Anatoly Karlin’s Military comparison and analysis seems well researched and useful

There is still no commonly agreed method on quantifying and ranking national military power. Anatoly Karlin is a California based Russian analyst and blogger. He proposes the concept of comprehensive military power index (CMP index) as a rating for comparing military power. It seems to be well thought and reasonable analysis.

Other attempts at military power index ranking come up with absurd rankings. Other indices have not been applied across current and historical contexts. Other indices cannot be applied in a meaningful way to predict the actual outcome of military conflicts.

There is one index for economics. It is called GDP (gross domestic product). You can make somewhat different arguments on relative economic size or living standards based on various ways of measuring GDP – e.g., the eternal debates over whether nominal or PPP is best. However, GDP make discussions comparing economic strength factually “grounded” in a way that military discussions (at least as they are carried out in the popular press and comments sections) are not.

Anatoly tries to convert to apply GDP concepts to military power.

Nuclear war power is a totally different and is entirely excluded from the CMP index. The CMP index is exclusively for conventional military power.

* World Bank’s figures for total armed forces personnel go back to 1989. They include paramilitary forces, which rarely match up to the quality of the conventional forces. The figures are used in the absence of figures just for active duty personnel

* Military capital is the tools – tanks, artillery, airframes, etc. – that militaries use to deal out damage. Historical references were used for the pre-1989 estimates. Military capital stock figures for post-1990 were based off of assumptions of military spending.

25% of military spending everywhere is assumed to be devoted to procurement. This is acknowledged to be weak. However there are major uncertainties over the size of military budgets in countries as big as China – to say nothing of individual components of that budget – trying to individually estimate the share of procurement spending across many countries would have been an extremely time-consuming and utterly pointless. In any case, swings of 5% or even 10% points up or down would not have had absolutely cardinal effects, since the main factor here is total military spending, for which we have relatively reliable figures for the 1988-2014 period from SIPRI. This military spending data was adjusted to take into account yearly international price level differences.
Military capital depreciates. A tank built in 2005 will be worth considerably less today. An assumption of 5% throughout is used. There are exception where military capital stays useful. The B52 bomber could be used for 100 years with updates to electronics.
Combat Effectiveness is a multiple of three components: Technology; Troop Quality; and Cultural Modifier.

Military technology progress is estimated at 3% per year except for 1935-1975 where it is estimated at 7% and 5% during 1975-1985. Anatoly lists which countries could be on the military technology frontier (USA and its main allies). He notes that not all countries have top notch gear. This is because they chose not to buy or make it. It is not because they have a technological lag in being able to achieve it. Lag of 5 years – Small NATO countries, close NATO clients, and the USSR and modern Russia as well as Russia’s closest allies and small rich countries like Singapore that devote a lot of attention to their militaries. Russia could lag in ten years in some technology but it is at the leading edge in tanks, diesel subs and anti-aircraft missiles. Lag of 10 years – China, India, most middle income countries and buyers of Western and Russian “monkey model” equipment – China is fast closing the gap and will soon reduce its lag to 5 years. Lag of 15 years for the rest.
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