Sri Lanka will slash its army by a third to 135,000 personnel by next year and to 100,000 by 2030, the state minister of defence said, as the country tries to cut costs in the face of its worst economic crisis in over seven decades. The size of Lanka's armed forces peaked between 2017 and 2019, with 317,000 personnel, higher even than that during the 25 year-long conflict with the LTTE that ended in 2009.