Egyptian Armed Forces

The modern Egyptian military was established through the sweeping reforms of Muhammad Ali in the early nineteenth century, which built a centralized, European-style standing army out of Egypt's traditional forces and carried Egyptian campaigns into Arabia, Sudan and the Levant before European intervention checked further Egyptian territorial ambition. After Egyptian independence in 1922 the military remained substantially under British influence until the 1952 revolution, led by the Free Officers movement including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muhammad Naguib, brought the armed forces to the center of Egyptian governance. Egyptian forces performed poorly in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, a failure that helped catalyze the Free Officers' rise, and after President Nasser's 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal prompted invasion by Israel, Britain and France, Egypt suffered tactical defeats but claimed a strategic victory once international pressure forced the invaders' withdrawal; Israeli forces then decisively defeated Egyptian armies in the Sinai during the 1967 Six-Day War amid poor Egyptian command coordination. In the 1973 October War, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal in Operation Badr and established positions on its eastern bank, a limited but symbolically decisive success that, despite Israel's eventual tactical gains, Egypt regards as a strategic victory reshaping the postwar Middle East; today the armed forces comprise Army, Air Force, Navy and Air Defense Forces branches overseen by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.