'Facts' about the Military

Detailed examination of armed forces and military industry must rely for its empirical basis on various publically available reference books, of which the most prestigious and author itative are The Military Balance and the series of Jane's annuals. Although there are large areas of consensus between the various sources, close study reveals numerous discrepancies between them and within them. Some of these discrepancies can be reconciled by painstaking work, but others cannot, and some element of the haphazard is probably unavoidable in deciding which of competing sets of data to rely on. Conclusions drawn from this kind of detailed research must therefore be formed within relatively broad margins of error to avoid being susceptible to these data problems. At the same time, the holy aura surrounding the most prestigious of the sources must be dispelled. While valuable as research resources, they are also flawed, producing for researchers problems of dimensions which will vary according to the precise nature of the work.