Which country has the most powerful military in Europe?

And people say air power is not enough...

Russian AF has about 500 fighters in total. They are not an AF-centric army. A part of these forces is not stationed in Europe but far away in Asia.

Lothar von Trotha wrote:And people say air power is not enough...

Russian AF has about 500 fighters in total. They are not an AF-centric army. A part of these forces is not stationed in Europe but far away in Asia.

Something called Cruise Missiles and IRBM's, russia would not even need to leave its boarders to obliterate any European military bases and MIC facilities.

Lothar von Trotha wrote:Garry - if there is war between Russia and some EU country, then that country will not be fighting alone but in coalition with other EU countries. A combo of Germany + France + Poland + UK would be a mighty force and it would be hard for Russia to break through it. If other European countries (Spain, Italy, Greece, Netherlands) joined in, it would be even harder.

We Germans are masters of maneuvre warfare. A Russian invasion of EU may as well end up like Russian invasion of East Prussia in 1914: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_East_Prussia_%281914%29

You can't compare anything in 1914 to today.

The main reason is the Cold War. It changed the balance of power in Europe completely - all European countries were completely neutered when compared next to the USSRs or USAs forces which were simply overwhelming.

After the Cold War ended, Europe neutered itself not just compared to US/Russia, but compared to anybody, while the US downsized and Russia lost a huge amount of its capabilities - but a huge amount of its capabilities still left it as incredibly powerful compared to anyone in Europe - that's just a consenquence of how far the Cold War superpowers were ahead of everyone else in terms of military capability.

Basically; a coalition of Germany-Poland-France-UK stands no chance, as it is today, against a Russian invasion.

Russia will basically open up with nuclear cruise missiles and nuclear IRBMs against any concentration of enemy armour/infantry, and nuclear ASMs against France's/UK's few carriers and helicopter carriers, and any other naval groups.
Iskander-Ms, Tu-22M3s, Tu-160s, Tu-142s.. these countries have no direct equivalents to these systems in service - their ability to hit back in the same way will be extremely limited. I believe France and Britain do have a limited amount of tactical nukes, but their delivery systems are likely obsolete.

Even discounting nukes - most of the other measures - armour, artillery, infantry, paratroopers, air-defence, EW, etc... are firmly in Russia's favour.
In terms of some things, like marines, airforce, etc... then combined the Europeans will be about equal with Russia.

The more nations you add the harder it will be for them to co-ordinate with each other. It's already hard for NATO to co-ordinate between themselves - they are a slow and sluggish organization with quite lackluster capabilities once you take away the US.
It took them months of first dialogue, and then months of actual work, to create a 'rapid reaction force', composed of some 5000 multinational soldiers (of 28 nations); and they still have big problems with the organization of this brigade.
Russia, in the same time frame (actually, considerably less), without much fanfare - revived several VDV brigades and divisions, and is quietly doubling the size of the VDV from ~35,000 to over 70,000, to be completed by 2019.
The VDV is capable of being deployed more rapidly than the NATO multinational brigade, is capable of reacting faster and most likely packs more force per unit; owing to its wide-variety of air-droppable weaponary including anti-aircraft vehicles, amphibious tanks and everything in between.

Russia will be able to mobilize far greater amounts of units far quicker than any NATO response, it comes down to that. Those Black Sea, Central Military District, etc... exercises were initiated merely 24-hours in advance; yet they involved hundreds of thousands of personnel (albeit, most of those were not directly involved in manuevers I'd wager)

GarryB wrote:Europe has rejected Russia... Russia should choose to do the same.

Europe has also largely rejected but used Turkey.

I think both Turkey and Russia should give up any ideas of being European and just aim to be a bridge between Europe and Asia... an economic position rather than political, but they should both be capable of making a bit of money and earning a good living as land bridges.

RUSSIA IS EURASIAN .

But, guys he is not interested in any realism only his on views of NATO stronkk1!!!

OK, you are right. I underestimated Russian AD and fact that lots of S-300s, S-400s, BUKs and lower tier AD systems would actually move together with the invading force, making Euro AF useless.

Still, those NATO countries have plenty of assets that can field.

The Russian army is not 1 million strong anymore. It's not even 500,000 strong anymore. Around 300k last I checked.

Fighting France, UK, Germany and Poland would be hard to say the least. This isn't Georgia who ran after a few Su-25 strikes.

TR1 wrote:Still, those NATO countries have plenty of assets that can field.

The Russian army is not 1 million strong anymore. It's not even 500,000 strong anymore. Around 300k last I checked.

Fighting France, UK, Germany and Poland would be hard to say the least. This isn't Georgia who ran after a few Su-25 strikes.

There was a infographic some time ago.
Basically it showed that formal army size aside, Russia has the most men at arms of any country this side of North Korea.

The army has been downsized but I seen this first hand - it's not combat positions that were cut, but mainly it was various non-combat military proffessions that were converted into civilian ones.
So the roles are still there, just now occupied by civilians, although in some cases some unneccessery roles were dropped altogether as the result of reforms.

You can add the Navy - it has its own Spetsnaz and its own regulars; marines and also the coastal troops which man its various stations, coastal weapon systems and which can be used as auxilleries.

Then the MVD; which has its own OSN/OMSN Spetsnaz, OMON units, Internal Troops (including conscripts) - some of these are pretty heavily equipped.

The FSB has its own Spetsnaz units, and it also controls the Border Guards, who are not small in number and are equipped with armoured vehicles.

The FSO has its own personnel, I believe the highly-trained Presidential Regiment is included under its aegis

Even the Federal Drug Control Service has its own Spetsnaz

EMERCOM is a semi-military organization too and can at least be relied upon for logistical and transport support during any conflict.

Basically the actual Army proper is free to just advance w/o having to worry about what goes on behind the front-lines; Russia formally speaking not only has a large amount of trained reserves to call upon, but also a huge pool of personnel who are already in government service.

TR1 wrote:Still, those NATO countries have plenty of assets that can field.

The Russian army is not 1 million strong anymore. It's not even 500,000 strong anymore. Around 300k last I checked.

Fighting France, UK, Germany and Poland would be hard to say the least. This isn't Georgia who ran after a few Su-25 strikes.

It wouldn't be hard at all, Germany and i speak out of experience, is not a military and has no power at all, we could only defend ourselfs against one neighbouring country that would be Netherland, because they scrapped their tank fleet and that is the only reason. Germany during cold war had a doctrine it was called "3 Days doctrine", which is nothing else but to sustain defense against Soviet Union for at least three days untill a real military arrives. To this day this doctrine is used joking about how useless the Bundeswehr is, we are completley broke and our logistical sector is depleted with 6000 men in Kosovo, Afghanistan and some other military bases like greece,turkey etc., Germany relies on RUSSIAN civilian transporters of AN-124 to transport our tanks, helicopters and any other IFV, we don't have any transporter big enough to transport any hardware only soldiers, not to mention that germany's active and combat ready and worthiness of equipment is average at 38% of what we actually have in service. For france and UK it is equal horrible of combat ready and worthy equipment, logistics is also not sufficient to give any significant response against Russia. All this EU armies would be just sitting ducks for russian cruise missiles and Air Force at stand off engagement.

Bundeswehr got downsized damn hard since the Cold War - by more than 50% actually and we got rid of most of our tanks. Give us some time and Poland will have more Leo-2s than we have.

Lothar von Trotha wrote:Bundeswehr got downsized damn hard since the Cold War - by more than 50% actually and we got rid of most of our tanks. Give us some time and Poland will have more Leo-2s than we have.

That's the way it's going really.

Only Poland and Finland take their defense seriously, out of the whole of Europe. And Russia of course

Lothar von Trotha wrote:Bundeswehr got downsized damn hard since the Cold War - by more than 50% actually and we got rid of most of our tanks. Give us some time and Poland will have more Leo-2s than we have.

cant really blame them- behind closed doors the people in charge will say there is no real threat to justify a large army. polan's leaders tho are russophobic to the core and you dont need to put some effort to sell some tanks, tho if i were in the german's shoes i wouldve jacked up the price to T-90 levels.

France

Runner-ups are Italy, Britain (expeditionary force) and Poland (home defence).

nobody wants war, especially not russia, and russian people. So it's really vain to make scenarios involving russians invading europe for whatever reason...

A lot of trolls in the east really like to bash russia and try to show some balls in the PR department, but even them don't want a real war.

I really think poland became a leader in the military department, but their excuse for doing so is a silly russian invasion threat.

Russia doesn't want or need any conquest anyway. Those who believe it are just morons. Crimea was always russia (well, always in the sense modern history), and the base is just too important for russia, so they did what should have been done in 1992. And eastern ukraine, is not russia, russia doesn't need them, poor, and decaying lands, russia has enough of those. What russia wants however, is to have this region as a buffer zone vs more and more virulent NATO and USA.

The novorussia army is now a strong and experienced force, and russia could use it to make the dirty job. But they must be careful not to despise them, because they could be a very dangerous foe if they feel betrayed by the kremlin.

GarryB wrote:Read the first post... it says nothing about invasions... it just compares the military forces of Europe... no need to actually go anywhere or do anything.

Russias nuclear forces alone makes it the most powerful in Europe...

You don't even have to go there, you could just point to how much more advanced the Russian aerospace industry is compared to the rest of Europe, or that the VDV is the best airborne/paratrooper forces in Europe if not in the world on firepower and mobility alone with the likes of BMD-4, Sprut-SD, Sonsa, and the gap will grow even larger when the air-droppable, amphibious Pantsir (on the Kamaz Typhoon platform) is finished being developed for the VDV.

Regular wrote:Let's assume this we are talking about EU.
UK military looks good but today  it's tiny and soft. Navy is very potent.
Germany has interesting weapons but their army is pathetic.
France on other looks solid.

I think UK becouse they got the carriars and a solid navy which can easily protect the country and work in international water. Also, I dont get it, UK must have 1000 aircrafts, France 300 and Germany less than 300, like 265 2015

UK must have almost 100000 active troops, France nearly that, and Germany, I dont know maybe 75000 with avaible reserve troops. I would gess that Italy got almost the same amount as Germany.

Spain isent even qualifying, I mean they got a military, but it's more like stationed to protect the countries borders and isent't closely the military amount than UK and France. Sweden's navy (with their new submarines) maybe stronger than Spain's.

Italy seems stronger although, they got carriars, a big population and is a rich country, they must take the third place I think.

My rank, except Russia:

1. UK
2. France
3. Turkey
4. Italy
5. Germany
6. Ukraine

henriksoder wrote:

Regular wrote:Let's assume this we are talking about EU.
UK military looks good but today  it's tiny and soft. Navy is very potent.
Germany has interesting weapons but their army is pathetic.
France on other looks solid.

I think UK becouse they got the carriars and a solid navy which can easily protect the country and work in international water. Also, I dont get it, UK must have 1000 aircrafts, France 300 and Germany less than 300, like 265 2015

UK must have almost 100000 active troops, France nearly that, and Germany, I dont know maybe 75000 with avaible reserve troops. I would gess that Italy got almost the same amount as Germany.

Spain isent even qualifying, I mean they got a military, but it's more like stationed to protect the countries borders and isent't closely the military amount than UK and France. Sweden's navy (with their new submarines) maybe stronger than Spain's.  

Italy seems stronger although, they got carriars, a big population and is a rich country, they must take the third place I think.

My rank, except Russia:

1. UK
2. France
3. Turkey
4. Italy
5. Germany (Big LOL)
6. Ukraine (Epic Facepalm LoL)

Poland and Czech will replace germany and ukraine with ease, even italy Poland can conquer and use as a little slut from military power.

Bundeswehr is an army for fighting insurgents, not for fighting armies.

Walther von Oldenburg wrote:Bundeswehr is an army for fighting insurgents, not for fighting armies.

Bundeswehr is no army, it is good for nothing.

Werewolf wrote:

henriksoder wrote:

My rank, except Russia:

1. UK
2. France
3. Turkey
4. Italy
5. Germany (Big LOL)
6. Ukraine (Epic Facepalm LoL)

Poland and Czech will replace germany and ukraine with ease, even italy Poland can conquer and use as a little slut from military power.

Yeah, you right about Poland, but lol about Chezh, they have a military budget equal Sweden. Is Germany so weak? I mean they have aircrafts to cover a strong airspace and get a military offensive, and I think the navy is pretty strong with like 14 submarines or something. I read somewhere that it's just The Nederhlands at German's borders which Germany is military superior.

henriksoder wrote:

Werewolf wrote:

henriksoder wrote:

My rank, except Russia:

1. UK
2. France
3. Turkey
4. Italy
5. Germany (Big LOL)
6. Ukraine (Epic Facepalm LoL)

Poland and Czech will replace germany and ukraine with ease, even italy Poland can conquer and use as a little slut from military power.

Yeah, you right about Poland, but lol about Chezh, they have a military budget equal Sweden. Is Germany so weak? I mean they have aircrafts to cover a strong airspace and get a military offensive, and I think the navy is pretty strong with like 14 submarines or something. I read somewhere that it's just The Nederhlands at German's borders which Germany is military superior.

You still don't want to understand, Budget means shit. Germany has quite large budget but is one among the weakest militaries around the world. Almost no operational jets, just 38% of our jets actually are fly worthy, among our own logistical aviation we have only 7 operational among 4 dozens, tanks are getting more stored than used, because of costs. Soldiers intended for active service in afghanistan shoot max 200 rounds per year, soldiers of average fire 30 rounds at most, but always good to have so many officers in military that recieve payments from 3500-8000 € per month but in the end no money for 5.56mm rounds for training. The least effecient military on this planet that is the Bundeswehr.

Defense Ministry cagy on Arrow test results


http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.626605



Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency conducted on September 9 a test of the Arrow 2 missile defense system, but the Israeli agency has been less than forthcoming about the results of the launches.

The tests were held in the Palmahim area, along Israel’s southern Mediterranean coast south of Tel Aviv and north of Ashdod.

Within hours after the September test launch a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry claimed the Arrow interceptor missile failed to hit the Sparrow target missile.

The target missile was later recovered from the sea after falling into the water.

France for sure