How Powerful Is Saudi Arabia? | Most Powerful Nations on Earth #10

How powerful is Saudi Arabia, really? By official Saudi figures, the kingdom allocated about $78 billion to defence in 2025 — the world's fifth-largest military budget — yet it has no nuclear weapons at all. Its power is bought with oil money, and Episode #10 asks how far money alone can go.


Start with money and people. The population is only about 35 million, but the budget is about 21% of all government spending and roughly 7% of GDP — one of the highest defence burdens of any major country. Analysts estimate about a quarter of a million personnel across the five services, plus a separate Saudi Arabian National Guard of perhaps 100,000 or more that reports outside the defence ministry.


The forces are Western-equipped and top-heavy in the air: F-15s including the advanced F-15SA, Eurofighter Typhoons and Tornados, AWACS and tankers. Its Patriot air-defence shield — now joined, reportedly, by a first THAAD battery in 2025 — has spent years intercepting real ballistic missiles and drones aimed at Saudi cities and oil sites. Two fleets guard two coasts, the Red Sea and the Gulf.


The deterrent is unusual: no nukes, but a separate Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force operating Chinese-built ballistic missiles in secret since the late 1980s — the long-range DF-3A bought in 1988 and, reportedly, the more accurate DF-21 from 2007. They were paraded publicly for the first time only in 2014, widely read as a signal to Iran. Saudi leaders have said the kingdom would seek to match Iran only if Iran built a bomb.


The limits showed in Yemen: since 2015 the Saudi-led coalition proved reach and endurance but did not defeat the Houthis, and a truce has largely held since April 2022. Dependence is the other limit — SIPRI puts the US share of Saudi arms imports at roughly three-quarters (2020–24), and the $142 billion US package announced in May 2025 is agreements, not delivered hardware. Vision 2030 targets localising 50% of military spending by 2030, up from about 4% in 2018.


The verdict of Episode #10: the richest, best-equipped military in the Arab world, built on a roughly $1.1 trillion oil economy holding about 17% of world proven reserves — but ranked only in the mid-20s by composite indexes, because money buys hardware faster than it buys manpower, industry and self-reliance. A genuine regional heavyweight, one tier below the nuclear powers. Next episode begins a new series: History of Pakistan #01.


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Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dailyinfodose-d5s

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