The Military Balance Editor, James Hackett, on the 2015
publication
My name is James Hackett, I am the editor of the Military Balance here at
IISS. I thought it was worthwhile coinciding with the launch of the 2015 book
to talk a little bit about the origins of the book, how it can be useful and also
the structure of this year’s volume.
When it started back in 1959 the Military Balance was an 11 page pamphlet,
detailing military strength of Nato and Warsaw Pact states. This year’s book
is 504 pages, detailing the military capabilities and defence economics of 171
states.
So how can it be useful in your work? Well it can be an annual handbook,
something to pick off the shelf when you need to know a quick fact or figure
about a country’s strength or defence economics data, or the defence policies
of states. But also it can be useful to find trends over time for instance looking
at the main battle tank figures for Europe between 1995 and 2015 you can
see a reduction from 25,000 around in 1995 to just shy of 8,000 now, which is
quite a drop, and you can look at those figures and define those trends by
annual use of the military balance publication.
So what about structure well the book starts with an introduction written by me
that talks about the main defence and security trends across the globe and
the challenges driving defence establishments in delivering policy and
delivering military capability. Then the book starts with three thematic essays,
this year Hybrid Warfare, Directed Energy Systems and Military Space
Systems. US Military Space Systems predominantly, but also the challenges
in terms of the increased access to space that some states are seeing and
also how space faring nations are responding to those challenges.
Then we go through the regions of the world, within the regions of the world
we have national essays and national defence economics analysis, that is
prefaced by regional analysis that then looks at why States act in certain
ways, what are the drivers for national defence policy and defence economics
activity.
After the national essays, which again are policy and economics orientated
we have A to Z country essays that detail military capability data and key
defence economics statistics. Now in terms of the military data it tends to be
organised in terms of strategic forces, for those states that have them, then
land, sea and air capabilities. Bringing up the rear in each region, you have
defence procurement analysis and that can be quite useful in terms of just
looking from year to year at a region to see what the general trends in
procurement activity in that region, for instance in East Asia, you can note
submarine procurement over the last five years, Latin America air transport
rotary wing procurement, those are the factors you can sort of point to by a
time series analysis of the procurement data at the end of the regional
chapters.
At the end of the regional chapters we tend to have a, each year a country
comparison section. That brings together the key statistics and defence
economics, personnel, strength from all the countries in the Military Balance,
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The Military Balance Editor, James Hackett, on the 2015
publication
bringing annualised totals at the end of those. Now for those in the media for
instance, or policy makers needing a quick figure for a policy statement, that
can be invaluable ready reference. One stop shop for your key defence
statistical data.
But the Military Balance has more as well, in common with other IISS
publications we make heavy use of graphics to bring to life the data within the
book. This year we changed the Military Balance chart, hitherto for the last
ten plus years it was the Chart of Conflict which has not been bundled with
our armed conflict survey that is forthcoming this spring. We have taken the
opportunity to drill down in more detail the military dispositions and
procurements and general military trend activity, then we focus on Russian
Armed Forces this year.
Now as the screen shot will illustrate now we pan across the country looking
at key force dispositions and also highlight in text boxes key elements of the
military reform process and progress so far in those and that ties in with the
text that is contained within the book more broadly. But we also this year
innovate with key equipment analysis graphics, now if we can then, you will
see there on your screen your, one of the Russian flanker family, now that
brings to life I think the data within the book and also illustrates the breadth of
analysis the defence and military analysis programme here at the Institute can
bring to the defence data, looking in on the simple numbers to talk a bit more
about capability, what things actually mean.
This year we also are lucky to have bonus material to give away with the
military balance and that for Italy and South Sudan what those pieces do they
illustrate the breadth of coverage within the book, from Europe to an African
State that is experiencing severe conflict at the moment. We think we look at
the military problems and drivers within the State for Conflict and also the
political policy developments and policy drivers that frame that general activity
and also as we said before key defence economics statistics.
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