Asia outstrips Europe in defence spending

07 March 2012 - by Darren Lake – Shepardmedia.com

Defence spending in Asia is expected to overtake that in Europe at some point this year, according to London-headquartered International Institute for Strategic Studies.

John Chipman, director-general of IISS, said on 7 March that the change reflected both continued austerity measures in Europe and sustained economic growth in Asia, which also continues to have a number of conflict flash points.

Some 80% of Asian defence spending is accounted for by five countries: Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea. China alone accounts for some 30% of defence spending in the region although its spending remains far below that of the US, according to Giri Rajendran, senior fellow for defence economics.

Chipman said that the majority of China's capabilities are not as advanced as some alarmists would suggest and described them as 'nascent' rather than actual. Given current projections Chinese defence spending is not expected to exceed that of the US for at least the next 15 years and there will be a considerable gap in capabilities still to close.

However, other countries in the region, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, are also making substantial investments in upgrading capabilities on a smaller scale. The procurement reflects the economic growth in the region, which is allowing countries to invest more in defence.

The announcement formed part of IISS' launch of its annual Military Balance publication that aims to quantify defence capabilities country-by-country. This year there are a number of new additions to the book.

For the first time the IISS has sought to make some assessment of countries' cyber warfare capabilities. Nigel Inkster, director of transnational threats and political risk, told Shephard that quantifying such capabilities was a tricky exercise.

'To do it properly you have to take a whole of society approach,' he stated. He added that areas such as industrial capacity and education need to be taken in to account.

However, for IISS the key to understanding cyber warfare capacity is the extent to which governments try to harness these diverse elements into a cohesive capability. Inkster used Taiwan as an example of an advanced 'cyber society' with all the necessary elements, but added that as yet there was no indication that the government or the military had attempted to organise those elements into a coherent capability.

Also added this year was a more detailed analysis of combat support capabilities such as combat engineering, logistics and ISR.

Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare, said that this was not an area that had been covered properly in the past, but that without it you could not have an assessment of the full spectrum of a country’s combat capability.