Editor’s note: This story used to mistakenly refer to GlobalFirepower.com as an “analytical center.” It was brought to our attention by Bellingcat, who looked into the website after Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko made the same mistake when quoting the Global Power ranking.
Global Firepower (GFP), a U.S.-based military website, has issued a rating of the world’s military powers, placing Ukraine in 30th position in its list of 132 countries.
GFP gave Ukraine an index of 0.5715, while the United States heads the list of the world’s most powerful militaries in 2017, with an index of 0.0871. Ukraine’s ranking of 30th in 2017 is the same one it had in 2016.
The GFP has been compiling lists of the world’s military powers since 2003, ranking them in accordance to its PowerIndex score. The index is made up of 50 factors, including a nation’s army size, economic and natural resources, quality and diversity of weapons, geographical factors, flexibility of logistics, and other factors reckoned to influence a country’s military strength.
The ranking is based on the nation’s index score, which is calculated by deducting positive factor scores and adding negative factor scores to the nation’s base index of zero. Thus, the closer the nation’s index is to zero, the more powerful it is reckoned to be.
The possession of a nuclear capability by a nation does not influence its PowerIndex score. All of the information for ranking militaries come from open sources, such as the CIA World Factbook or scientific research papers.
Russia, which is currently occupying the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and which ignited a war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in the spring of 2014, was ranked the second most potent military force, with a PowerIndex of 0.0941.
China, India and France round up the top five.
Providing details on Ukraine’s forces, GFP estimated the nation’s manpower at 160,000 troops on active service, and more 1 million in reserve. According to the website, Ukraine now has up to 87 helicopters, 105 attack and fighter jets, and 89 transport aircraft.
The website said Ukraine’s armored forces include 2,449 main battle tanks, 8,217 armored fighting vehicles, and 1,302 self-propelled guns. Its heavy artillery includes 1,669 towed howitzers, and 625 rocket launching systems.
At the same time, GFP said only a few ships were now in active service in Ukraine’s navy, which now has just one frigate, one corvette, three patrol craft, and one minesweeper.
While lagging far behind Russia, Ukraine is also out-gunned by all of Europe’s top militaries – France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Greece, and Poland.
According to the PowerIndex, Ukraine is roughly equal in terms of military power to Sweden or the Czech Republic.
Ukraine’s defense spending in 2017 is to be $4.8 billion, making it the world’s 40th largest defense budget in absolute terms. Ukraine’s defense spending is slightly lower than that of Belgium and Kuwait, and roughly matches that of Switzerland, Malaysia, South Africa and Denmark.
