British Army

The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Naval Service and the Royal Air Force. As of 1 July 2024, the British Army comprises 74,296 regular full-time personnel, 4,244 Gurkhas, 25,934 volunteer reserve personnel and 4,612 "other personnel", for a total of 109,086.

The British Army traces back to 1707 and the formation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain which joined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into a single state and, with that, united the English Army and the Scots Army as the British Army. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the monarch as their commander-in-chief, since both the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and Scottish Claim of Right Act 1689 require parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army.

The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence and commanded by the Chief of the General Staff.

At its inception, being composed primarily of cavalry and infantry, the British Army was one of two Regular Forces (there were also separate Reserve Forces) within the British military (those parts of the British Armed Forces tasked with land warfare, as opposed to the naval forces), with the other having been the Ordnance Military Corps (made up of the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, and the Royal Sappers and Miners) of the Board of Ordnance, which along with the originally civilian Commissariat Department, stores and supply departments, as well as barracks and other departments, were absorbed into the British Army when the Board of Ordnance was abolished in 1855. Various other civilian departments of the board were absorbed into the War Office.