The ultimate yardstick of national power is military capability. Because countries subsist in an environment where internal and external threats to security are both common and ever-present, the effectiveness of their coercive arms becomes the ultimate measure of power. Military capabilities enable countries to defend themselves, while simultaneously enabling their state managers to pursue whatever interests they wish, if necessary over and against the preferences of other competing entities. The ultimate “output” of national power should be—ideally—the ability of a military force to successfully prosecute a variety of operations against its adversaries. Whether a force is in fact capable of overwhelming these adversaries requires a detailed analysis of the balance of power, which will not be undertaken here, because the objective is not to assess power as an “outcome” but only as a “resource.” Measuring military capability here will focus on understanding which ingredients are necessary for the creation of an effective force, and how the effectiveness of this force can be conceptualized in an intellectual sense.