A Latin proverb says that arms keep peace and rightfully so. When there is mutual concern about each other’s military capabilities, countries tend to resort to diplomatic measures more often. Some countries however, as we are about to find out, spend an awful amount of money on their military, be it on maintaining their current arsenal or developing new technologies.
Among them, ten countries stand out from the rest as having impressive armies, not necessarily due to their sheer size, but due to their force-projection capacity as well. Let us then take a look at the ten most powerful armies in the world today.
10Japan
Japan’s military expenditure is around $49.1 billion. The spending was increased as a result of increasing disputes with China as of lately, but not by a lot. A new military was also placed on the outer islands as a result of these disputes. For the most part, Japan’s military is well-equipped. There are currently 247,000 active personnel as part of the arms forces and 57,900 in the reserves. Japan’s military vehicles involve 1595 aircraft and 131 ships. Interestingly enough, the constitution limits the army to only have defensive capabilities, which is the same reason why Japan doesn’t have any nuclear warheads.
