Written by D-Mitch
 |
| Member States of NATO |
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord; OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, where the Supreme Allied Commander also resides. Belgium is one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe. (source: wikipedia) The following graph depicts the Naval Forces of NATO in categories/types of warships. Next to the quantities I have included the percentage of the United States Naval Forces in order to highlight the important contribution of the U.S.A. to the Alliance. This time, I have included a table in the image, where I explain briefly the acronyms, the classes and how they differ with each other, as well the criteria I set for the inclusion or exclusion of a number of countries' warships. I avoided each country's system of pennant numbers and classification (sometimes for political reasons) such as -D-
for George Leygues class making them in that way to belong to destroyer
type despite the non destroyer's capabilities and the small size of the
class. I tried to avoid also the unfair categorization of warships in a
higher position in the hierarchy such as the Pauk or Joao Coutinho
class to corvettes without having missile launch capability while other
larger ships such as those of Holland class are classified as oceanic
patrol vessels. I tried to avoid all these unfair classifications and
based on capabilities, size and armament I divided all the classes (in
brackets) except of the auxiliary ships in 18 main
types/categories. Warships that are out of service (cannibalized) or in reserve (without sensors or weapons) are not included in the graph.
