Israel is ranked 17th in the world for military strength, while Iran is 14th, according the Global Firepower rankings for 2024.
Since 2006, Global Firepower has published a ranking of the military forces of 145 countries, rating each country’s conventional means of making war on land, sea, and in the air according to over 60 factors. A perfect score in the rating would be 0.0.
As part of its survey, Global Firepower compares rival countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, China and the US, and Israel and Iran.
Israel receives a rating of 0.2596, versus 0.2269 for Iran. Israel’s advantages over Iran are said to be its geography, the size of its military reserves (115,000 more personnel), its defense budget ($14 billion higher), and its air power (61 more aircraft).
Besides the numerical advantage of its air force, Israel’s main advantage is said to be that it uses the latest US equipment, particularly the F-35 multi-role combat aircraft, while the Iranian air force is mainly based on planes bought in the 1990s, and even in the last days of the reign of the Shah in the 1970s. This is why the Iranians hope that the large sales of its UAVs to Russia will lead to the Russians selling it Sukhoi Su-35 aircraft.
The US leads the world military ranking, with a score of 0.0699. Russia is second (0.0702), China third (0.0706) and India fourth (0.1023). South Korea overtakes the UK to take fifth place.
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(c) 2024 the Globes
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