Investments in public administration and defense along with mandatory social security more than doubled in Kazakhstan in 2022, QazMonitor reports citing finprom.kz.
The Global Firepower ranking of countries by level of the military strength places Kazakhstan 63rd out of 145. The country's index was 1.0873. The lower the index, the greater the military might of the state.
Experts evaluated 60 different factors, including the level of defense spending, the arsenal of equipment, the number of tanks, ships, aircraft and other military equipment, and access to resources, which affect military efficiency. The presence of nuclear weapons was not taken into account.
The countries with the highest rates of military power are the United States, Russia and China. Bhutan is at the bottom of the ranking.
Among the post-USSR countries ranked above the Republic of Kazakhstan, Russia spends $82.6 billion on defense. Ukraine spends $30 billion, while Azerbaijan – $3.1 billion. On the contrary, Belarus ($723.1 million) and Uzbekistan ($692.5 million) have budgets nearly four times smaller than Kazakhstan ($2.6 billion).
According to the Global Firepower analysts, Kazakhstan's aviation today includes 237 aircraft: 75 attack helicopters, 39 attack aircraft, 81 fighter aircrafts, 17 transport, and 25 training aircraft.
The country's ground forces number 300 tanks, 5,200 armored combat vehicles, 246 self-propelled artillery, 456 towed artillery and 407 multiple rocket launchers.
The total number of military personnel is 77,000 – 45,000 are active servicemen and 32,000 are paramilitary forces.
The GFP ranking is based on a nation's potential war-making capability across land, sea, and air fought by conventional means. The results incorporate values related to manpower, equipment, natural resources, finances, and geography represented by 60+ individual factors used in formulating the finalized GFP ranks - which provide an interesting glimpse into an increasingly volatile global landscape where war seems all but an inevitability.