British Armed Forces | |
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Founded | 1707 |
Service branches | Royal Navy British Army Royal Air Force |
Leadership | |
Commander-in-Chief | Charles III |
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (de facto authority) Secretary of State for Defence | Keir Starmer Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP |
Chief of the Defence Staff | General Sir Nick Houghton |
Personnel | |
Available for military service | 14,607,725 males, age 15–49, 14,028,738 females, age 15–49 |
Fit for military service | 12,046,268 males, age 15–49, 11,555,893 females, age 15–49 |
Active personnel | 150,000 active personnel |
Reserve personnel | 82,000 regular reserve[N 1] |
Expenditures | |
Budget | FY 2013-14: GBP £36.3 billion[1] |
Percent of GDP | 2.1%[2] |
The British Armed Forces are the military of the United Kingdom. They are officially called His Majesty's Armed Forces and sometimes called the Armed Forces of the Crown.[3] The British Armed Forces are made up of three parts: the British Army, the Royal Navy (including the Royal Marines) and the Royal Air Force.[4]
The Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces is the British monarch.[5] Members of the British Armed Forces must swear allegiance that they will obey the orders of the monarch. Under the constitution of the United Kingdom, the armed forces controlled by the Crown, but because of the 1689 Bill of Rights, the British may not have an army during peacetime unless the British Parliament allows it.[6] However, the British Parliament now passes an Armed Forces Act every five years as a formality. The British Prime Minister is the de facto commander of the British Armed Forces,[7] which are managed by the Ministry of Defence.
The British Armed Forces protect the United Kingdom, the British overseas territories and the Crown dependencies and take part in United Nations peacekeeping missions[8] NATO missions. The most recent wars in which the British Armed Forces have fought are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, peacekeeping in Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone, peacekeeping in the Balkans and Cyprus and defending the no-fly zone over Libya. The British Armed Forces have bases in the following places: Ascension Island, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Diego Garcia, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya, Qatar and the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus.[9][10]
The United Kingdom tested its first nuclear weapon in Operation Hurricane in 1952. As of 2012[update], Britain is one of the five recognised nuclear powers and has around 225 nuclear warheads, which are controlled by the Royal Navy.
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