Global Firepower Index

Re:Global Firepower Index by nozzlegear on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @05:06PM (#40057232)

The data here is somewhat interesting if you're curious about where a country might stack up outside of the three usual suspects at the top. But I question how some of the data is ranked and weighted. For example, I randomly clicked on `United States vs Iran` under flashpoints. One would expect the United States to dominate Iran in all of the categories, given the US is the world's military mac daddy. Not so, though.

According to this page, Iran bests the US in the following categories:

1. Manpower. I guess because Iran has 220k "paramilitary forces" and the US has 0.

2. Financials. This is the really bizarre one. Iran wins because it has less external debt than the US. Which, okay. I don't think ignoring the US economy (or any country's economy) is the best way to compare financials.

3. Geography. Iran wins because it has less coastline and less shared borders. I thought this would be more of a "we know the land" kind of thing but it's just a measurement of raw kilometers.

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Re:Global Firepower Index by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday April 16, 2024 @06:58PM (#40058350)

> Iran wins because it has less coastline and less shared borders. I thought this would be more of a "we know the land" kind of thing but it's just a measurement of raw kilometers

Yeah, the lack of consideration of strategic depth makes this approximately useless as an index. (But great as a data source.)

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