5 Largest Armed Forces in the World Ranked by Active Military Personnel

In this article, we look at the five largest armed forces in the world by manpower. You can read about trends in the defense industry by heading over to the 20 Largest Armed Forces in the World Ranked by Active Military Personnel, where we have also discussed how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent shockwaves across Europe, forcing several regional countries to increase the sizes of their military and reserve forces.

5. North Korea

Active Military Personnel: 1,320,000

We begin the list with North Korea, which has about 1.32 million active military personnel who account for 5% of the country’s overall population. Pyongyang has been actively seeking to further build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and modernize its already huge conventional military force.