Comment on Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service
frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 5 weeks agoIt is a bad idea, which is why nearly everywhere has stopped doing it and hardly anywhere has started again.
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.
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.
ceasarlegsvin@kbin.social 5 weeks 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.