The UK Armed Forces currently have a total strength of 180,779 personnel, according to Defence Minister Lord Coaker, in response to a parliamentary question from Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links.
The latest figures, as of 1 January 2025, provide a breakdown across service branches, gender, and reserve components, offering insight into the current composition of Britain’s military.
The service-by-service breakdown includes:
- Royal Navy and Royal Marines – 37,601 personnel
- Army (including Gurkhas) – 108,413 personnel
- Royal Air Force – 34,765 personnel
The figures include Regular Forces, Volunteer Reserves, and other personnel categories, such as the Serving Regular Reserve, Sponsored Reserve, Military Provost Guard Service, Locally Engaged Personnel, and elements of the Full-Time Reserve Service.
Gender Breakdown
The gender composition of the Regular and Future Reserve 2030 Forces, as of 1 October 2024, is:
- Male personnel – 147,570
- Female personnel – 21,420
Data on other personnel categories, such as certain reserve elements, was not available.
The Army is the largest component of the UK Armed Forces, with over 108,000 personnel. The numbers also underscore the increasing role of reserves, which make up nearly 18% of the total force.
These numbers provide a clear picture of the UK’s defence personnel structure as the Strategic Defence Review progresses.
It’s pretty disingenuous to include reserves
Reserves play a very important role in our armed forces.. Quite correct to include reserve personnel.
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Why? Reserves are important.
Why do you think? Strange question to ask me mate..
Dont get why asking Jim “why?” is a strange question to ask.
Oops sorry Elliot.. my bad, miss read. Quite agree, reserves have always been important, particularly these days.
my multi tasking with several different jobs at that moment failed me.. Have a good evening.
No worries all good! Yes agreed. The russian invasion of Ukraine has shown us that!
I’ve had arguements with people who say we don’t need to increase troop numbers due to the nature of warfare changing. I said I appreciate warfare has changed but you still need boots on the ground to hold and control areas, defend areas, man AA system, logistics etc.
I get we’re an island and the Navy and Airforce should be prioritised but we still need to be a larger Army.
I say it’s disengnnious because if you include reserves then countries like Russia appear to have massive army’s which don’t really exists.
Reserves are vital but then what’s a reserve? Active duty military personnel including active reservist are normally counted seperalry form reserves.
John, I agree. We have always used Reserves/TA, especially in larger wars, such as the world wars. In Gulf War 1 a huge number of TA deployed. We could not have deployed an armoured division + without them. 9,500 reservists deployed on Op TELIC, GW2.
Jim, Why? They have always been a key component of our armed forces. Our full ORBAT would be non-viable withourt the reserves.
Plenty of VRs in Ww2. As time went by all the more so.. Just look at black and white photo’s
Hi Jim there are reserves and there are contracted and paid reservists.. nothing wrong with counting your contracted reservists… they are a meaningful reserve force.. when Russia talks about its huge numbers of individuals it can mobilise its not actually taking about its reservists..because the number of contracted reservists in the Russian armed forces ( contracted part time soldiers) is actually classified and not actually that many in number..,
It certainly makes the figures look better when reserves are included.
I am definitely in your camp. One example from my time. A reserve unit if Engineers set up a weekend training camp 20 miles from Dundee. Bringing three MGB up from the Midlands the previous week using third line full timers. One MGB per troop. Prize for best and quickest bridge up and down.
Come the Saturday of the training camp there was torrential rain set in for 48 hours. Nine ranks turned up. The PSI was near suicidal.
The Norwegian army is very much in effect a Reserve army, frankly its a shambles. If you want to include reserves in your total you have to accept some will not turn up and or fight. The quality is questionable. What role do they play. Medics fine by me, third line support okay. Front line action, you can venture into cannon fodder territory. Russia being a case in point today.
Whilst I’m sure your anecdotes are true and not uncommon, the idea that they prove the reserves to be useless for all but guard duty isn’t borne out by military history. In the advent of war, the reserves will be inducted into at least six-months full-time training just as volunteers would normally do – if not, they’ll be facing the same battle experience that professionals also don’t acquire until it happens. If my granddad’s experience is anything to go by, after that there really isn’t much difference between them and a professional soldier.
He signed up for the Royal Engineers on Sept 4th, and three weeks later was defending the wrong end of a bridge near Lille, wearing just a greatcoat and helmet. Six years later he was a company sergeant-major, and turned down a request to stay on as RSM. He always said that the fact that he was still alive and not dead was down to chance… and occassionally advising professional officers that they should perhaps rethink their orders!
Exroyal, its a mixed bag.
In Camp Bastion as COS I was responsible for Camp security, an interesting task for a REME Major(!). Our FP Coy was from The Rifles – OC and 2/3 of the R&F were TA. They were excellent, especially their beyond-the-wire patrolling. On one occasion they disturbed two Talibs setting up for an IDF attack on the base. During my time there were no Talib attacks on the base, in large part due to the effectiveness of our FP Coy.
They were replaced by the less-than-effective regular RAF FP Sqn (of Battle of Bastion fame)
Source MOD Quarterly service personnel statistics: 1 January 2025 (far more detail there)
Totals and Trends
180,780 Strength of UK Forces Service Personnel at 1 January 2025, a decrease of 2,350 (1 per cent) since 1 January 2024.
127,040 Full-Time Trained Strength (RN/RM & RAF) and Full-Time Trade Trained Strength (Army) at 1 January 2025, a decrease of 3,620 (3 per cent) since 1 January 2024.
12,850 People joined the UK Regular Armed Forces in the past 12 months (1 January 2024 – 31 December 2024), an increase of 2,170 (20 per cent) compared with the previous 12 month period.
14,830 People left the UK Regular Armed Forces a decrease of 1,310 (8 per cent) compared with the previous 12 month period.
29,260 Strength of the Trained Future Reserves 2020 at 1 January 2025, a decrease of 360 (1 per cent) since 1 January 2024.
3,680 People joined the Future Reserves 2020 a decrease of 210 (5 per cent) compared with the previous 12 month period.
4,280 People left the Future Reserves 2020 a decrease of 1,270 (23 per cent) compared with the previous 12 month period.
Regular Personnel
RN/RM 31,906 of which Trained 27,837 87.2%
Army 73,847 of which Trained 70,752 95.8%
RAF 30,364 of which Trained 27,746 91.4%
Gurkhas 4,127
The artical a gender breakdown of male and female ,what about the other dozens of genders
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Why do we have a lot of Inuits in our armed forces ?
Northern /”Artic Flank ,someone’s got too protect the Artic from those pesky Russians ,that’s all I can think of either that or because of Global warming?.
The solution is coming , wait to the Next strategic defence cuts (review) lol.
If they are army has low numbers and need more troops why not boost them with more troops from Nepal. Could easy get thousands more to join the army
We have turned tens of thousands away, either through “computer says no” or “computer says nothing for months on end”. It’s not so much a potential recruit shortage as much as a complete failure of the Government, VSOs and outsourced agencies.
If we ever increase to 120k+ regular troops or we simply have no one signing up or those who do don’t meet standards then go ahead and raise a division or two of Gurkhas. Until then we need to sort the UK recruitment pipeline. We also just need pay, conditions and funding improved or we are just going to go from crisis to crisis. This isn’t the 19th century, acceptable service life standards must be provided to everyone, Gurkhas included.
The economic reasons to recruit locally first are numerous. Then there’s future recruitment and political advantages.
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With numbers like that, Britain ought to be able to 10,000 peacekeepers to Ukraine.
First, consider how to defend your borders with these meager armed forces before sending anything abroad.
Peacekeeper nonense isn’t happening .We don’t have the kit or the nos.Mp stated this week that troops in estonia werent properly kitted out.So how they gonna kit out 30,000 troops as the 10,000 troops will have to rotate. Secondly russia have made it clear they wont accept european peacekkepers.
For a short period, as a best effort silver bullet. But who do we replace them with?
The Army is now too small for numbers like that.
That’s why we have the UN blue helmets , Starmer just wants his Maggie moment of British heroism, His plan for the force of the willing is losing momentum .Even the hierarchy of the Army are saying its a non starter .
Collins, not a chance.
Beware just looking at headline numbers and not drilling down.
If we deployed reg Army peacekeepers with armoured or mechanised equipment, then we have just two conventional armoured brigades and one light mech brigade to draw on. That is not enough brigades to do an enduring operation and meet Harmony guidelines. We may be peacekeeping out there for years. UNFICYP started in 1964 and is still running with UK personnel.
So, if Harmony is still a consideration, (Dannatt likes to say that it is not) we step down to deploying a single deployed armd/mech BG, maybe 1,000 men.
Even then we may have to pull out of our Op Cabrit task in Estonia, which requires another armoured/mech BG.
Of course weak Generals may ignore all of the above and say to the politicos ‘Yessir, we can do it and we can deploy 5,000 or 10,000 men’, and use massive numbers of reservists. The army would soon break.
“Even then we may have to pull out of our Op Cabrit task in Estonia, which requires another armoured/mech BG.”
Yep, and Starmer was saying the other day the Ukraine mission would not necessitate pulling out from other commitments!
He is either lying, ignorant of reality, or being misinformed.
As the Armed Forces have been ‘slashed and burned’ by so many, for so long, if and I say IF the current incumbents were to take the Military seriously for a change, what do they spend any new money on?
The UK needs ships and subs, it needs fighter aircraft, it needs tanks, apc’s artillery etc etc. Do they focus on recruiting first? 180,000 personnel is a fraction of what is required to do all that we would like them to do. To be fair, I wouldn’t know where to start.
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Disingenuous to include reserves in that total. If they want to do that they should be saying the various readiness states. Reserves are important but this lump sum hides they need work up time. Not as much as a volunteer fresh through whatever farce recruitment is currently, but still months.
When I joined the RAF in 1983 the number serving was 89’000…..I remember the instructor at Swinderby saying it was ” Slightly under” it’s full strength of 90’000 !!. By 1996 when I left it was sitting around 45’000……
Still peddling numbers that don’t reflect the real state of the armed forces!
Am I right that there are only 40,000 combat infantry less the number of marines? The rest of the army is made up of Logistics, armour and artillery. It would be OK for home defence and that’s about it.
Whats happen to the analogy “the man who stands on the turf is the man who owns it” 40,000 doesn’t cut it!
Keg, I guess we have 18 – 20,000 regular Infantry.
Our army doesn’t really do Military Home Defence (MHD). It hasn’t trained specifically in that role for years, probably since the 80s. It is also too small – in West and East Sussex combined there is only one regular army unit, and they are not Infantry – I refer to the air defence gunners at Thorney Island, who would be deployed overseas providing AD for a deployed force. Many other areas of the country could say similar about lack of Regs. Of course MHD is best left to the Army Reserve, and the Regs can focus on expeditionary warfare.
Oh dear 😟