Royal Navy vs United States Navy (2018)
Despite the title, this post is not about a hypothetical battle between the United States Navy and the Royal. Instead, it is an attempt to analyze how accurate Britain’s common refrain about “punching above its weight” really is. While my thesis may prove unwelcome to the British, I am not trying to insult the RN. Rather, I am trying to disabuse a commonly held myth that I feel does far more harm than good. First a comparison of the two nations. The UK has a population of 66m and a GDP of $2.9 trillion nominal or $3.0 trillion PPP, while the US population is 327m and its GDP is $20.4 trillion (nominal and PPP are the same for the US since PPP is calculated off the dollar). Supported by a population 1/5 the size and a GDP 1/6.8 times the size, it is obvious that the UK will be far weaker than the US in absolute terms. However, as will be shown, it is also far weaker in relative terms. The FY2018, the British defense budget was £47.2 billion ($62.5 billion at the time of posting), ...