The Royal Kyrati Army, also known simply as the Royal Army, was the military of the Kingdom of Kyrat under the rule of Pagan Min from 1987 to 2014. Pagan Min established the Royal Army in 1987 after seizing power at the end of the First Kyrati Civil War, manning its ranks with both volunteers and conscripts. Its ranks included older draftees, former criminals, and drug addicts; Pagan Min paid his soldiers with both cash and opium. The Royal Army was poorly equipped and trained, wearing repurposed camo fatigues, damaged ballistic helmets and bandanas, adn battered vests held together by duct tape. In addition to enforcing Pagan Min's rule, the army was entrusted with hostage-taking and extorting civilians, controlling manual labor camps, looting Buddhist temples, patrolling the Lowlands and Midlands, gunrunning, selling tea and drugs, refining raw poppies into heroin, poaching animals, and guarding outposts and fortresses.
The Royal Army battled the traditionalist Golden Path in the Second Kyrati Civil War, although its operations were confined to southern Kyrat, while the loyal, Chinese-majority Royal Guard was entrusted with defending Pagan Min's center of power in the north. Even after Ajay Ghale led the Golden Path to victory over Pagan Min in 2014, the Royal Army refused to surrender and continued to abuse civilians and fight against the Golden Path across Kyrat.