https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php
In that ranking, Iceland is ranked higher than other countries with military forces like Bhutan or Kosovo, and is very near to other countries which also have at least some military forces like Moldova or Gabon
None of these countries have a strong military at all, but shouldn’t Iceland rank much lower than they do as they do not have a standing military (except for a few helicopters and coast guard ships)?
Comments
“Except for a few helicopters and coast guard ships”. That’s a few helicopters and coast guard ships more than Bhutan and Kosovo!
If you look at the methodology which incorporates GDP, Population and Geography, it’s hard to argue.
It’s an island in an isolated location, so geography alone provides a great value in defensive war, esp. with air and sea power projected by NATO countries.
Worth noting that ‘GlobalFirepower.com’ has errors and is generally considered inaccurate and unreliable as a source; for example they once listed Sri Lanka as having 225 aircraft carriers or something like that iirc
That kind of rankings are pulled from the writer’s ass with methodologies that don’t hold any weight.
Let’s not forget that the military-less Iceland defeated the might of the British Royal Navy in three separate wars
Global Firepower is useless garbage. It has so many issues that its ranking has no relation with reality. I will now list some of the more egregious ones.
It does not consider different strategic situations or outlooks. A military optimized for national defence is very different from a military optimized for expeditionaty warfare and somewhat different from one optimized for offensive warfare. The lack of distinction here causes very weird value judgements.
The valuing system on how the numbers of different assets like planes vs tanks vs ships are compared is essentially arbitrary. There is no way to tell how many tanks you need to have equal combat power to one jet or frigate. And they somehow also manage to give values on stuff like foreign exchange reserves, length of land borders and number of harbors.
Global Firepower disregards qualitative differences: a Soviet built rusting 1950s t-55 counts as a main battle tank just as much as a Leopard 2A7 made this year does and even worse, a North Korean MiG-17 of dubious ability to still fly counts as the same as an F-35.
The readiness rates in the index for military equipment are completely pulled out their ass, with no relation to reality. Some countries publish readiness rates for specific equipment types, those are not used.
Munitions stockpiles are not considered. Any weapon is useless without ammunition and they just don’t consider ammo stockpiles nor production.
Anything hard to quantify is just ignored. Stuff like training level, will to fight, fitness, readiness, qualitative differences between equipment types and so on are just ignored and assumed to be equal between all powers.
There are many more huge issues all big enough to make the whole ranking useless, but I hope that I have shown my point already. To be honest I don’t think it is even possible to make such a military power ranking that is in any way useful. There are just too many unknowns and it is almost impossible to compare the relative value of capabilities in different domains. I would recommend getting the IISS Military Balance 2025 and do the comparisons you need yourself, but the over 500 dollar price is too much.
After quick Wikipedia research there is a small Icelandic Crisis response unit that consists of 30 active duty personnel at a time that’s mostly used to support NATO operations so they do have a small paramilitary force though they seem to have strict limitations on what they can do and when they wear uniforms and carry weapons.
Iceland is the tenth-weakest military power in the world according to this.
“No formal military” doesn’t mean a fully unarmed country.
Iceland has three armed coast guard vessels and a police unit which has military-typical infantry and participated in several overseas deployments.
So Moldova, for example, has a bad police force as their formal military, which may indeed be worse than the formal police unit Iceland deployed to Afghanistan, Lebanon and Kosovo.
A battle hardened army is the most important thing. Equipments help a lot, yes. But it is the experience and intelligence of officers and ordinary soldiers that wins wars.
So this kind of lists are trash.
Iceland is protected by NATO. And that’s likely why it’s ranking high.
Why is Russia number 3, who turned a 3 day operation into a 3 year long shit show of incompetence? Why is Ukraine, who fights world power #3 single handedly, so low on ranks?