Albania

the Albanian Armed Forces (AAF) are responsible for defending the country’s independence, sovereignty, and territory, assisting with internal security, providing disaster and humanitarian relief, and participating in international peacekeeping missions; the AAF is a small, lightly armed force that has been undergoing a modernization effort to improve its ability to fulfill NATO missions; the AAF has contributed small numbers of forces to several NATO missions since Albania joined NATO in 2009, including peacekeeping/stability missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Iraq, and multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria and Latvia; it has also contributed to EU and UN missions (2025)

250 Kosovo (NATO/KFOR) (2025)

Republic of Albania Armed Forces (Forcat e Armatosura të Republikës së Shqipërisë (FARSH); aka Albanian Armed Forces (AAF)): Land Forces, Naval Force (includes Coast Guard), Air Forces Ministry of Interior: Guard of the Republic, State Police (includes the Border and Migration Police) (2025)

note: the State Police are primarily responsible for internal security, including counterterrorism, while the Guard of the Republic protects senior state officials, foreign dignitaries, and certain state properties

18-30 for voluntary military service for men and women; conscription abolished 2010 (2025)

note: as of 2024, women comprised about 15% of the military's full-time personnel

the military is in the process of modernizing by replacing its inventory of Soviet-era weapons with NATO standard armaments; in recent years, acquisitions have included equipment from France, Israel, Italy, Turkey and the US (2025)

approximately 7,500 active-duty military personnel (2025)