USA vs China Military Power Comparison | United States Army VS Chinese Army | 2016

A question posted recently on Quora asked, “How much stronger is the United States military compared with the next strongest power?” Check out these answers and keep the discussion going. Add your own thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

By Daniel Kearns, former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division

1,000 times. Maybe more.

No other military or combination of militaries could even begin to inflict the slightest numbers of casualties on the United States military in a conventional war.

Consider: The U.S. spends close to what the entire rest of the world spends in defense. $711 billion. Per year. The next closest is China at $143 billion.

The M1 Abrams tank has seen more combat than just about any other tank on the battlefield today. It has never been knocked out by enemy fire. (Completely killed). Ever.

China has less than 500 Type 99 tanks, that have just been developed, and are not even close to being as good as the Abrams. We have 8,700 Abrams.

We have 10 aircraft carriers. The good kind. Everyone else has 10. Combined. And they are mostly small ships that can launch helicopters.

There are 8,400 attack helicopters in the world. The U.S. has 6,400 of them.

The United States has engaged in every type of ground warfare in the last 20 years. From mountains to jungles, and from desert to urban, we have the some of the most experienced warriors in the world. No other country comes close to the amount of combat veterans that we have.

We own all the satellites that guide GPS systems. We have all the advanced stealth technology. The latest sensors? U.S. The latest information systems? U.S. An Abrams tank can see a target, the tank commander can instantly send that target to every tank in his company.

Now you have 14 tanks looking for you. Oh, and it also uploads to every Apache helicopter in the area. Every indirect and direct fire system in the area knows what you are and where you are. Your survivability just dropped to 0. Instantly.

Fighting a conventional war against the U.S. would be like a 3-year-old child playing chess against Gary Kasparov. They wouldn’t even know what they were supposed to be looking at.

*Edit: The purpose of the answer is not borne out of some nationalistic sense of pride, although I am a U.S. veteran and consider myself patriotic, but rather to call attention to how much larger the U.S. military industrial complex is than the entire rest of the world.