The website Global Firepower annually publishes a report and ranking of 140 national armed forces.
The final Global Firepower ranking uses over 60 individual factors to determine the PowerIndex (PwrIndx) score of a nation, with categories ranging from the number of military units and financial standing to logistics and geography.
The United States (U.S.) leads
The top five on the list are led by the U.S. with a 0.0744 PwrIndx score, followed by Russia (0.0788), with China in third, India ranked fourth in military strength, and South Korea fifth.
Among the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia ranks 63rd, Croatia 74th, Albania 78th, Slovenia 96th, North Macedonia 112th, Montenegro 127th, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) 132nd, and Kosovo 141st.
Serbia is currently spending significant resources on acquiring military equipment and modernizing its armed forces. According to available data, around 9.7 billion euros were allocated for military equipment in 2023, which includes production for export.
In 2023, Serbia spent 1.51 billion dollars on defense, the highest amount in its history.
“Following global trends in armament and modern security challenges, the Military Technical Institute worked intensively in 2024 on developing and creating conditions for production in the defense industry factories of various variants of unmanned aerial vehicles, among which suicide drones ‘Komarac’ hold a significant place. These drones were developed in 2024, and the equipping of Serbian Armed Forces units with them began,” the Serbian Ministry of Defense stated on X late last year.
What Komarac 1 and 2 can do
With this, Serbia has continued its investments in armaments, a topic openly discussed by the country’s president, Aleksandar Vucic.
What can the Komarac 1 suicide drone do?
According to media in the region, the drone is armed with a 60mm mortar shell produced by Valjevo’s “Krusik.” It is a one-way drone concept designed to destroy various types of targets at a low cost.
“Krusik will deliver all its shells, the ones used in Komarac drones – 5.000 of them, capable of causing serious damage to lightly armored vehicles and creating chaos among enemy infantry. Imagine having enemy trenches a kilometer away; you send in the Komarac drones, and you can easily take that battle line,” Vucic explained the drone’s function.
The Komarac 2 features a larger warhead and can inflict damage on heavily armored vehicles and assets. These drones are armed with a warhead equipped with an explosively formed projectile of 105mm caliber, which penetrates the target with the projectile, while fragments of the projectile and pierced armor act inside the target, simultaneously increasing air pressure.
