BEAN-COUNTING WON’T DO: MAKING SENSE OF MODERN MILITARY COMPETITION
Ian Bowers , Henrik Stålhane Hiim May 14, 2026 7 minutes read
Traditional measurements often fail to capture how modern, advanced militaries compete.
Are the United States and China amidst an intensifying militarily competition? Traditional ways of measuring such competition—comparing military budgets or the building of similar platforms—indicate that the answer is a resounding no. While China is rapidly expanding its navy, the United States is not keeping pace. Similarly, whereas Chinese military budgets have increased dramatically in absolute terms (albeit not in relative terms), U.S. military budgets have not. Put simply, China is racing, while the United States does not appear to be responding. Yet few observers of international affairs would say that the United States and China are not in competition. So, should we believe the metrics or our lying eyes?
Traditional measurements often fail to capture how modern, advanced militaries compete. As we argue in a new article in Comparative Strategy, both the academic and policy communities need to update their methodologies. By examining the operational concepts of militaries, one can discern how and against whom they are preparing for war. Indeed, both U.S. and Chinese operational concepts demonstrate that the two are competing intensively with each other.
The Analytical Challenge
In the modern era, the nature of warfare has changed. Traditional bean-counting methods of measuring competition—budgets or numbers of individual military platforms—fail to capture this shift. There are several reasons for this.
First, modern militaries no longer aim to employ force from a single service or domain. Advanced military force development rests on the assumption of either jointness or the ability to create effects from multiple sources. For this reason, different militaries may acquire different platforms and come up with different solutions to similar operational or tactical problems. This complicates comparative methodologies, and points to why traditional bean counting may produce misleading results.
Although U.S. operational concepts aim to achieve superiority across the joint functions, they place particular emphasis on fires, intelligence, and command and control.
The U.S.-China competition
Our analysis of U.S. and Chinese operational concepts demonstrate that intensifying competition and an action-reaction dynamic is unfolding. Both sides have for more than a decade developed concepts that seek to exploit the potential weaknesses of the other. Moreover, their operational concepts demonstrate what their strategic goals are. Whereas China’s main objective is to fight a war over Taiwan while deterring, delaying or denying U.S. intervention, the United States aims to deter Chinese aggression and defend Taiwan. To do so, the U.S. military needs to penetrate, disrupt and operate within China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubble. These objectives are reflected in the operational concepts and now doctrine of the U.S. services and the Joint Staff.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/bean-counting/
