It may be half a year away, but military planners around the world are always looking ahead,
and the year 2020 will prove pivotal for many of the world's militaries.
With the possibility of another major conflict in Europe brewing, and China seeking to economically
damage the US for its support of Taiwan, national priorities have been shifting for the last
year, and who ends up at the top of the world's military dog pile in 2020 may just surprise
you.
5.
France
France looks set to retain its spot in the world's top 5, even despite very strong gains
on the behalf of the Japanese military which currently sits- and is set to remain at- the
number 6 spot.
The United States has long complained of European nations not meeting the NATO goal of 2% of
GDP spent on defense, which is meant to ensure that NATO remains strong without the need
for the US to carry most of the burden.
France has officially stepped up to that challenge, aiming to hit 2% of GDP by 2020 or 2025 at
the latest.
With the current French budget at 42.2 billion dollars, they are currently hitting a mark
of 1.82% of GDP, putting them leaps and bounds ahead of most other NATO members.
Part of that increased budget is going towards overseas operations- namely peacekeeping and
anti-terror operations in Africa.
While money spent on active operations won't be used for procuring new hardware or training
new troops, ongoing overseas campaigns do provide the French military with critical
battlefield experience and greatly increases the proficiency of not just individual soldiers,
but the military on the whole.
It is this on-going real-world experience in the very difficult task of carrying out
full-domain operations around the world that is expected to propel France into the number
four spot as a military power in the near future, dislodging India from its current
perch.
Major procurements by the French military will also boost its capabilities and firepower
though, with the planned purchase of 10 more Mirage 2000D fighters.
France's current fighter jet procurement is slow and limited as it continues to evolve
its Rafales 4.5 gen fighters.
Though not nearly as stealth-capable as the F-35, the Rafale has proven to be an extremely
capable fighter with some impressive electronic warfare capabilities.
In the near to mid-term future, France plans on rolling out a sixth generation fighter
in cooperation with Germany, further securing its slow but steady climb up the world power
ladder.
Featuring one of the world's best military industrial complexes, France is set to remain
a military heavy weight, but will eventually outclass India simply by its ability to innovate
at home.
As the backbone of most European Union forces, the French have vast experience in low to
medium intensity conflicts, and while the nation hasn't been tested in high intensity
combat since the 1950s, its arsenal of modern and very capable tanks, artillery, and ships
make France the European Union's reigning military power, and one of the United State's
most important allies.
4.
India
India currently enjoys the number four spot amongst military powers, yet its long-time
hold on the fourth rung of the top five ladder is tenuous and being aggressively challenged
by France.
While its longtime rival, China, may be ranked higher than it in the power spectrum, India
has one thing going for it that China does not: a great amount of experience at various
levels of combat intensity.
It has for a long time dealt with an ongoing Maoist insurgency at home, and its military
intelligence services have a great deal of experience detecting and foiling terror plots
which are often directly backed up or orchestrated by the Pakistani intelligence services.
They also have a history of high-intensity conflict against Pakistan, and though its
last war against Pakistan was in 1971, the Indian military has continued a long-standing
tradition of strenuous and realistic training programs for its naval, army, and air forces.
Currently India's major weakness is a relatively weak domestic arms industry, but that too
is changing- albeit likely too slow to prevent France's eventual replacement of India as
the world's 4th most formidable military power.
One of India's major advantages over any other nation though is its ambivalent relations
towards all major powers around the globe, which allows its military to purchase equipment
from Russia, Europe, Israel, and the United States.
This allows the Indian military to pick and choose the absolute best fit for its requirements
in any category of military hardware, and while that may hurt with equipment standardization
issues, it gives India the pick of the litter when it comes to cutting edge military tech.
China's aggressive expansion into the South China Sea has seen India gradually shift closer
and closer towards the United States, but just in case of war with China without any
foreign aid, India is set to continue to grow the strength of its fleets.
India's geographic position has been likened to 'standing on China's jugular', thanks to
the fact that the majority of China's imports and exports all flow through the Indian ocean.
This has placed a need on India to develop a more capable fleet than China, as in any
war India's navy would be enemy number one for the Chinese military.
3.
China
Currently China is set to retain its number three spot, with a rather large gulf separating
itself from India at the number four spot.
Yet in the future, possibly as soon as 2030, China will almost definitely overtake Russia
for the number two spot as the second most powerful military force in the world.
Currently China fields one of the largest armies on earth, and has an almost unlimited
pool of manpower to call upon if war fares poorly.
The modernization of the Chinese military is a wonder in and of itself, having operated
a large, if mostly backwards, ground force up until the 1990s.
For decades China focused on fielding a massive army capable of repelling another invasion
by hostile foreign powers, yet as China's economy began to rise, so did its reliance
on overseas trade.
This quickly led to a critical need to secure that overseas trade, and thus the focus shifted
from China's army to its air and naval forces.
Today China is seeking to desperately make up for shortfalls in equipment in terms of
ships and planes versus its projected current and future rival, the United States.
The Chinese Navy, currently a force only truly capable of defensive operations close to Chinese
shores, is looking to become a true 'blue water' navy that can conduct global naval
operations.
That however will require a major expansion of its naval carrier forces, and it's hoped
that by 2030 the Chinese navy will field two fully-operational aircraft carriers- which
still places it far short of the US's own carrier fleet of 11 full-sized carriers and
nine smaller carriers capable of carrying up to 20 vertical take-off and launch aircraft
each.
China is also looking to make huge gains on its fleet of 76 submarines, which will put
it on course to rival US submarine power by 2030.
However on both of these critical fronts, China faces serious problems.
Firstly, its projected purchases of aircraft carriers will be of the ski-jump assisted
take off design like the Type 001 and Type 002- this means that Chinese carriers will
be limited to launching smaller jets with smaller payloads than the US.
Secondly, though China may achieve a numerical superiority to the US in submarines, Chinese
submarines are notorious for being considered the noisiest in the ocean and very easy to
track.
Technological limitations will no doubt be broken in time, but China still faces serious
issues in realistically challenging the United States.
It has not fought a major military operation since a brief conflict with Vietnam in 1979,
and despite its growing arsenal of modern weapons, its ability to coordinate all of
those weapons in a modern combat environment is doubtful.
Its military is still plagued by corruption issues stemming from the longtime practice
of selling military ranks off by communist party officials, and its troops have routinely
and woefully underperformed under realistic training scenarios.
2.
Russia
Russia continues to hang on to its number two spot as the world's second most powerful
military in 2020, yet its hold is tenuous at best, and there is little doubt that by
2030 Russia will drop to the number three spot as China rises to claim the number two
position in the military dogpile.
A former global superpower, the fall of the Soviet Union devastated the Russian military,
and it has since spent almost twenty years trying to reinvent itself as a modern and
capable force.
After a humiliating performance against Chechnyan rebels in the 1990s, the Russian conflict
against Georgia offered a new opportunity for the Russian military to prove to the world
that it had picked itself up from the rubble of the Soviet Union to become a modern military
power.
While Russian forces quickly crushed Georgian resistance as many had predicted, the brief
war did showcase several fundamental weaknesses of the Russian military- many of which it
has still failed to address.
Where Russia exceeds though, it does so stunningly.
The military of 2020’s Russia continues to field the best air defenses in the world,
with the family of S-300, S-400, and the new S-500 anti-air missile systems making up the
backbone of Russian air defenses.
Long delayed, the S-500 is expected to rival the American THAAD- or Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense system.
Unlike the American THAAD though, the S-500 will be able to engage both ballistic missiles
and hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft, with the projected ability to shoot down even
low orbiting space craft.
Russia is also set to lead the world in electronic warfare capabilities, with a host of new EW
systems even today entering service.
Facing the threat of American networked weapons, Russia quickly shifted priorities from trying
to match the firepower of these weapons to instead trying to disrupt them, and has historically
fielded some of the best EW assets in the world.
Conflicts in the Ukraine and cyber operations against NATO and the US show that Russia maintains
a keen edge in electronic warfare operations, and everything from disrupting enemy communications
to directly hacking foreign adversaries.
Unfortunately, Russia faces several crippling problems which will all-but-guarantee its
eventual downfall to the number 3 spot, and China's ascension to number 2.
Most glaring of these problems is the fact that the bulk of the Russian military continues
to be very poorly trained and low-morale conscripts, and despite several initiatives to create
an all-volunteer force like the United States, Russia is still only able to field a low number
of volunteer troops- which it considers its elite forces.
Another problem Russia faces is the continued collapse of its economy thanks to international
sanctions against it and a lack of diversification amongst its economy.
Russia's economy has stagnated so drastically that the majority of its economy is now directly
tied to energy, and thus is highly vulnerable to disruptions in global energy markets.
As the world shifts to renewable sources of energy, Russia's stagnant economy will only
worsen as exports of oil and natural gas dwindle- unless of course Russia manages to find a
way to convince the international community to lift much of its sanctions against it.
That would require a commitment to good behavior versus its neighbors that it seems loathe
to commit to though, and seems unlikely.
By 2030 Russia will remain a formidable military power equipped with select pieces of excellent
military hardware, but fielding a force that is overwhelmingly poorly equipped and can't
afford large numbers of critical next-generation weapon systems such as the indefinitely postponed
5th generation Su-57 and T-14 Armata tanks- neither of which will be built in numbers
larger than a token demonstration force.
1.
United States
The United States will continue to remain the world's number one military power by a
large margin in 2020, and even in the decades to come is set to remain markedly apart from
its near-peer competitors, China and Russia.
A variety of factors determine the US's continued dominance, yet its greatest asset is its robust
and diversified economy.
Such strong economic performance allows the US to field the most capable military in the
world, and a carefully cultivated system of alliances throughout the globe sees it work
together with many regional partners to contain would-be threats.
This, even more so than American firepower alone, is what truly makes the American military
a global leader.
Plagued by problems, the F-35 is nonetheless slated to enter full production sometime in
2020, and present bugs continue to be ironed out of the design.
The F-35 is widely misunderstood though, and often derided for shortcomings in scenarios
it was never designed to enter into.
Widely known to be an inferior dog fighter, the F-35 is instead meant to operate as a
long-range assassin with a first-look-first-kill capability and the greatest networked capabilities
of any other platform in the world.
Despite this though the F-35 is having the most troubled rollout of any weapons program
in US history, and many planes from the first few procurement waves are not likely to last
their planned operational lifetime- further adding to the cost of the most expensive weapons
program in history.
This has the potential to leave the US critically short of much needed air assets during an
emergency, and is a contingency for which it still has no solution to.
Thanks to a reinvigorated defense budget, the US will also ensure that it maintains
adequate numbers of attack submarines of the new Virginia class, widely considered the
best submarine design in operation other than the vaunted Seawolf class- a Cold War American
sub that is nonetheless considered even more capable than modern Virginia class subs, and
of which the US maintains three in operation for its most critical and sensitive undersea
operations.
With near-peer competitors such as Russia and China making big technological strides
to catch up with american capabilities, a new emphasis on a third offset strategy has
seen billions spent on next-generation tech.
Future US military goals for winning or deterring a major war are focused on artificial intelligence,
increasing the networked capabilities of American weapon systems, reducing the vulnerability
of the US and its allies to the loss of space-based communications and recon assets, and big investments
into undersea warfare systems such as unmanned submarines.
Facing the threat of mission kills against its carriers by Chinese ballistic missiles,
the US Navy has also focused on a distributed firepower capability, which would allow any
ship in its fleet, via networking, to engage a variety of targets with their own- or other
ship's- weapon systems.
The world of 2020 looks to remain ruled by the same military powers as today, yet in
the very near future major changes to the world's top 5 militaries will see the balance
of power shift dramatically.
France's ascension over India to the fourth spot of the top 5 signals a renewed capability
for Europe to defend itself, something the US has long been calling for after decades
of footing the majority of the cost of Europe's defense against the Soviet Union and Russia.
China's ascension over Russia to the number 2 spot also signals a dramatic change in the
global order, as Russia's economy continues to contract and shrink the nation's military
power, even as China completes its incredible modernization initiatives.
Hopefully the shift in the world's top five military powers will be a peaceful one, and
not herald the brewing of a new global conflict- the entire point of military power in our
modern world being to prevent and deter war, not to cause it.
Who do you think will be in the top 5 by 2030?
Why or why not?
Let us know in the comments, and as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to
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