Not a fanboi of the UAE.
But definitely a fanboi of reality.
Please do two things for me:
Define what we are comparing between UAE and BD.
Secondly, in what possible way is BD superior to the UAE.
Besides having 160 million people versus about a million Emiratis.
A hypothetical scenario where UAE and BD are side by side. UAE having the same conditions as a state and BD having the same condition currently.
UAE:
- 90% population expat
- 10% citizens, only about 1 million
- No water source to sustain the country without high tech and power
- Almost total dependency on imports for food
- The 1 million population don't even run the organizations as in how a labor force does, they are only in official positions
BD:
- 100% population local and nationalist
- Huge water resources
- One of the most fertile lands on earth, produces it's own food
- Peoples ability to take hardship for long period is immense. The vast majority of people live in village who can even resort to foraging for food.
- Ability to absorb something as severe as loosing 50% population due to hunger and famine
- People are not burger kids, these are people of the land, the can go without electricity and other modern amenities.
- Well trained army. 6 million Ansar force with basic infantry training. If required millions more can be trained in a short period.
We are not talking about some 5/10 days show off to look cool with F-16 like Tom Cruise. We are talking about an all out war for the survival. UAE has no chance, first few barrage of howtzier rounds that will fall in UAE, all expats will leave. Then there will be no state at all, well almost. UAE is a joke of a comparison against BD.
People think they have money, shiny cities, their income is high and poor and destitute people of BD go there to work, so they have automatically developed a mindset that such a country will thrash a country like BD. It does not work like that.
Firstly, potential western backing did not factored in the GFP ranking, only NATO members got an extra point due to obligatory nature of support for it's members.
OK, Hypothetical neighboring UAE destroys Bangladesh air force in the 1st day of war by using it's far superior Air Force and make Bangladesh's ground forces ineffective. then what? Do UAE is capable to mount an ground invasion of Bangladesh with their tiny army to occupy it to neutralize it's farther hostility? No. So, fighting would come to a halt for a brief period only, but state of war will continue. Meantime both Bangladesh and UAE would goes to general mobilization and weapon collection. Here Bangladesh has advantage. Both country's economic size are comparable. But UAE's economy would start to crumble once it's 90 percent expat population start to leave. Moreover, UAE is a country 100 percent dependent on foreign food import, even it's drinking water comes from desalination plant.
As far as current inventory is concerned, Bangladesh navy has upper hand over UAE. Naval hostility and maritime shipping disruption will have more serious impact on UAE than Bangladesh. Because unlike UAE, which is almost 100 percent dependent on foreign import for almost all the basic necessities, Bangladesh's foreign trades are a small part of it's economy and most of the necessities are produced within the country. So, any protracted war like situation will have more lethal consequence for UAE. It's tiny population will only exacerbate it's problem kipping up with Bangladesh. I think, GFP certainly did not ranked Bangladesh or so many other countries with inferior air forces relative to UAE above it just by analyzing the outcome of first few day's of the hypothetical confrontation. if superior air force was the only criteria to win the war, then after Korean war, North Korea should not have existed as a country or Western backed Saddam's Iraq should have won over Iran in the first year of Iraq-Iran war in 1980.
Indonesia is certainly far far powerful country than Israel. Withdraw 'all free' American support for Israel, only allow weapon purchase by it's own money for both Israel and Indonesia from global market and then allow them to engage in hostility for few years. Then see, which country prevail at the end.
Ground forces won't be ineffective like that. Air superiority has advantage but it can't totally neutralize a large ground force making many evasive maneuvers. It's not that easy to detect ground force from air and just annihilate them that easily. There will be high casualty yes, but the remainder that will reach the other side will fvck up the tiny army UAE has.