British Armed Forces Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids British Armed Forces
The tri-service badge
Established	1707
Parts	Royal Navy British Army Royal Air Force
Leadership
Commander-in-Chief	Queen Elizabeth II
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (de facto authority) Secretary of State for Defence	Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP Rt Hon Philip Hammond MP
Chief of the Defence Staff	General Sir Nick Houghton
Serving soldiers
Available to be a soldier	14,607,725 males, age 15–49, 14,028,738 females, age 15–49
Fit to be a soldier	12,046,268 males, age 15–49, 11,555,893 females, age 15–49
Active employees/soldiers	150,000 active personnel
Reserve personnel	82,000 regular reserve
Expenditures
Budget	FY 2013-14: GBP £36.3 billion
Percent of GDP	2.1%

The British Armed Forces are the armed forces of the United Kingdom. The British Armed Forces are officially called Her Majesty's Armed Forces, and they are sometimes called the Armed Forces of the Crown. The British Armed Forces is made up of three parts: the British Army, the Royal Navy (and the Royal Marines) and the Royal Air Force.

The Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces is the British monarch. Members of the British Armed Forces must swear that they will obey the orders of the monarch (swear allegiance). Under the constitution of the United Kingdom, the armed forces controlled by the Crown, however, because of the 1689 Bill of Rights, the UK cannot have an army during peacetime unless the British Parliament allows it. Nowadays, the British Parliament passes an Armed Forces Act every five years, which means the UK can keep its military. The British Prime Minister is the de facto commander of the British Armed Forces. The armed forces are managed by the Ministry of Defence.

The British Armed Forces protect the United Kingdom, the British overseas territories and the Crown dependencies. They also take part in United Nations peacekeeping missions. The British Armed Forces often take part in NATO missions. The most recent wars the British Armed Forces have fought are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Operation Palliser, 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 (Cyprus).

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. It has around 225 nuclear warheads. The United Kingdom's nuclear weapons are controlled by the Royal Navy.

Images for kids

A modern reproduction of an 1805 poster commemorating the Battle of Trafalgar
Soldiers from the Royal Irish Rifles in the Battle of the Somme's trenches 1916
British commandos during the Second World War
The Vulcan Bomber was the mainstay of Britain's airborne nuclear capability for much of the Cold War.
Commander-in-Chief the Queen Elizabeth II riding Burmese at the 1986 Trooping the Colour ceremony
The Ministry of Defence building at Whitehall, Westminster, London
Welsh Guards Trooping the Colour
Top ten military expenditures in billion US$ in 2014
A Trident II SLBM being launched from a Vanguard-class submarine
HMS Queen Elizabeth, a Queen Elizabeth-class supercarrier on sea trials in June 2017
The Challenger 2 main battle tank
The Eurofighter Typhoon multirole combat aircraft
RFA Argus (left), the fleet's aviation training and hospital ship
A newly qualified Royal Marine of 122 Troop Kings Squad is pictured during a passing out parade in 2011, having undergone the recruitment process and selection and training
Queen Elizabeth II in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, April 1945

British Armed Forces facts for kids

Images for kids

See also