Brazil as a military power

Very often I hear about Brazil as a major power.

Whilst Brazil is the premier power in South America, by global standards it does not seem very impressive from a military perspective:

Air Force – current jet fighters, large transports, reconaissance
About 110-ish fighter planes split 50:50 between F-5E/F and AMX. 12 Mirage 2000s retired by December 2013 (apparently only 6 operational right now)

16 C-130E/H
12 C295

5 tankers (3 KC-137 + 2 KC-130H)

9 P-3 ASW
12 EMB-110

5 R-99 AWACS

Most of rest of fleet is utility, trainer and COIN aircraft.

Air Force – future
Up to 110 4.5 generation aircraft

2 KC-767 to replace KC-137.
28 KC-390 to replace C-130.

Air Force future capability is still small and completely lacking in strategic transport as well as sufficient fighters for international deployments

Navy – current major ships

1 aircraft carrier – Clemencau class

10 frigates (c. 1976-1986) – 3 Type 22 and 7
5 corvettes – 5 including 1 new Barroso class. Other 4 date from early 1990s

5 submarine – Type 209.

4 large landing ships (1 is 1950s, 2 are 1960s and 1 is 1980s)

2 tankers

15 x A-4 Skyhawk

Lots of smaller ships including OPVs, river monitors, patrol boats and minehunters of various vintages.

Navy is largely obsolete and still mainly internal focused.

Navy – future
4 Scorpene submarines
5 new large frigates
more OPVs
1 new support ships

Talk of nuclear SSN – but these have been on and off for years.

Army

Current plans are focusing on defence in Amazon (Amazonia Protegida and Sentinela da Patria) as well as qualitative improvements such as NVG and UAVs.

Army equipment is also obsolete – MBTs are Leopard I and M60. Main APC is M113. No real plans to replace these.

A lot of the other stuff dates from 1960s and 1970s.

So in the future:

– Brazillian Air Force’s cutting edge will be quite small by international standards and still lacking in strategic transport, long range surveillance etc.

In fact it’s Air Force’s cutting edge will be size of RAAF albeit without 5th generation fighters, large AWACS or strategic transport.

Vast majority of aircraft will still be internal security dedicated.

– Brazil Navy will get a boost with 5 new frigates but will still be small by international standards and will also still be primarily based on obsolete ships.

Brazil Navy “blue water” capability will be a more poorer version of Spanish Navy in terms of size.

– Brazil’s Army will still be primarily dedicated to internal security and still mainly obsolete.

So for a supposedly “major” power Brazil will have virtually no combat capability in terms of modern power projection and it’s military will still be primarily a counter narcotics/COIN force for internal policing