• 0 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: April 18th, 2024
  • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.socialtoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service
    1·
    5 months ago

    this is a tread about the UK government trying to sell a crap idea.

    Largely, but I was responding to the specific sentence I highlighted.

    The UK back in the 1960s ended conscription. And decided instead to invest in technology. And personal with the training to operate that technology.

    The UK has favored a doctrine of a small, well trained, professional army since before WW1. It’s also tended to be more expeditionary. Both of these conflict with the benefits of conscription.

    That doesn’t mean it’s an outright superior system. It has its own drawbacks and benefits compared with alternative systems. Sometimes you send that force into a meatgrinder because the fighting calls for more manpower than it can supply, regardless of technology. It depends on the war you’re fighting.

    Rather then using ill motivated short time troops as little more then cannon fodder.

    Weirdly enough, fighting a defensive, existential war tends to solve the motivation problem pretty quicky.

    Also, if you’re calling up previously conscripted troops when shit hits the fan, they will have been trained for far, far longer than if you try to enlarge the size of your fighting force from scratch.

    I feel like your knowledge of conscription comes entirely from the Red Alert 2 unit of the same name. Don’t confuse peace time conscription with war time conscription. They’re incredibly different things.

    For a nation lacking funding.

    You’re really just running down the bingo board of one-liners that betray a complete unfamiliarity with what you’re trying to talk about.

    No military budget is infinite. You decide the type of military you want to build, and you build it in the most effective way possible. Sometimes conscription fits in with that. Sometimes it doesn’t.

    once you have gotten to that stage

    Tick another one off the bingo board.

    We’re talking about conscription in peace time.

    Conscription is by its very nature using citizens of your own nation to absorb attacks.

    That’s literally what a military is.

    in no situation can conscripts show the professional training of people who choose to invest in a military career.

    Conscripts receive the same training as career professionals.

    Russia knows full well attacking a NATO member nation will not result in a ground war

    Why wouldn’t it result in a ground war? NATO isn’t going to want to escalate into full apocalypse unless they absolutely have to.

    There’s a reason the UK didn’t nuke Argentina when it took the Falklands.

    They know full well natos are well maintained

    The UK’s two most recent trident tests both failed.

  • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.socialtoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service
    51·
    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.

    Germany used to conscript, because there was this thing called the USSR that represented a very real and existential threat right next door. Then that stopped being the case, so their long term doctrine changed from defensive to expeditionary, so they stopped conscripting.

    Given that expeditionary wars in the middle east are becoming a bit faux pas, and “being invaded by your neighbour” is back in fashion, I imagine more places will shift doctrine again and conscription will start seeing a return. Then again it might not because of how fundamentally unpopular it is with the population.

  • ceasarlegsvin@kbin.socialtoUnited Kingdom@feddit.uk•Conservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service
    41·
    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.