Since Muammar Gaddafi rose to power in 1969, Libya received military assistance from the Soviet Union.

After the 2011 civil war and the fall of Gaddafi, the armed forces consisted mostly of local militias that were frequently created or ceased to be active and made temporary shifting alliances.

Five battalions, which were initially designed for guerrilla warfare in the Jabal al Akhdar region of Cyrenaica, were established under British command.

Because the high mobility of the desert campaigns required a considerable degree of technical and mechanical expertise, the Libyan forces were used primarily as auxiliaries, guarding military installations and prisoners.

After Britain succeeded in occupying the Libyan territories, the need for the British-trained and equipped Sanusi troops appeared to be over.

The Sanusi Army was reluctant to disband, however, and the majority of its members arranged to be transferred to the local police force in Cyrenaica under the British military administration.

King Idris of Libya and his government relied on the police for internal security and were anxious to increase the size of the national army to 5,000 troops.

A group of young officers and soldiers led by Muammar Gaddafi overthrew King Idris in a coup d'etat on 1 September 1969.

The King's nephew and heir presumptive, Crown Prince Hasan, was captured by the rebels and spent several years under house arrest.

The IISS estimated tank numbers in 2009 as 2,025: Russian official sources reported in 2010 that T-72s would be modernised with help from Russia.

In 2009 the IISS estimated that Libya had Crotale, SA-7 Grail, and SA-9/SA-13 surface-to-air missiles, as well as AA guns in Army service.

[4] Leader: Mohammed Buzeiud; trained at Bassingbourn Barracks, UK (2014)[20] As of 2019[update], since the start of the Second Libyan Civil War in 2014, the Libyan armed forces, composed to a large degree of militias,[4] have been partially led by the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, while remaining highly divided between those nominally led by the GNA and those nominally led by Khalifa Haftar in command of the Libyan National Army (LNA) on behalf of the part of the national parliament in Tobruk.

[25] During 2015–2018, the LNA under Haftar's control unified many militias into a regular hierarchical structure in the eastern part of Libya and used online social networks to present the image of growing military and political power,[4] while still remaining, as of November 2019[update], dominated by Salafist militias and foreign members.