Mindblowing simulation shows how ‘dominant’ the United States air force actually is

You may have noticed that the world has become a more dangerous place in recent years.

We're certainly not in World War III territory - and you'd certainly know if that kicked off - but should such a large-scale conflict break out, you could easily look at recent global developments and understand how it all went down.

Russia is over three years into the invasion of Ukraine it was confident would only last about three days, with the Ukrainians finding ways to strike back against an invader that outnumbers them significantly.

Israel and Iran have been trading missile strikes once again, and Iranian threats to target bases of other nations has been met with a US response that it would unleash 'levels never seen before'.

Meanwhile, China has always got one eye on Taiwan in case it reckons the US won't be able to uphold its security guarantee, so an ability to project strength in multiple parts of the world is probably quite important.

With that in mind, check out this simulation that shows the sizes of the air force each nation has to get an idea of just how many planes the US can command.

How large is the US military?

The US can boast a military with around 1.31 million active members, and a reserve some 700,000 strong.

It has six official armed forces, of which the largest branch is the army, with around 450,000 active personnel, followed by the US Navy with about 334,000 hardy seamen.

Meanwhile, the US Air Force has about 318,000 people serving in it and there are about 169,000 people in the US Marine Corps, which is considered its own force as they're a 'sister service' to the navy rather than under it.

Below that, you've got about 41,000 members of the coast guard, and the new kid on the block Space Force has only got just over 9,000 people.

It's not the largest military in the world, however, as the more populous nations of China (2.035 million) and India (1.4 million) have more active personnel.

When going off total numbers that it could muster including reserves and paramilitaries the US drops from third on the list to eighth.

In that case North and South Korea race to the top spots, followed by Vietnam, but, of course, it's not just about how many boots you can put on the ground, with modern technology playing a huge part.

That's where things like the air force come in, the pilot and logistical crew that put a fighter jet in the skies can be worth much more than many times their number when it comes to the battlefield.

Just how big is their air force?

As you've seen from the simulation, the US has far more military aircraft than any other country with somewhere between 13,000 and over 14,000, depending on who you ask.

The next closest competitor is Russia, which can boast about a third of the amount of American hardware.

Even when you start to slice up the number of planes the US has by branch of the military, they still come out ahead of pretty much everyone else.

The World Directory of Modern Military Aircraft uses something called the TruVal Rating (TVR), which they use to calculate the strength of an air force based not only on quantity of aircraft, but also quality and logistical support.

With this metric, the US Air Force comes out as top dog with over 5,000 aircraft at their disposal, but what's interesting is that they actually occupy four of the top five spots when measured by TVR.

So the USAF has a TVR score of 242.9, which is miles ahead of the next closest competitor... the US Navy.

Yes, they get a score of 142.4, so America has the first and second most powerful air forces in the world.

Just after them is Russia with a score of 114.2, so even though they've got more planes than the US Navy their air force is rated as being weaker.

Spots four and five on the list are taken up by the US Army (112.6) and the US Marine Corps (85.3), so all in all that's a blooming huge amount of planes.

Nuclear arsenal sizes

Of course, there are countries around the world with the military hardware to render many other details academic.

The US and Russia control around 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, according to the Arms Control Association.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that the US has around 3,700 warheads, though not all of them are deployed, while Russia has more with an estimated total of 4,309 warheads.

China has around 600, followed by France with 290, and the UK with 225. India's words are backed by an estimated 180 nuclear weapons, while neighbouring nation Pakistan has 170.

Israel is thought to have 90 nukes, though it tries to keep such details under wraps despite the latest Mission Impossible movie saying they did have a nuclear arsenal, and North Korea has around 50.