The Militia Artillery units of the United Kingdom and Colonies (including Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa prior to their attaining dominion status) were military reserve units made up of volunteers who served part-time during peacetime, training to take over responsibility for manning fixed artillery batteries from the regular Royal Artillery during times of war.

The Militia, which had become a paper tiger, changed from a conscripted force to one in which recruits voluntarily engaged for a term of service.

The invasion scare also led to the re-establishment of the Volunteer Force as a permanent (though only part-time, except when embodied for emergencies) branch of the British military.

This force (which differed from the Militia primarily in that its volunteers did not engage for a term of service, and might quit with fourteen days notice, except while embodied) contained a mixture of artillery, engineering and infantry units.

During the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, the military forces were re-organised through a succession of reforms, with the Board of Ordnance abolished after the Crimean War.

Its military corps, including the Royal Artillery, as well as its civilian Commissariat, transport and stores organs were absorbed into the British Army.

In 1889 the number of divisions was reduced to three, and the Militia Artillery brigades were renamed again, mostly regaining some variation of their original territorial names.