Talk:Armed forces

Merge discussion

 * Propose merge. Following a brief exchange on the talk page of Military sociology, I propose that this article and Military be merged. As I understand it, in American English the two terms are synonymous, whereas in British English "military" is usually used as the adjective and "armed forces" as the noun. At any rate, there is not enough distinction between the terms to warrant two separate articles. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't see that there is a meaningful difference. I suggest this merge is announced at WP:MILHIST.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Support. I propose this article, "Armed Forces", to be merged into "Military". The merger proposal should also be announced in "Military" talk page. Fleet Command (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Support, i'll help merge.username 1 (talk) 14:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I am redirecting to disambiguation page the full version of this page is kept at User:User name one/Armed Forces for mergeing.username 1 (talk) 14:25, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - the two terms ae not identical - BilCat (talk) 19:20, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - What's the difference?username 1 (talk) 19:33, 21 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Strong oppose - will expand on this later if needed, but im pretty sure most will oppoes this merger. As mentioned above though when it was raised some time ago, this really needs to be mentioned at WP:MILHIST to get plenty of feed back / views from people involved in this area of articles. BritishWatcher (talk) 19:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Support There is not really much of a difference and merging these two articles will provide more info in one place —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ocho85cinco85 (talk • contribs) 01:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I am intrigued by the above archived discussion. 5 supporters of the merge and 2 opposed. There are arguments given supporting the merger. There are no arguments given for why the articles should not merge. It seems to me that there is not a distinction of significance between "military" and "armed forces" so far as what would go into an article. As a Venn diagram these circles would be near perfectly overlapping or (at the very least) concentric. For those who were opposed, please explain. The distinction should probably be highlighted in one of the articles. --MCG (talk) 04:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not a vote. - BilCat (talk) 17:05, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * If I understand it correctly, the military is the main (and often the only) part of the armed forces, but in some cases (maybe during a war) the armed forces can also include, for example, border guards, paramilitary organisations, some police forces, guerrillas... They are not a part of the military but they can be a part of the armed forces.
 * If something like this would be added to the article, we could probably cite some law... The Lithuania article (lt:Ginkluotosios pajėgos) cites a Lithuanian law, but there must be some English speaking country that also makes such a distinction, right? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:05, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

"Armed forces" and Military
Please see a discussion about the relationship between "Armed forces" and Military. Maurreen (talk) 16:14, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Update: Due to Talk page archiving, the discussion mentioned above can now be found at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Archive_94. — ¾-10 00:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Military which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 00:30, 21 January 2023 (UTC)