A regular army is the official army of a state or country (the official armed forces) -- contrasting with irregular forces such as volunteer irregular militias, private armies, mercenaries, etc. A regular army usually consists of:
- a standing army, the permanent force of the regular army that is maintained under arms during peacetime.
- a military reserve force that can be mobilized when needed to expand the effectives of the regular army by complementing the standing army.
A regular army may be:
- a conscript army, including professionals, volunteers and also conscripts (presence of enforced conscription, including recruits for the standing army and also a compulsory reserve).
- a professional army, with no conscripts (absence of compulsory service, and presence of a voluntary reserve). It is not exactly the same as a standing army, as there exist standing armies both in the conscript and the professional models.
In the United Kingdom and in the United States the term regular army means the professional standing army, as different from reserves, National Guard, etc.
Read more about Regular Army: Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words regular and/or army:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)