About us

We work for a secure and prosperous United Kingdom with global reach and influence. We will protect our people, territories, values and interests at home and overseas, through strong armed forces and in partnership with allies, to ensure our security, support our national interests and safeguard our prosperity.


Responsibilities

The Ministry of Defence has 8 defence tasks:

  • defence, security and resilience of the UK and its overseas territories
  • nuclear deterrence and the defence nuclear enterprise
  • contribute to improved understanding of the world through strategic intelligence and the global defence network
  • influence through international defence engagement
  • overseas defence activity
  • promote UK prosperity and civil society
  • direct defence
  • strategic base and enabling functions

Priorities

Our priorities are to:

Read our Outcome Delivery Plan to find out more about how we are performing against our objectives.

The government is conducting an Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.

Who we are

The Ministry of Defence has permanent and casual civilian personnel, including Royal Fleet Auxiliaries, Trading Funds and locally engaged civilians .

The UK regular forces comprise full time trained and untrained personnel in the:

Full personnel information can be found in the following publications:

Our organisation charts

Use of images

You may use images on this website when reporting current news only. See the MOD news licence.

Our blogs

Follow Defence in the media, the official news blog of the MOD, for headlines in the mainstream media about defence matters, our perspective on stories and listing of upcoming events.

Online security

Online resources for serving and ex-serving defence personnel, their families and friends for safe and responsible use of social media are available in Think before you share online.

Accessibility

For guidance on the accessibility of Ministry of Defence content hosted on gov.uk and contact details for reporting any issues, please read our accessibility statement.

Corporate information

Access our information

Jobs and contracts

Read about the types of information we routinely publish in our Publication scheme. Find out about our commitment to Welsh language scheme. Our Personal information charter explains how we treat your personal information. Read our policy on Social media use.