Comment on Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service

• HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The military disagree with you. IE the experts who need to manage the system.

  All it dose is create ill motivated unskilled labour. At a time were fighting a wat has the least need for that type of labour.

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  • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And the military leadership of every country where conscription is a thing disagrees with you.

    All it dose is create ill motivated unskilled labour.

    If you think military conscription is for the here and now you unfortunately don't know what you're talking about.

    Conscription is so that if you need to mobilise quickly, all of your eligible population are already trained, have units to report to, officers etc.

    If you're building a defensive military, it makes perfect sense, because in a defensive war motivation more or less ceases to be an issue.

    The UK's military is far more expeditionary, so it doesn't make sense unless you build it into your long term plan, which is exactly what I said in my original comment.

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    • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      As we are talking about the UK. Where it is UK military leaders and technological investment that the leaders will be training for.

      What any other nation thinks or dose is pretty worthless. As is some politicians trying to win votes from boomers. Or myself.

      Only opinion that matters really is the UK military leadership. Who make it clear they do not want this.

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      • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Other countries considering a bad idea doesn’t make it a good idea.

        This isn't talking specifically about the UK, and nor was I.

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• frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It is a bad idea, which is why nearly everywhere has stopped doing it and hardly anywhere has started again.

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  • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because their long term military strategy changed.

    Conscription makes perfect sense if you're setting yourself up to fight a defensive war. E.g., Finland's entire military is more or less built for a defensive war against Russia, so they conscript.

    Because they built it into their long term strategy, like I said in my original comment.

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  • stsquad@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s certainly a bad idea to rely on conscripts to make up the bulk of your fighting force. It’s not a totally bad idea to have a population of fighting age citizens have had some basic military training and know which way to hold a gun. Countries like Finland or Switzerland have a more realistic view of what they may need to do if things ever got bad on their eastern front.

    For the UK we’d have probably resorted to our nuclear deterrent before we consider putting conscripts on the front line.

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    • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      In a war, the bulk of Finland's force will be made up of conscripts. Or more accurately, people who were conscripts.

      The career military men will be the officers. If you look at their officer to non officer ratio in peacetime it will be absolutely bananas compared to the UK's. Because if they do get invaded by Russia, they'll immediately call up their reserves (which due to conscription is their entire eligible population) and the ratios will make more sense.

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