Volunteer Reserves (United Kingdom) in the context of "Royal Naval Reserve"

The British Armed Forces are the unified military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, support international peacekeeping efforts and provide humanitarian aid. The force is also known as His Majesty's Armed Forces due to the British monarch's status as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces.

Since the formation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 (later succeeded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and finally by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the British Armed Forces have seen action in most major wars involving the world's great powers, including the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the First World War and the Second World War. Britain's victories in most of these wars allowed it to influence world events and establish itself as one of the world's leading military and economic powers. The British Armed Forces consist of: the Royal Navy, a blue-water navy with a fleet of 62 commissioned and active ships, together with the Royal Marines, a highly specialised amphibious light infantry force; the British Army, the UK's land warfare branch; and the Royal Air Force, a technologically sophisticated air force with a diverse operational fleet consisting of both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft. The British Armed Forces include standing forces, Regular Reserve, Volunteer Reserves and Sponsored Reserves.

The University Officers' Training Corps (UOTC), also known as the Officers' Training Corps (OTC), are British Army reserve units, under the command of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which recruit exclusively from universities and focus on training and developing leadership. Their role is to allow university students the opportunity to undertake modules of Reserve Officer training designed to fit around their degree and to develop the leadership abilities, skills and experience of their members, which could be useful in a future career in the British Army, or skills and training that can be utilised in a civilian career. While in the UOTC, Officer Cadets will undertake the Reserve Officer Training Modules (Alpha & Bravo).

University students serving with the UOTC are personnel of the Army Reserve, and are attested and paid when on duty. They are classed as Group B (Non Deployable), whilst in the UOTC. Students undergoing service with the UOTC hold the rank of Officer cadet. Students have no obligation to pursue further service in the armed forces when they leave university and can resign from the UOTC at any time. UOTCs are led by officers and non-commissioned officers from the Regular Army and wider Army Reserve.

The Regular Reserve is the component of the military reserve of the British Armed Forces whose members have formerly served in the "Regular" (full-time professional) forces. Other components of the Reserve are the Volunteer Reserves and the Sponsored Reserves. The Regular Reserve largely consists of ex-Regular personnel who retain a statutory liability for service and are liable to be recalled for active military duty "in case of imminent national danger or great emergency". It also consists of a smaller number of ex-Regulars who serve under a fixed-term reserve contract (similar in nature to the Volunteer Reserves) and are liable for reporting, training and deploying on operations.

Since April 2013, Ministry of Defence publications no longer report the entire strength of the Regular Reserve, instead, only Regular Reserves serving under the fixed-term reserve contract are counted. As of 2014, they had a strength of 45,110 personnel. Of those, approximately 2,450 were serving alongside the Regular military in active service.

The Royal Marines Reserve (RMR) is the volunteer reserve force used to augment the regular Royal Marines. The RMR consists of some 600 trained ranks distributed among the four units within the UK. About 10 percent of the force are working with the Regular Corps on long-term attachments in all of the Royal Marines regular units. All the volunteers within the RMR must pass through the same rigorous commando course as the regulars. Volunteers may be civilians with no previous military experience or may be former regular Royal Marines.

The history of the British Army spans over three and a half centuries since its founding in 1660 and involves numerous European wars, colonial wars and world wars. From the late 17th century until the mid-20th century, the United Kingdom was the greatest economic and imperial power in the world, and although this dominance was principally achieved through the strength of the Royal Navy (RN), the British Army played a significant role.

As of 2015, there were 92,000 professionals in the regular army (including 2,700 Gurkhas) and 20,480 Volunteer Reserves. Britain has generally maintained only a small regular army during peacetime, expanding this as required in time of war, due to Britain's traditional role as a sea power. Since the suppression of Jacobitism in 1745, the British Army has played little role in British domestic politics (except for the Curragh incident), and, apart from Ireland, has seldom been deployed against internal threats to authority (one notorious exception being the Peterloo Massacre).