Largest Armed Forces in the World

Just a listing by strength of active duty personnel (Army, Navy and Air Force). U.S. and some of its allies are in bold. Allies = countries we are obligated to defend by treaty or law (Taiwan), a total of 48 (in bold are the 27 NATO members, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines and Australia), including 16 Latin American nations in the Rio pact (but not placed in bold):

  1. China: 2,233,000
  2. United States: 1,492,200
  3. India: 1,325,000
  4. North Korea: 1,190,000
  5. Russia: 845,000
  6. Pakistan: 643,800
  7. South Korea: 630,000
  8. Iran: 523,000
  9. Algeria: 520,000
  10. Turkey: 510,600
  11. Vietnam: 482,000
  12. Colombia: 466,713
  13. Egypt: 438,500
  14. Burma: 406,000
  15. Indonesia: 395,500
  16. Thailand: 360,850
  17. Brazil: 318,480
  18. Taiwan: 290,000
  19. Sri Lanka: 276,700
  20. Iraq: 271,500
  21. Mexico: 270,250
  22. Ukraine: 250,000
  23. Japan: 247,150
  24. Sudan: 244,300
  25. Saudi Arabia: 233,500
  26. France: 222,200
  27. South Sudan: 210,000
  28. Eritrea: 201,750
  29. Morocco: 195,800
  30. Germany: 186,450
  31. Afghanistan: 185,800
  32. Israel: 176,500
  33. Italy: 176,000
  34. United Kingdom: 169,150
  35. Canada: 166,000
  36. Bangladesh: 157,050
  37. Greece: 143,350
  38. Ethiopia: 138,000
  39. Spain: 134,900
  40. Democratic Republic of the Congo: 134,250
  41. Philippines: 125,000
  42. Syria: 125,000
  43. Cambodia: 124,300
  44. Peru: 115,000
  45. Venezuela: 115,000
  46. Malaysia: 109,000
  47. Angola: 107,000
  48. Jordan: 100,500
  49. Poland: 99,300
  50. Nepal: 95,750
  51. Nigeria: 80,000
  52. Argentina: 73,100
  53. Singapore: 72,500
  54. Romania: 71,400

……

61. Australia: 56,200
71. Portugal: 42,600
75. Netherlands: 37,400 
78. Bulgaria: 31,300
79. Belgium: 30,700
83. Hungary: 26,500
84: Norway: 25,800
88. Czech Republic: 23,650
97. Denmark: 17,200
98. Lithuania: 17,131
100. Slovakia: 15,850
107. Croatia: 14,506
108: Albania: 14,250
129: New Zealand: 8,550 (U.S. suspended obligations in 1986)
133. Slovenia: 7,600
138. Estonia: 5,750
140: Latvia: 5,310
161: Luxembourg: 900
167+: Iceland: 0

Rio Pact includes Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and of course, the United States.

This listing is drawn from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel

It is based upon the 2014 edition of “The Military Balance” by IISS.

They also have a number of other lists…if that is your thing:

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1455

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One comment

  1. These numbers do not represent the total warmaking potential nor are they actually representative for the active personnel in the forces/militant forces, NATO ultimately faces. Short: These numbers simply do not reflect reality, especially not for authoritarian states (at least not by my calculations).
    A few examples: Vietnam alone has 5million reservists and probably more than 1,4 million active members to face China at the moment. Russia has 20,000 tanks, this correlates to armed forces size, with 6k of these designated we would have an armed force of 4million with the units in ukraine and non listed border troops – plus, approx. 400,000 further non affiliated militant forces have been counted (probably more than 8-10,000,000 trained reservists in the Moscow district).
    Poland reinforced its army with a national guard.
    With a labour force of 700,000,000, China basically dwarfes any other nation. They will probably condense their forces to a “dual type” structure with a professional army of 2-3 million and massive mainstay of more than 10 million.

    A good coefficient for dictatorships is usually 3.9 to 4.1 or 1/3 to 1/4 of active reserves. Democracies can recruit 18-20 % of their labour force, while dictatorships rely on up to 35-40% of their society (granted that they are developed and capable enough of translating the potential), since everyday life is militarized.

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