Armed forces

The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external and internal aggressors. In broad usage, the terms "armed forces" and "military" are often treated synonymously, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. Armed force is the use of armed forces to achieve political objectives.

The study of the use of armed forces is called military science. Broadly speaking, this involves considering offense and defense at three "levels": strategy, operational art, and tactics. All three levels study the application of the use of force in order to achieve a desired objective.

Organization

In most countries the basis of the armed forces is the military, divided into basic military branches. However, armed forces can include other paramilitary structures.

Armed

Armed (May, 1941–1964) was an American Thoroughbred gelding race horse. He was sired by the great stakes winner Bull Lea, the sire of Citation. His dam was Armful, whose sire was Belmont Stakes winner Chance Shot and whose grandsire was the great Fair Play.

Besides being small for his age and very headstrong, Armed had the habits of biting and kicking hay out of his handler's pitchfork. Since he was also practically untrainable, his trainer, Ben A. Jones, sent him back to Calumet Farm to be gelded and turned out to grow up. He returned to the track late in his two-year-old season and resumed training.

His first start was as a three-year-old the following February, and he won at Hialeah Park by eight lengths. He won again less than a week later but then won only once in five more starts and had to be rested due to an ankle injury.

Armed raced for seven seasons, from 1944 to 1950, finishing with a 41-20-10 record in 81 starts. In 1947 under jockey Douglas Dodson, he defeated U.S. Triple Crown champion Assault in a match race at Belmont Park and set a track record of 2:01-3/5 for one and one-quarter miles while winning the Widener Handicap and carrying 129 pounds. He repeated as American Champion Older Male Horse and was voted 1947 American Horse of the Year honors. In the Horse of the Year poll conducted by Turf and Sport Digest magazine, he received 151 of a possible 173 votes to win the title from Citation, Stymie, Bewitch and Assault. Armed died in 1964 of an intestinal tumor. In 1963, he was inducted into National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. In The Blood-Horse ranking of the top 100 U.S. thoroughbred champions of the 20th Century, he was ranked #39.

Russian Armed Forces

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Russian: Вооружённые Си́лы Росси́йской Федера́ции, tr. Vooruzhonnije Síly Rossíyskoj Federátsii) are the military service of Russia, established after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 7 May 1992, Boris Yeltsin signed a presidential decree establishing the Russian Ministry of Defence and placing all Soviet Armed Forces troops on the territory of the Russian SFSR under Russian control. The commander-in-chief of the armed forces is the president of Russia. Although the Russian armed forces were formed in 1992, the Russian military dates its roots back to the times of the Kievan Rus'.

Armed forces under the Ministry of Defence are divided into:

Armed response vehicle

An armed response vehicle (ARV) is a type of police car operated by British law enforcement. ARVs are crewed by Authorised Firearms Officers to respond to emergency telephone calls believed to involve firearms or other high-risk situations. ARVs are specially adapted and modified to accommodate specialist equipment, along with the transportation of armed officers to a scene of an incident.

Introduction of ARVs

Armed response vehicles were introduced to the British Police to provide them with a firearms response capability, as the United Kingdom police do not routinely carry firearms on patrol, with the exception of a minority of armed officers. Outside of London, ARVs are controlled and organised by the Force Firearms Unit, and within the capital they are controlled by Specialist Firearms Command. ARVs are identifiable in London by a yellow dot sticker, visible from each angle, and an asterisk on the roof to enable helicopters to identify the vehicle as being an ARV. Diplomatic Protection Group vehicles, identifiable by their red paintwork, utilise the same markings to denote the carrying of firearms officers.

San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.44 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world.

The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not use the nine-county definition of the San Francisco Bay Area. The OMB has designated a more extensive 12-county Combined Statistical Area (CSA) titled the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area which also includes the three counties of San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, and San Benito that do not border San Francisco Bay, but are economically tied to the nine counties that do.