Spread Sheet Model for Analyzing the Military Balance in Asia

The 2010 Asia Military Balance Database was developed by Robert Hammond during an internship at the Burke Chair, as a tool for providing rapid updates to assessments of the Asian military balance. It is available to all users and can be found on the CSIS web site at:

https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/1000927_2010_Asia_Military_Balance_Final8.9.pdf

It consists of an Excel 2007 spreadsheet named “2010 Asia Military Balance Database.” This is the same file used to create the 2010 Asia Military Balance report that can be found on the CSIS web site at:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/military-balance-asia-1990-2010

This database provides a convenient tool for organizing, summarizing, graphing and comparing data on equipment, personnel and military spending for South, East and Southeast Asian countries in 1990, 2000, 2005 and 2010. Equipment data entries can be broken down from general equipment classifications like “Helicopters” all the way down to functional and model levels, like “Helicopter, Utility” and “UH-60 Blackhawk,” for added specificity if desired. Similarly, personnel statistics are disaggregated by year, branch and by personnel status as active or reserve forces.

This hierarchy of equipment description, coupled with the database’s highly useful pivot tables, makes what would otherwise seem like comparing apples and oranges a fast and simple endeavor. For example, the pivot table entitled “By Year Then Type” collects all equipment data for each country for each year, and sums each country’s total equipment stocks at each level (e.g. type, function and model). As a further example, this means you could easily compare China’s and Taiwan’s total fixed-wing, combat aircraft stocks for the year 2010 or even trace changes in changes in stocks of specific models of main battle tanks for Russia for the selected time periods.

Detailed instructions on how to use this database are included within the database itself.

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Anthony H. Cordesman

Anthony H. Cordesman

Former Emeritus Chair in Strategy

Robert Hammond