Brazil has the 10th largest military power in the world

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s military power is the 10th strongest in the world. The country is the second strongest in the Americas, second on the continent only to the United States, the world leader. The data are from the GlobalFirePower website, which makes an annual survey of the military power of countries all over the planet, called GFP Index. The ranking of military powers for 2022, released in January, evaluated 140 countries.

Brazil’s performance was classified as “excellent” by the GFP Index in 34 of the 47 items considered, subdivided into eight major areas: human resources, air force, land force, naval force, natural resources, logistics, finances, and geographic factors. Brazil received a bad evaluation in four items: foreign debt, borders, and the number of aircraft carriers and destroyers.

In the 2021 survey, Brazil occupied the 9th position. The fall, however, does not represent a decline in Brazil’s military power because the GFP Index gives each country a score, which is more positive the closer it is to zero. Brazil’s score in 2021 was 0.2026, and the score in 2022 is 0.1695 – so, by the numbers, Brazil would have evolved from one year to the next.

The drop in the ranking occurred because the country was overtaken by Pakistan, which was tenth last year. Oscillations in position are usual in the list. Brazil reached 25th place in 2006 and jumped to 9th place in 2007. The country’s best position was the eighth place achieved in 2010.

Among Brazil’s neighbors, the one with the closest performance in the ranking of military powers is Argentina, which ranked 40th, with a score of 0.6091. Brazil exceeds in the ranking some economic powers, such as Italy (11th place), Germany (18th), and Canada (23rd). It is also ahead of countries that live with war, terrorist attacks, or internal conflicts, such as North Korea, Israel, and Iran.

The USA leads the ranking, with a score of 0.0453. Russia is second, with 0.0501. The other countries ahead of Brazil and Pakistan are China (3rd place, 0.0511); India (4th, 0.0979); Japan (5th, 0.1195); South Korea (6th, 0.1261); France (7th, 0.1283) and the UK (0.1382). Ukraine, currently under Russian invasion, is in 22nd place.

POPULATION IS BRAZIL’S HIGHLIGHT IN THE RANKING OF MILITARY POWERS

Brazil currently has 213 million inhabitants, making it the seventh-largest in this criteria. The GFP Index positions Brazil as the 13th largest in the world in active duty personnel in the Armed Forces, with 360,000 military personnel; the fifth largest in “ready for service” population, with more than 86 million citizens; and the second-largest in reserve military personnel, with 1.3 million people.

The country is also well evaluated in criteria such as the production of oil barrels, estimated as the tenth-largest in the world, and the defense budget – which, with US$18.7 billion, was considered the 15th largest in the world.

In military equipment numbers, Brazil falls a few positions in the ranking. The country is 16th in the number of aircraft for military use, with 679 units – as a comparison, the USA has 13,247 and Russia, 4,173.

Brazil ranks 33rd in the number of war tanks. With 439 units, it has fewer tanks than Cuba, Turkmenistan, Romania, and Mongolia.

In naval fleets, Brazil ranks 29th. Neighboring Bolivia and Colombia and smaller countries, such as Sri Lanka and Sweden, are ahead of Brazil. Having no aircraft carrier and no destroyer also weighs against Brazil. Due to the lack of equipment, Brazil is last on the list.

But it is in border management that Brazil has the worst performance in the military, ranking at the 126th position. The country has more than 16,000 kilometers of borders with other countries, and the GFP Index defines borders as “increasingly crucial in the defense of the land” in war times.

“Larger borders are a natural obstacle to defense power,” the report points out. Brazil is neighbors with ten countries: Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and France (through French Guiana).

GOOD PERFORMANCE GOES AGAINST THE “PESSIMISM” OF MILITARY LEADERS

Brazil’s improvement between 2021 and 2022 and the country’s almost constant positioning among the ten largest military forces in the world goes against the statements of the Armed Forces’ leaderships, which, on more than one occasion, expressed concern about the country’s power.

In November 2020, General Edson Leal Pujol, then commander of the Army, said that Brazil had one of the smallest armies in the world concerning the area to be monitored by the Armed Forces. Pujol’s statement was part of a debate about the management of the Amazon rainforest.

Eight years earlier, in August 2012, reserve general Maynard Marques de Santa Rosa said that Brazil had ammunition only for “one hour of combat.” He also stated that the equipment available to the Brazilian military was obsolete.

GFP INDEX IS BASED ON A CIA SURVEY

The “CIA World Factbook”, produced annually by the CIA, the intelligence agency of the US government, is the primary data reference for the formation of the GFP Index. The publication presents general data about the countries, such as the number of inhabitants, geographic contents, and financial capacity.

GlobalFirePower points out that its survey considers only official data and information related to “conventional methods” of war, which excludes nuclear weapons and mechanisms such as guerrilla actions and cyber attacks.

The world’s top-10 military powers:

1. USA
2. Russia
3. China
4. India
5. Japan
6. South Korea
7. France
8. United Kingdom
9. Pakistan
10. Brazil