Force Structures

Sri Lanka's armed forces number 262,500. Service is voluntary. The end of the 26-year campaign to defeat the ethnic separatist insurgent Tamil Tiger guerrillas allowed the armed forces to shift their focus to peacetime internal security and undergo a large-scale (though undefined) personnel reduction of the Army. Despite the drawdown in operational tempo and slashing of personnel overhead, force modernization lagged. As a result, Sri Lankan force projection beyond the immediate...