obtain.
In other NATO countries, the index exceeds 0,19, which indicates the great potential of the armies of the USA, Russia and China. But there is a small nuance concluded in the postscript "NATO allies receive a slight bonus due to the theoretical distribution of resources).
Therefore, it will be no surprise that in the Global Firepower rankings, the US and Russian armies actually have almost identical indices.
In the US, they openly admit that the military expenditures of the American army are very overstated with low efficiency. This has long been talked about at the political level. For example, at the US Congress hearings Ann Patterson (Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs) and Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs) answered to very uncomfortable questions about Syria.
They were asked about the costs of the US and Russia to bomb the positions of the IG (banned in the Russian Federation). It turned out that Russia spends between two and four million dollars a day, while the United States spends eight million a day, and the United States Air Force delivers eight times less blows than Russia.
The effectiveness of the bombing of the United States was questioned even in the American press.
Recently, Joshua Waddell, Captain of the United States Marine Corps, wrote an article "Innovation for the Marine Corps Gazette, in which it criticizes the Pentagon and the defense policy of the United States, noting that the Russian army acts much more efficiently with a smaller budget: “The United States considers its army to be the strongest in the world only on the basis of gigantic defense spending, while a large budget does not guarantee military success. ”.
The captain of the Brent Goddard II tank battalion in another article ("Marine Armor of 2050", published on the same resource) compares US and Russian armored vehicles and complains that the American tanks M1A1 will be in service until the 2050 year. Already, the Russian tanks T-14 "Armata" can not be compared with the M1 Abrams. Russian technology has gone ahead. “What will happen to 2050 year?” He asks.
The military operation in Syria showed only a small fraction of the capabilities of the Russian army in the hope that demonstration of all the power of Russia would simply not be needed.
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