I devote an unhealthy amount of my life to the pursuit of mildly interesting useless knowledge, like how many main battle tanks are fielded by the nations of the world. That number seems to be in the ballpark of 104,476, however it doesn’t appear to be very up to date. This is just a numerical count though, and not a measure of capability. Whether a tank shoots lazer or it has a rock catapult they all counts the same.
For perspective, Russia has the most tanks (15,398), followed by China (9,151), and US (8,850). Generally speaking, large countries have more tanks, tiny countries often have no tanks at all. This is of course rather unremarkable because it is to be expected. But there are a few more interesting patterns.
In the European Union, the largest fielder of tanks is Greece at 1,354. Incidentally it is also the most broke. By contrast EU’s richest and most populous country Germany has around 400. It used to be upwards of 2000, but sold or scrapped most of them to save money. They figured why spend all that money for the upkeep when the US has plenty of tanks anyway. Donald Trump is understandably not amused.
Greece’s neighbour and mortal enemy Turkey has 2,504. Turkey is in a bad neighbourhood, so they aren’t scrapping their tanks any time soon. That doesn’t leave Greece much of a choice. They need to retain the option to kick an unfriendly envoy down a large hole while they yell “THIS IS SPARTAAA!!!”.
Countries in the middle east have lots of tanks, especially if they are near the tiny Israel. Israel has 1,560 tanks and is the country with the highest tank to human ratio. Jordan, next to Israel and almost as tiny has 1,323. For comparison, Malaysia has almost twice the population of both countries has 48.
Situated right next to Malaysia, the even tinier Singapore is stated as having 96, exactly twice of Malaysia’s. Likely a result of some sort of strategic planning than some coincidence. I think this number has changed by now. This is despite the high cost of Certificate of Entitlement (COE)*. Otherwise it could easily be a factor of ten.
* COE is an innovation of Singapore designed to keep the population car poor and the government cash rich.
On the other end of the spectrum is New Zealand. Having comparable population and GDP with Singapore, It’s army fields a grand total of 0 main battle tank. The Tasman Sea keeps the Kiwis feeling safe from the drunk Aussies from stumbling in and throwing up in their pristine nature.
Communist countries also tend to have more tanks. In our neighbourhood, Vietnam has 1,800. Indonesia has more than twice the population of Vietnam has 378. This is also a legacy of Vietnam wars and the Chinese invasion soon after.
The communist North Korea has 3500. South Korea has only 2,514, but it runs on Hyundai engine and controlled by Samsung phones. North Korean tanks runs on horses. In the last famine they ate most of their horses so they really need those nukes before those make-up wearing degenerate capitalist southerners with impeccably shaved eyebrows come marching north.
One useless bit of trivia, while I was half kidding when I wrote that, it turns out to be true. The first South Korean designed tank is from Hyundai Precision and it uses targeting electronics from Samsung.
Another useless bit of trivia. Malaysia was interested in that Hyundai tank, because to their dismay Proton doesn’t make any tanks. So like any self-respecting marketing department Hyundai came up with a proposed variant specially tailored to Malaysian market, one that has an air conditioning unit added, at the expense of less ammunition capacity.
The Malaysian army was understandably impressed, who even needs ammunition? All those explosives pose a danger to the crew and public, those shiny pointy shells can’t even be seen from the outside. Air conditioning on the other hand, would come in really handy in certainly sweltering parades. One has to have the right priority, it’s not like Singapore or Thailand is going to invade.
But alas the overly earnest guys from the Hyundai showroom insisted on selling them 210 tanks. Perhaps they were thinking more in line with the needs of a North Korean parade, this is of course way too many for a Malaysian parade. So the Malaysians bought their 48 from Poland instead. I would say it’s a good call. Hyundai is just a step up from Proton. Poland is literally right next to Mercedes-Benz and BMW country.