The Authoritative Source of Armed Forces Community Research

Transparency

Last updated: 21 August 2026

ForcesAtlas is a free community resource, developed and managed by researchers at King's College London for the benefit of the armed forces community and the wider research, policy, and practice community. That brings a responsibility to be clear about what we do and what we will never do.

Our promise to you

Information about how you use ForcesAtlas can only be used to run, protect, and improve the service. It must not be used for the maintainers' own academic, career, financial, or commercial benefit.

We will not use your searches, clicks, downloads, exports, or feedback to choose research topics, recruit participants, support our publications or funding applications, gain an advantage over other researchers, or market or sell anything to you. This is a rule of how ForcesAtlas is managed.

What happens when you search

You do not need an account, and ForcesAtlas does not build a personal history of your searches.

  • To find results: your search is sent to our server and processed.
  • To make repeat searching easier: your browser may remember up to ten recent searches on your device. ForcesAtlas does not receive this list. You can remove it with the Clear
  • To keep the site fast: searches and their results may sit briefly in a temporary memory cache. They expire automatically and are not connected to a personal profile.
  • To keep the site safe and working: standard technical logs may hold limited request information for a short period.
  • If you ask us to email results: we keep limited delivery information so we can send the email, prevent misuse, and fix problems.

Google Analytics only runs if you accept analytics cookies. It can tell us that somebody searched and give us broad information such as the type and length of the search, but we do not send it the words searched for. Search terms are also removed from page and referrer addresses sent to analytics. You can change your choice at any time. The Privacy Policy explains all of this in more detail.

Researchers' interests and fair treatment

The people who manage ForcesAtlas are active researchers. They can use the public database and export tools in the same way as anyone else. They cannot use private visitor or usage data for their own work, and their publications do not receive special treatment.

  • The maintainers' publications go through the same checks, tagging, and correction process as every other record.
  • Search results are not promoted to favour the maintainers, King's College London, collaborators, or funders.
  • Visitor data cannot be turned into a research dataset or used in papers, presentations, funding applications, recruitment, or commercial work for the maintainers' benefit.
  • Anyone can report a possible error, omission, or concern about unfair treatment.

How research gets into ForcesAtlas

We monitor research databases and publications. GenAI helps us sort, tag, and summarise records, and people review the work before it is published. AI can make mistakes and no database can guarantee that it contains everything. Being listed in ForcesAtlas does not mean that we endorse a study or its conclusions. The About page and FAQ explain more.

Tell us if something is wrong

If something looks inaccurate, incomplete, or unfair, use the feedback button or email [email protected]. We will review concerns about individual records and about how ForcesAtlas is managed. If our approach changes, we will update this page.