I previously introduced a new measure of military capabilities, \(M\), which is intended to capture the size and sophistication of a nation's military relative to prevailing standards of the day, here. Some legitimate concerns were raised about how the scores were calculated, so I adjusted the measure.
The real question is how to normalize the raw military data to reflect prevailing standards of the day. In my previous two attempts, I did this through the use of arbitrary constants. This is unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons. I've decided to instead base the \(M\) scores on 5-year moving averages.