Hardware data: coverage & notes
Full detail behind the Wikipedia-sourced tanks / self-propelled artillery / towed artillery / MLRS figures on each country profile -- which countries are covered, which zeroes are real verified figures vs. still-open gaps, and why specific fields are left blank rather than guessed. See Data sources for the short version and the rest of the site's sourcing.
Source notes
- The World Factbook
Active-duty personnel strengths for most countries, from the last public-domain (CC0) Factbook archive before its 2026 discontinuation.
- NATO — Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2025 estimates)
Active-duty personnel for NATO's 28 non-US/UK/France members.
- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) — Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025
Defense spending for the 33 countries in SIPRI's published top-40 table.
- Wikipedia — equipment lists (CC BY-SA)
Tanks, self-propelled artillery, towed artillery, and MLRS strength, verified country by country. Covers 172 of 181 countries.
- FlightGlobal — World Air Forces (annual census) & IISS — The Military Balance
Total aircraft, helicopters, attack helicopters, and armored vehicles. Coverage ranges from 155 to 171 of 181 countries depending on the field.
- Wikipedia — List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel (CC BY-SA)
Reserve personnel for 168 of 181 countries.
- Al Jazeera — Syria's challenges to rebuild its armed forces (Jan 2026)
Background on Syria's post-Assad force rebuild (context only).
- World Bank — Energy imports, net (% of energy use)
Energy dependency score, real and World-Bank-sourced for 143 of 181 countries.
- IMF — World Economic Outlook Database
GDP (nominal, current US$), real and IMF-sourced for 179 of 181 countries.
- EIA (via Wikipedia's List of countries by oil extraction / natural gas production, CC BY-SA)
Oil production, real and EIA-sourced, for 102 of 181 countries; natural gas production for 77 of 181.
- EIA — International Energy Data (Imports)
Oil and gas import volumes, real and EIA-sourced, for 175 of 181 countries.
- ITU — ICT Development Index (2024 edition, 2022 data)
Digital infrastructure index, real and ITU-sourced for 161 of 181 countries.
- World Bank — ICT goods imports (% of total goods imports)
Tech dependency score, real and World-Bank-sourced for 167 of 181 countries.
- World Bank — Food imports (% of merchandise imports)
Food dependency score, real and World-Bank-sourced for 149 of 181 countries.
Coverage
Tanks, self-propelled artillery, towed artillery, and MLRS strength, rebuilt country by country from Wikipedia's per-model equipment rosters (which themselves cite sources like the IISS Military Balance) as GlobalFirepower's replacement. Currently covers 172 of 181 countries -- everything else still shows as not tracked, and even a covered country can be missing whichever individual fields couldn't be verified with a clean, current, non-conflicting figure.
Confirmed zeroes vs. open gaps
Some zeroes on this list are real, verified figures rather than gaps -- not an unresearched blank. They generally fall into a few buckets: countries with no standing military at all (Panama, Iceland, Costa Rica, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Palau, Vanuatu, Samoa, and a handful of others); a documented policy choice not to field a given category (Belgium, Ireland, and Luxembourg field no tanks, self-propelled artillery, or MLRS at all; the Baltic states and others have deliberately gone without tanks); a fleet that was donated, retired, or decommissioned with no replacement (North Macedonia gave its Soviet-era armor to Ukraine in 2022-23; Czechia's rocket-artillery fleet was decommissioned in 2011); and an order that's confirmed but simply hasn't been delivered yet (Canada's, Hungary's, and Peru's MLRS purchases are all still pre-delivery). Each zero here traces to at least one current, citable source rather than an assumption from silence.
Why some fields still stay blank
A field stays blank, rather than filled with a guess, for a few recurring reasons: the only source available gives one combined figure spanning multiple of our categories with no breakdown; a total can’t be trusted not to double-count a stored, reserve, or on-order status; or current sources conflict widely enough (sometimes by 2-20x) that no single figure is clearly the most authoritative. A separate handful of countries are excluded deliberately rather than left blank by gap: Russia, Israel, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Venezuela are skipped because active conflict or sanctions-driven decay means published totals would overstate what’s actually operational today, and Yemen, Afghanistan, and Sudan -- which haven’t had a coherent national military since a takeover, collapse, or civil war -- show a dated pre-collapse figure with an "as of" badge instead. Aircraft, helicopter, and armored-vehicle totals are sourced separately (FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces census, IISS Military Balance, official releases, and defense press) and cover roughly 155-171 of 181 countries depending on the field -- see the Data sources section for exact per-field counts.