Army
(asked on 23rd November 2017) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many (a) officers and (b) soldiers there were in the British Army in each year since 2000.
The officer and soldier strengths of the Army at 1 April for each year since 2000 are shown below:
Army Full Time Strength
| Officers | Soldiers |
2000 | 14,130 | 100,050 |
2001 | 14,320 | 99,670 |
2002 | 14,550 | 100,240 |
2003 | 14,940 | 102,340 |
2004 | 15,180 | 102,030 |
2005 | 15,040 | 98,370 |
2006 | 15,130 | 96,750 |
2007 | 15,100 | 95,620 |
2008 | 15,090 | 94,620 |
2009 | 14,930 | 96,370 |
2010 | 15,020 | 98,340 |
2011 | 15,020 | 95,460 |
2012 | 14,660 | 93,560 |
2013 | 14,060 | 89,280 |
2014 | 13,360 | 80,840 |
2015 | 13,000 | 77,020 |
2016 | 12,790 | 75,240 |
2017 | 12,910 | 73,870 |
Future Reserves 2020 Strength
| Officers | Soldiers |
2012 | 4,300 | 21,690 |
2013 | 4,300 | 20,940 |
2014 | 4,350 | 19,230 |
2015 | 4,490 | 20,940 |
2016 | 4,840 | 23,830 |
2017 | 5,100 | 24,840 |
Notes:
1. Numbers are for trained and untrained personnel and have been produced by Defence Statistics.
- Full time strength in the above tables includes the trained element which contributes to the liability. e.g. it includes Gurkhas but it excludes Full Time Reserve Service (FTRS) Home Commitment (HC) and those FTRS serving on Operational Commitment Establishment (Reserve). As such these may differ from published statistics.
3. The Future Reserves 2020 population consists of Group A Army Reserves, some Sponsored Reserves and those personnel serving on FTRS(HC) contracts who were previously Army Reservists. Ministry of Defence does not hold Future Reserves 2020 population data pre – 2012.
4. Figures have been rounded to 10, numbers ending in "5" have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias.