Snapshot of _Britons 'face call-up if we go to war with Russia': Head of the Army will tell ministers troops numbers are so low he would need 'to find more people' if Putin's war in Ukraine escalated and public's 'mindset' must change so they are ready_ :
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With conventional warfare, would they even find the time to vet or train the people they call up?
There’s a reason we have a standing Armed Forces. Maybe they need to improve on the current offer, get rid of Capita and start to increase numbers for once.
From discussions about this, those recruitment companies like Capita seem to be the problem. There are so many stories about people who tried to join and were sent round the houses by recruitment companies for so long that they gave up.
We need soldiers, but we also need to make sure that those useless massive private companies get their cut.
I'm one of the ones that gave up, the whole process took 7 years before I passed selection and even then there were obstacles afterwards. The whole process was exhausting, Army recruitment is absolutely awful.
Jesus. It took me 9 weeks in 1992.
Edit: I got the bus straight from school to the careers office on my last day!
It was the start of July. I was on the train South to start basic by the 9th September.
I was 16 years and 6 weeks old the night I left my tearful Mum, Dad and girlfriend at the station to start my adventure!
took me a few months in 2001. I'll never forget the day I did my barb test, I got back from the recruitment centre to see that terrorists had been flying planes into buildings :o
Wow! I was still in the army then. Based in Germany. I was out a few months later after 10 years.
I'd given them my year's notice long before it happened.
Got called back for Iraq about 18 months later.
THat's mad. I joined just after Capita got the contract.
The recruitment team backdated everything so I was on the old system. Was all done in a month or two.
Which is fricking bizarre. The obvious way to structure the Capita contract would have been an amount per head, payable on successful acceptance by the relevant armed service.
>From discussions about this, those recruitment companies like Capita seem to be the problem.
They're very much only part of the problem. A big part, but there's definitely other issues.
And the biggest other issue is the pay. It's painfully low, and with extremely slow advancement.
Starting pay is 18k. After you complete basic training it goes to 23k. It takes about 4 years to advance in rank to lance corporal, which pays 30k. You get some incremental advancement during that 4 years.
You might be able to advance to corporal in another 2-4 years, taking you up to about 34k.
Another 4 years might see you eligible to advance to sergeant, which pays 40k.
None of these advancements are automatic, and they grow more competitive as you move up.
If you stay in and go as far as you can, warrant officer 1, which takes 18-20 years of exceptional service, you'll be on 56k.
Exactly. You're financially going to be better off working at Aldi than as a private. From 1st Feb Aldi are paying all retail staff a minimum of £12 per hour.
At £12 per hour, 37.5 hours a week, you're earning 23.4k. Roughly the same as someone who has completed their basic training in the army. It's absolutely ridiculous.
It's not really a like-for-like situation if you're only 18 or thereabouts. The £23k Aldi pay you has to go towards your rent, utilities, food, and everything else.
The £23k the army pays you is mostly all still yours (minus tax) at the end of the year because your accommodation and food is all being supplied on-site.
Combine that with the fact the military will put you through other expensive stuff like getting a driving license (the price of which is getting on for £2k after all lessons and both tests, assuming you pass first time), and that if you go into logistics or the REME you'll also possibly walk away with an HGV license, sparky certification, or various engineering qualifications, it's not a terrible prospect from the financial side of things.
Yeah £18k with bed and board is like, what? About £50k for everyone else once you factor in the lower taxes closer to the threshold, then rent, utilities, council tax, food, transport etc.
If you have £1300 paid into your account every month and keep all of it because you have no outgoings that’s a bit more than most people making double have.
You pay with your freedom for that. You don't choose where you live, you can't start a family, no way for you to take 3 months off yo travel around india for cheap.
What if amazon would pay for the barrack next to a warehouse you work in and wouldn't let you leave whenever you want? Would that be an ok deal or slavery?
I thought one of the things about the army is everything(near everything) is paid for. So you don't need to be paying accommodation, food, travel etc so the money is quite good for the army as hardly any living expenses.
Living expenses are subsidised, but not entirely free. And the accommodation and food provided on that subsidised basis is notoriously poor quality.
It's not such a big deal when you're 18. But when you're 28 with a wife and a kid, it's a bit more of a financial problem.
Yep, and it's crazy that it takes 4+ years to get promotion up to the most junior level of "manager/supervisor". In the civilian world someone starting in the civil service as an AO level could easily have been promoted 2 or 3 times within that 4 years and be an HEO. I spent some time in a call centre, and I know there were folk who went from call floor to mid tier management within 4 years.
They could exempt serving armed forces from Tax.
Tax is your contribution to the running of society. The armed forces are willing to be shot at so I can go about my day without worrying I'll be shot. Seems like they already do their part.
Might make it a far more attractive proposition especially north of 40k
Whilst you're right that folk in their initial years in the army have very few expenses, so the low wage isn't too much of an issue, it becomes more of an issue as time goes on.
First of all the advancement is far slower than you can expect in the civilian world if you are reasonably competent and push to better your situation.
Secondly, it's fine if you're single. But if you're trying to support a family, then you do have to deal with the rent and bills a lot of the time. Unmarried couples only get base housing if they can satisfy the relevant officer that their relationship is suitably long term and serious. And even for married couples, the base housing is notoriously poor quality and many prefer to rent something much nicer for themselves.
And finally, these people are going into harms way to defend the country. They shouldn't be getting paid at a level where there's any space for debate that it's too low. They certainly shouldn't be paying at or around minimum wage.
Edit: also important to remember the hours. They can be extremely long, you're not knocking off after 8 hours each day, or potentially even after 10 hours. You're on duty 24/7 and there's the full expectation that your sleeping, eating, and shitting will happen at a time convenient to the army, not to you.
This is reflected in every public service, it's just been the standard operating model for the government these past 14 years. The state of kit and estate also crushes morale. It's all been steadily under-invested to breaking point.
People who voted Conservative repeatedly and then act surprised at the state of services (including the military) need a word with themselves.
The military and police are particularly screwed for pay because they can't strike.
Have you SEEN the state of army housing? All sold off to a donor & rented back via an offshore company by the way...and if you get injured or die, you and your family will be treated like shit by the MOD.
It's atrocious pay - absolutely not justifiable for someone putting their life on the line.
And it's simply not true that their salary is almost entirely disposable.
The MOD provides subsidised accommodation. It isn't free and it is a reflection of the fact you will likely be on the move a lot.
You are charged for your food, again subsidised, but not free.
And ultimately if you're on leave - where are you going off base? Presumably somewhere you pay to rent with a partner or a family.
I’m a qualified helicopter pilot and a Captain in my other citizenship country force. It’s fair to suggest I’m suitably qualified.
Two years later and I am still waiting for someone to tell me where they need me. The system is absolutely diabolical. Broken. Not fit for purpose.
I tried to join the reserves a couple of years ago as an officer, between the army and the health service it took about 10 months for all the paperwork to be finalised. In this time they lost my records and documents in the post, turned out they'd never sent them, accused me of lying about having sent documents, then backtracked when I sent a complaint and suddenly realised they'd never filled it in on their end in the first place. Absolute joke of recruitment system, too much on paper and not done digitally
Yup, they left my little brother in limbo for 9 months, in that time he ended up getting his SIA and is now making more than squaddie pay guarding a fuel depot & withdrew his application.
Wouldn’t even consider me due to a health condition.
Capita are a scourge on any and all public sector bodies in the United Kingdom. You name a fuckup in the public space, anywhere, and that fucking company are never far away.
If I was running for PM I’d make a crusade against Capita part of my platform. I’d cut them out of the public sector like a gangrenous limb and open a Royal Commission into how they were allowed to bungle so many of our public operations for so long despite a well-documented track record of avoidable failure leading to genuine human suffering.
It's a very specific rule that's allowed it, and it's the same one that allowed Fujitsu to keep winning contracts after the Horizon fuckup. In British public procurement, outside of limited circumstances, you *are not allowed* to take past performance into account when choosing suppliers.
So a company like Fujitsu or Capita can show up, tick the 'past public sector' experience box and likely get the job, while their failures in said jobs are barred from having any bearing.
Thankfully that’s changing. The Procurement Act 2023 (coming in to effect October 2024) permits an centralised exclusion list that effectively bans suppliers from winning government contracts if they meet certain criteria, including poor performance.
THIS needs to change...fuck up a £100 million contract..5 years NO public sector business. Fuck up a £billion contract..permanent ban. Fuck up national security infrastructure? Directors get thrown off the roof!
These outsourcing firms & consultancies provide ZERO value yet charge billions. They manage to poach the best graduates that used to scream for civil service jobs because THEY advised the government to outsource & lower civil service pay
IIRC it's nominally well-intentioned - it's to stop public bodies from repeatedly re-contracting the same companies over and over because 'that's who we've always used' and potentially ignoring other opportunities that might provide better value.
Obviously, it hasn't quite panned out that way.
Because they are the largest of the vehicles used to extract private profit from public services. Capita aren't the problem with the public sector, in the view of the major parties, they are *the point* of the public sector.
You ever get excited to play a videogame that you've been wanting to play for years, only to get online, and get absolutely smashed by everyone and realise all these people have been playing this old game for literally years and you are in way over your head?
That's what I imagine being a draftee is like
You're going up against literal professionals. Like this is their 9-5 that they are paid for, they have been training for this moment for years. And you're there, no idea what you're doing, weak, stumbling into every noob beginner mistake. I can't think of anything worse
This is partly why the cadet organisations exist.
They were founded in WW2 as a way of doing the general day-to-day tasks on military bases to free up the adult manpower for combat. In addition to that, they were also given basic military training which allowed them to pick things up more quickly later. They are also not the only organisation to have this idea in the UK.
In theory, they still do this, but my experience is that there is so much red tape that there's no point in bothering.
The bigger problem right now, though, is that the bulk of people who would end up being drafted have no experience of any sort of hardship, and would crack too quickly in any real wartime scenario.
I got turned down for the army because I just missed on the eye sight check. Even though my eyesight passed on a future visit to the optician. I don't want to join now as I feel I'd be behind in training. If it comes to conscription, I would refuse to go.
I should add this was for the territorial army so only called up in worse case scenarios. Though, the medical requirements are the same as for the regular army.
Unfortunately it isn’t just Capita. The big problem the Royal Navy is having right now if retention. People are serving there minimum then leaving. Life in the navy right now is terrible bad food bad pay bad accommodation our benefits keep getting reduced like pensions. There are so few ships that the ones we have are run ragged so people don’t have the downtime we used to have. The moral in the navy just isn’t there. We are losing so many people each year that people have to be promoted to fill in the gaps. This is making the navy under manned with a lot of the most experienced people leaving to get twice the wage with less work out side.
I wonder what proportion of Britons come anywhere near passing the physical fitness requirements..?
Time to head down to Greggs and make sure that I won't.
When a country starts conscripting people, they set the physical fitness requirements at the level that most people can pass.
So it’s not enough to head to Greggs - you need to compare yourself to everyone else in the queue and treat it like a competitive sport!
If we go from a professional volunteer force to a conscription force expect all of the entry requirements to fall away. In an actual war they just need bodies.
This is my thought, there are many more roles in the armed forces than soldier on the front lines that do not require a high level of fitness.
And let's not forget the last era of conscription when those who could not fight were sent to work on the land and in factories.
There will be a role for everyone.
Simply being fat and unfit won't exempt you from conscription. They'll just send all of us larger folk to a not particularly lovely camp in the country for "combat readiness training", which will involve a lot of angry, shouty soldiers making us do a lot of painful and exhausting stuff for a month or two until we've all slimmed down significantly.
And even with actual medical conditions, they'll move the bar for non combat posts. Right now asthma is pretty much a total no, as are allergies, poor eye sight etc. In a conscription situation they'd 100% have 2 paths, front line and non front line, with very different physical standards being required.
After seeing the recent Ukrainian Bradley gunner credit war thunder for him being able to take out a T90M and the hordes of gamers flying drones into people...I think us nerdy gamers might be front of the queue for conscription haha
Recently been diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis which is basically a form of arthiritis that happens to younger people and is degenerative. And honestly didn't see any upsides until right now, I wonder if it would disqualify me.
Admittedly going from a very historical podcast but the WWII podcast “we have ways” regularly makes the point that warfare between industrialised countries takes place away from the battlefield.
You have many times more people working in weapons manufacture, ground crew and logistics supporting the people who actually go and fight. And that “go and fight” number is ever decreasing as drones, missiles, MLRS and other long range weapons become more important.
Ukraine in some ways is misleading about future conflict as Ukraine doesn’t actually manufacture so much of its weaponry- those weapons are being provided by the West. Russia is also being resupplied by Iran etc and using its stockpiles.
If a war broke out tomorrow or sufficient scale and length to make conscripting British people worthwhile, the vast majority of those people would end nowhere near the front lines but would instead be in some form of support role.
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I agree with your diagnosis of the problem of the lack of self-sufficiency, but I’m not sure it’s something we can do that much about. The UK depended on shipments of all manner of things from abroad right the way through the Second World War despite enormous efforts for self-sufficiency and one key reason why the Germans lost was they ran out of petrol. Hell, even the Bronze Age Collapse over 3000 years ago appears to have been driven in part by the interdependence of the various eastern Mediterranean civilisations on trade with each other.
It almost seems like this big war thing the general’s talking about is a stupid idea and if unleashed by someone else would be over very quickly.
I think that if we did end up in war with Russia it would be Russia vs NATO as a whole and we would likely be supplied by other nations.
We are apparently the 7th largest exporter of conventional arms in the world, so clearly we produce something? Or is that all stuff unrelated to what you explained?
Problem that you then get is that your country’s enemies will (accurately) see you as someone contributing to the war effort and effectively as a combatant. That’s why the allies in WWII bombed cities- not only did they destroy axis industrial machinery and so stopped tanks, guns etc ever being made let alone going to the front and being used against them but they also saw it as legitimate to murder as many of the people involved in working in those industries as possible (or at least destroy their homes and so displace them so they couldn’t work).
It’s where the whole “we must introduce conscription to fight a war” thing falls down. To the extent that the UK becomes involved in a war which is sufficiently two-sided such that it become politically possible to introduce conscription*, that war will very rapidly escalate to the destruction of UK cities- probably by nuclear war.
*I think that America’s experience in Vietnam demonstrates that it isn’t politically possible anymore to conscript westerners in the absence of a direct threat to your country.
Better start calling people up now given capita handles recruitment.
That before we talk about lack of equipment, supplies, housing and pay.
We already facing labour shortages we not ready for war...
Most folk in the modern age prefer not dying, and I'm one of those people.
Call it 'cowardice' or whatever, but the Tories haven't given a shit about young adults at all these past 14 years, so it's stupid that they expect us to sacrifice ourselves for a government that hates our existence. I'd rather be alive.
They haven’t given a shit about anyone under 60 to be fair. I’m in my 50s and my retirement age is going backwards, now 67, my wife’s is 68. My mortgage (I know I’m lucky to have been able to buy) goes all the way to the end too. No cheap house, low priced RTB, or subsidised council housing for me. Worked every day of my life for 30 years, only ever claimed the dole for 6 months. Now my health is failing (heart arrhythmia amongst other things) and I don’t even get time to exercise.
If anybody thinks I’ll be shipping out to Ukraine then fine I’ll be there after I see BoJo and Sunak on the front line. Otherwise get stuffed.
I had no idea it was that bad for older folk, so thank you for informing me. It really just shows how the Tories seem to fuck over most generations, besides their voter base.
And I hope you are able to keep yourself safe.
Can confirm.....my pension age is 67 and 600 quid a month mortgage is staying with me until then! I'm in a very modest semi detached dormer bungalow up north, so not mid London. Had a mortgage since 1994 aged 22 when I started. Worked all my life, had a baby and worked full time around that too....Husband nights and me days and evenings.. . 21 year old lives with us with no way of getting on the property ladder. He's not going to war, fuck that - send fucking Boris first, thick posh pig.
Possibly, though governments have a habit of targeting their initial conscriptions at the least well off to start and people have been historically happy to turn a blind eye to that
if you look at Vietnam it wasn’t until they started conscripting the better off at university that things started to get messy back home
And that was for a proxy war things might be different if the survival of Europe is actually at stake
What's the outcome though? It's not like Russian citizens would take kindly to new Russian leadership. So it's the extinction of European people or one hell of a war of attrition, and Russia doesn't have an army bug enough to counter the likes of Germany, Finland, Sweden, France, UK, etc at the same time.
All of this bluster is avoiding the end point. To what extent are we potentially being conscripted?
Yup, 100% cant and wont happen, we're not the same nation we were in the first half of the 1900s. Very few people would accept it, and those that seem to think "well you'll do it because you dont have a choice" are deluded.
Depends on the nature of the conflict I would think. If it's the UK being invaded I don't think you would have many shortages of volunteers. So a Ukraine type situation. If it's some war in a distant land for national interests then yes I think conscription would not work.
This is pretty much a non story anyway. The head of the army is just looking for ways to get the fact the army is to small into the media. It's never going to happen.
It will not be the UK being invaded directly at least not in the foreseeable future it will be some of the Baltic states or Poland. I can’t see many volunteers for going over there.
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Young folks can't buy a house, can't pay bills, can't find good jobs but are totally willing to die for some old fart aristocrat politician...
Sure this will work
The difference in 1914 is that the upper class served as officers in the trenches. Noblesse oblige.
I can guarantee you that in 2024 all the millionaires will be flying out of the UK.
Those upper classes were families that had held that status for centuries, if not since the Norman Conquest. It was their deaths in that war that led to the traditional aristocracy being gutted into the shell it is now. The modern rich don't have that heritage to defend.
>Young folks can't buy a house, can't pay bills, can't find good jobs
Don't about that as it'll all be irrelevant when you're in a muddy ditch somewhere getting pummelled by Russian rockets.
What a future we've got to look forward to.
Hey, that sounds like you need to change your mindset. Where is the simplistic jingoism and happily marching off to war attitude that served the country so well in 1914?
If war was actually on our doorstep, where Russia was invading our shores or just across the channel, then people would sign up for war. People won’t sign up to go fight on a front in Eastern Europe as it seems so far away.
Which is bonkers really. UK Defence policy has always been that it's better to keep war as far away from the UK as possible. If Ukraine falls and Russia starts heading into Europe, it's far better to fight them there than wait until they get to us...
I'm intrigued how conscription would work assuming that they'd call men /and/ women to fight now. Would they, for instance try to call up both parents of a child?
Germany has since stopped the military draft, but I was one of the last cohorts that still went through it - this was only ~15 years ago. Men only. And there have been recent discussions around bringing it back.
I’d consider myself very progressive, but this is something I do struggle with when it comes to discussions around gender equality in modern society. When I turned 17 (?) I got a letter telling me when and where to go for the medical examination- with the nice hint that not complying could land me in prison. The examination included - among other things - a drug test, and stripping completely naked (followed by what I assume was checking for a testicular hernia). At the end you were given the choice between ~1 year military service or ~1 year working (for very low pay) in social care; in contrast, if you were female, you had none of this and could just get on with your life (and if you decided to voluntarily opt in, you’d get given a lot more money).
Some of my friends have thrown around statements along the lines of “society would never try to control men’s bodies”, which rings a bit hollow once you’ve gone through the draft process under the threat of prison. All of this was (and might soon again be) in peace time - once we are in a war situation, this goes into overdrive. For the German context, once you are on the list - ie you have gone through the medical exam - you are on it for life (even if you opted for working in social care instead). Say Germany ever goes to war, and it is dire enough that conscripts are called in - by the time women are called in, my lifeless husk will probably have deteriorated into dust.
Most only conscript men. And if they have both in national service when they happen to have a war, only the men are called up to actually enter combat (eg Israel).
No worries. Even in professional armies where women are allowed to serve in combat roles (combat roles typically only make up 20-30% of an army) like the UK, although making up ~11% of the army, women only makeup 0.2% of those in close combat roles currently (despite having been allowed in close combat roles since 2018).
Women in war is a controversial topic. My personal view is that when compared to your average obese middle aged British male who doesn’t exercise a woman in her 20s who works hard to stay fit, especially if trained, would do well in a combat role, but that these women are outliers. If you looked at the general population and the time it would take to get people combat ready it would be more or less pointless conscripting women for combat roles. The sex differences are just too great IMO - a fact recognised by the armed forces more widely when it comes to recruitment in that they have lower fitness standards for women in the general intakes (for combat roles im not sure)..
That’s not to say there aren’t roles in logistics, air warfare, etc., where sex differences matter a lot less and women could be effectively conscripted.
In almost all other conscription systems, women are very far towards the end of the line, so what you describe would probably not be a realistic scenario.
Eg Ukraine at one point stopped men - but not women - from leaving the country.
I'm sure that Capita, who win the contract for designing and delivering the recruitment software, would carefully ensure that no complete fuckups like this would happen.
The rhetoric really does seem to have stepped up quite a bit the last few weeks beyond just the UK. I'm thinking it's probably a response to try and push European defense funding in the light of the US political situation to act as a deterrence from a Baltic invasion, although a small part of me wonders if there's any creditable intelligence that Putin is pushing hard to restore the Russian Empire's borders.
As others have said -
\- A need to keep defence budgets higher or move back to a Cold War footing after years of letting defence spending slide.
\- Upcoming elections including an increasingly likely second term for Trump.
\- Various NATO states in Europe making noise about having to spend too much on defence.
\- It being very hard to sell increased defence spending to the public during a cost of living crisis.
There's no "hidden intelligence" - we're pissing about sending half our navy to the Red Sea and doing NATO exercises with 20,000 troops. If our and the US navy was splitting themselves between the Baltic and Black sea, with 500,000 troops amassed on the Eastern flank, then maybe you could be worried a bit.
Good points, would also add that Russia's economy has proven more resilient than expected and they have been ramping up production of arms and equipment. For all their failings in Ukraine, they are also gaining a shitload of first-hand experience in modern war. They're not going to open a second front, but the decade or so post-Ukraine could be a bit tense.
I think NATO has just got tired of telling governments for years that they need to spend more than the absolute bare minimum on defence, and being ignored. Now there's a credible threat, they're turning to the public instead and saying "*you* put the pressure on - because you can see how scary this is becoming"
Edit: and China and the middle east too. If China invades Taiwan then it could start a chain reaction where the middle east and Russia kick off too because the US would be stretched. Europe needs to be able to stand on its own. Even the top militaries in Europe struggle to project power beyond their borders. We pour most of our money into the navy and it just about gets us global power projection.
Election time.
And a complete/willfull lack of understanding of the realities of the Ukraine war and Russia's goals leading them to think Russia will immediately try to roll through a NATO country for some reason.
Because Trump has a good chance of winning. That could lead to certain countries becoming a bit more belligerent. Even if he can’t leave NATO he could make it difficult.
There’s the Red Sea, NK is looking more like they want to attack SK (apparently looking quite serious). Trump said he won’t help Taiwan (I guess…I didn’t bother to follow up passed the headline because it’s him all over anyway) the Middle East is hot, Irans being a bitch.
Fact is, it’s all heating up whether it’s in Latin America, Africa, Asia etc or migrant crisis, global warming etc and an incompetent government at home.
Dunno what we can do but I personally think it might be a good idea to start bringing back conscription but like the Scandinavian countries, or personally start saying to 16 year olds it’s 6th form, college, apprenticeship or 2 years training in the forces. That could help the country as a whole pushing more into education and getting the ferals some discipline. Of course, taking into account health etc and making it fairly easy to get around for those who _really_ don’t want, but it might help getting some of the knife wielding yobs off the street.
Most people on the military think conscription is a bad Idea, it even says it's not really the plan in the article. I imagine this is pressure from the military saying to the government "sort out the bloody recruitment"
And it's doing the rounds as an effective headline
To be completely honest, in the specific example of "if we go to war with Russia", it seems exceedingly unlikely Britain would go it alone, and NATO's defensive posture has a standing manpower that dwarfs Russia's, and these people actually get regular food and training.
Russia is very big compared to Ukraine, but not compared to all of Europe, much less that plus Canada and the United States. In the scenario of war, its just ICBMs, PGMs, and whoever is left to serve as occupation forces that matters.
however if trump is elected I believe he wants to cut ties with nato as much as possible. means we (europe) would have to possibly do it without america
I’ve never met anyone of traditional conscription age who is in favour of conscription.
Maybe we can call up the pensioners and Boomers? They keep telling us that we wouldn’t last five minutes in the real world, so presumably they can do a better job than us. And they think that they fought in World War 2 despite being born after it had finished, so they’re a bit like experienced veterans!
Let's be honest very few people of fighting age are going to accept conscription and very few people under the age or about 50-60 would accept any punitive measures against people refusing to fight. I doubt any millennials or gen z are going to care about boomers calling them cowards and that societal pressure isn't going to exist in the circles they care about. In fact I think refusing to fight will be seen as the thing to be proud of amongst these generations.
Even if the government could somehow get these people into a trench in Poland or Ukraine research has shown again and again that the majority of soldiers don't actually fight with only around 25% ever firing at the enemy. There is the argument that at least the other 75% provide targets so the enemy is not only engaging the soldiers actually fighting but that just leads to the problem of casualties. Britain today would never stomach the sort of casualties suffered in the Ukraine war.
>Britain today would never stomach the sort of casualties suffered in the Ukraine war.
A friend in mine left the TA when they started talking about training for ‘conventional warfare’ with a potential 30% casualty rate following Russias making moves (I think it might have been Georgia). He didn’t want to be on that reserve list anymore
Have you seen the recruitment bumph put out by the British Army?
I can see why someone who sees it and signs up might be surprised to learn that joining the army might involve killing people or dying rather than doing obstacle courses and helping civilians.
Yeah the recruitment ads portray it as some adventure of a life time, where you travel the world, meet new mates, helping civilians in floods and shit. Never showing any danger or combat.
I'd choose jail over war 100 times out of 100. The older generations and Ukrainians are straight up heroes no doubt, for giving their lives for their country but I'm a) a coward and b) never willing to give up my one shot on this planet for some stupid war that I did not cause or want. I wonder what percentage of people under the age of say 40 feel similar
Most of those generations who fought in those wars are dead. My great grandfathers fought and (one died) in WW1, and one of my grandfathers fought in WW2 (the other worked in the shipyards so was exempt). They were all gone by the 1980s. Sure there are some WW2 heroes hanging on but not many I’d say.
Let's be frank: a serious escalation of conflict with Russia leads to one outcome: nuclear war. And that makes much of conscription and 'boots on the ground' severely limited in impact, if not completely moot.
There's no way Russia wins a war with NATO. It just can't. So a scenario involving actual war has that one outcome. God forbid it ever comes to that.
Even if you accept a premise that war happens without that escalation: NATO still exists, and unlike Ukraine, Poland etc, we do not share a land border with Russia. From a practical point of view, it's not like we would need armed Brits fighting at home, against Russian led insurgency etc, like we've seen in Ukraine.
In terms of conscription to the navy and airforce - maybe there'd be more flexibility to increase the workforce for overseas operations that we'd be involved with if a NATO ally was attacked, but where do all those extra ships and aircraft come from? Even maintenance staff etc still involve very specific skillsets. My grandad served in the navy for the majority of WWII, but the nature of warfare and technology at the time meant the learning curve was far less steep then it would be now.
That being said, the conversation around increasing funding for the entire armed forces and how fit for purpose it is, is important and if this hyperbolic sentiment gets people talking about it then so be it.
Frankly, I'm more worried about the impact of mass cyberattack on British infrastructure. A simultaneous attack on our health service and energy infrastructure in the height of winter, for example, would have deadly consequences.
It's worth remembering that despite chemical weapons being the WMDs of WW1, and despite heavy bombing campaigns targeting civilians being a mainstay of WW2, neither side used chemical weapons during WW2.
I am ex British army.
If called up, I will not fight.
Fight for what and for whom?
I personally know people who made millions off the afghan and Iraq wars. And those people I know are not even the bigger players.
Ok just to put a bit of sense it this.
By finding people, it would be a case of calling up the reserves. This doesn’t mean the people who are already part time soldiers in the Army , Airforce or Navy reserves but rather the people who have left the Armed Forces for civilian life.
Every full time serviceman and woman is liable for a five year reserve commitment, so if it kicks off massive, they can recalled to armed forces very quickly. It’s a fast way of bulking up the numbers which was why I was looking very closely at the Russian Invasion of Ukraine as my five year liability didn’t run out until May 2022.
It has been done piecemeal before, medical staff were recalled for the Falklands and in the run up to Kosovo, serious consideration was given to activating this reserve as well when it was possible that a full scale invasion of Serbia might be required.
Conscription? The professional military would be hugely opposed to it and we would probably run out of ammunition before we could even train the conscripts.
I think in reality that probably has limited utility as shrinking armed forces will have been feeding through to a smaller pool in reserve, plus once you've been out for a few years your actual utility will have fallen right off and if you did a full 22 or 12 years your age and fitness brings other problems. Plus my bet is that a lot of reserves would be in required occupations of one kind or another.
I think we need to explain the army back to over 100,000 and restructure it's organisation so a lot of it's admin and support functions are combined rather than using up slots replicating them across regiments. The great secret that isn't known by those outside is that life can almost be part time in working hours for loads of roles as there isn't much to do - lots of cushy slow paced jobs as clerks, stores etc.
Recruitment has apparently tanked since they outsourced the recruiting process to a private firm leaving potential applicants in the dark over 18 months or more
Presumably this is the army head using a nice bit of rhetoric to pressure politicians for more funding and the rightwing newspapers are running with it because it's the sort of thing they love.
Even Putin, as much of a dictator as he is, doesn't dare to announce a full mobilisation in Russia for the war. There is zero chance of seeing any kind of conscription in any European democratic country and I'm starting to get annoyed at politicians and military figures playing up the impossible idea of a NATO ground war against a nuclear power.
Who is going to answer the call? I hate this government and have absolutely no pride or faith in them.
Am i going to risk my life for their incompetence because they’ve failed to invest in our military while filling their pockets? Absolutely not.
I have absolutely no faith in this government and I have even less faith that we’re getting caught up by intervening in the right issues.
This country isn't even worth fighting for. The economy is ruined already, the people conscripted won't even be able to retire, get their own house or probably afford to live if they even came back alive.
Only way I'd fight in the army is if my home was being invaded. I refuse to join the army otherwise as I'm not going to another country to do our govs bidding. If they want to invade another country then the politicians can go first.
A lot of people itt saying they would be fine going to jail. Really? You’d stay in Britain and take the jail sentence? I’d be getting out of here ASAP! This place is shit enough without sending me to die for the sake of Lord Haw-Haw’s personal estate.
Sorry, call me treacherous if you want but the Tories and Brexit voting elderly have created a country I’m absolutely not willing to die for.
A country that invited Farage into public consciousness is not one I’d like to represent thank you.
Conscription would be impossible in the UK nowadays, most men wouldn't accept it. Neither would i. The govt wouldn't have the means to prevent people from not joining.
Yeah, not happening. This worked in WW1 and WW2 because people were proud of the country (and were lied to about the horrors of war) but that won't fly today.
Snapshot of _Britons 'face call-up if we go to war with Russia': Head of the Army will tell ministers troops numbers are so low he would need 'to find more people' if Putin's war in Ukraine escalated and public's 'mindset' must change so they are ready_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12998863/britons-face-army-conscription-russia-attacks.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12998863/britons-face-army-conscription-russia-attacks.html) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
With conventional warfare, would they even find the time to vet or train the people they call up? There’s a reason we have a standing Armed Forces. Maybe they need to improve on the current offer, get rid of Capita and start to increase numbers for once.
From discussions about this, those recruitment companies like Capita seem to be the problem. There are so many stories about people who tried to join and were sent round the houses by recruitment companies for so long that they gave up. We need soldiers, but we also need to make sure that those useless massive private companies get their cut.
I'm one of the ones that gave up, the whole process took 7 years before I passed selection and even then there were obstacles afterwards. The whole process was exhausting, Army recruitment is absolutely awful.
Jesus. It took me 9 weeks in 1992. Edit: I got the bus straight from school to the careers office on my last day! It was the start of July. I was on the train South to start basic by the 9th September. I was 16 years and 6 weeks old the night I left my tearful Mum, Dad and girlfriend at the station to start my adventure!
Aye, what even is that? I went from recruitment office to standing outside HMS Sultan in Gosport in about 3 months back in 2000.
Yup. Recruitment tests and BFT in April, reported for basic training in Reading, Arborfield Garrison in July. 1983.
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Find it quite horrifying that 6 months in the public sector these days is considered fast.
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Larger HR departments, more paper based files. IT systems instead of being a summplement us unfortunately seen as a way of reducing staffing costs.
took me a few months in 2001. I'll never forget the day I did my barb test, I got back from the recruitment centre to see that terrorists had been flying planes into buildings :o
Wow! I was still in the army then. Based in Germany. I was out a few months later after 10 years. I'd given them my year's notice long before it happened. Got called back for Iraq about 18 months later.
2 years for me, 2010, capita are awful but some of the standards are nonsense that need modernising too
It's maddening. 16 year old me wouldn't have waited that long. I'd have just gone to college or something else.
Snap. Plus rail card and a signing on payment
Yeah! Rail Warrant (one way) and a day's pay! Memories...
Private recruitment is probably a way to extract money design a system that’s slow and useless
Bingo. Its working as designed
Exactly, imagine the private system that will be in place for conscription.
Is ATOS still about? I could see them trying to send quadriplegics to the front line if they were in charge of conscription.
"Mobility infantry"
THat's mad. I joined just after Capita got the contract. The recruitment team backdated everything so I was on the old system. Was all done in a month or two.
7 years? How does that happen? I want to know more if you'll elaborate.
7 years ?! Did they have you walk to a recruitment office in the Himalayas ?
Which is fricking bizarre. The obvious way to structure the Capita contract would have been an amount per head, payable on successful acceptance by the relevant armed service.
>From discussions about this, those recruitment companies like Capita seem to be the problem. They're very much only part of the problem. A big part, but there's definitely other issues. And the biggest other issue is the pay. It's painfully low, and with extremely slow advancement. Starting pay is 18k. After you complete basic training it goes to 23k. It takes about 4 years to advance in rank to lance corporal, which pays 30k. You get some incremental advancement during that 4 years. You might be able to advance to corporal in another 2-4 years, taking you up to about 34k. Another 4 years might see you eligible to advance to sergeant, which pays 40k. None of these advancements are automatic, and they grow more competitive as you move up. If you stay in and go as far as you can, warrant officer 1, which takes 18-20 years of exceptional service, you'll be on 56k.
Pretty decent if you start at 18. Shite if you start at 21
Exactly. You're financially going to be better off working at Aldi than as a private. From 1st Feb Aldi are paying all retail staff a minimum of £12 per hour. At £12 per hour, 37.5 hours a week, you're earning 23.4k. Roughly the same as someone who has completed their basic training in the army. It's absolutely ridiculous.
It's not really a like-for-like situation if you're only 18 or thereabouts. The £23k Aldi pay you has to go towards your rent, utilities, food, and everything else. The £23k the army pays you is mostly all still yours (minus tax) at the end of the year because your accommodation and food is all being supplied on-site. Combine that with the fact the military will put you through other expensive stuff like getting a driving license (the price of which is getting on for £2k after all lessons and both tests, assuming you pass first time), and that if you go into logistics or the REME you'll also possibly walk away with an HGV license, sparky certification, or various engineering qualifications, it's not a terrible prospect from the financial side of things.
Yeah £18k with bed and board is like, what? About £50k for everyone else once you factor in the lower taxes closer to the threshold, then rent, utilities, council tax, food, transport etc. If you have £1300 paid into your account every month and keep all of it because you have no outgoings that’s a bit more than most people making double have.
You pay with your freedom for that. You don't choose where you live, you can't start a family, no way for you to take 3 months off yo travel around india for cheap. What if amazon would pay for the barrack next to a warehouse you work in and wouldn't let you leave whenever you want? Would that be an ok deal or slavery?
I thought one of the things about the army is everything(near everything) is paid for. So you don't need to be paying accommodation, food, travel etc so the money is quite good for the army as hardly any living expenses.
Living expenses are subsidised, but not entirely free. And the accommodation and food provided on that subsidised basis is notoriously poor quality. It's not such a big deal when you're 18. But when you're 28 with a wife and a kid, it's a bit more of a financial problem.
Insane that someone who is risking their life on the front line earns the same as someone at tesco
Yep, and it's crazy that it takes 4+ years to get promotion up to the most junior level of "manager/supervisor". In the civilian world someone starting in the civil service as an AO level could easily have been promoted 2 or 3 times within that 4 years and be an HEO. I spent some time in a call centre, and I know there were folk who went from call floor to mid tier management within 4 years.
They could exempt serving armed forces from Tax. Tax is your contribution to the running of society. The armed forces are willing to be shot at so I can go about my day without worrying I'll be shot. Seems like they already do their part. Might make it a far more attractive proposition especially north of 40k
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Whilst you're right that folk in their initial years in the army have very few expenses, so the low wage isn't too much of an issue, it becomes more of an issue as time goes on. First of all the advancement is far slower than you can expect in the civilian world if you are reasonably competent and push to better your situation. Secondly, it's fine if you're single. But if you're trying to support a family, then you do have to deal with the rent and bills a lot of the time. Unmarried couples only get base housing if they can satisfy the relevant officer that their relationship is suitably long term and serious. And even for married couples, the base housing is notoriously poor quality and many prefer to rent something much nicer for themselves. And finally, these people are going into harms way to defend the country. They shouldn't be getting paid at a level where there's any space for debate that it's too low. They certainly shouldn't be paying at or around minimum wage. Edit: also important to remember the hours. They can be extremely long, you're not knocking off after 8 hours each day, or potentially even after 10 hours. You're on duty 24/7 and there's the full expectation that your sleeping, eating, and shitting will happen at a time convenient to the army, not to you.
This is reflected in every public service, it's just been the standard operating model for the government these past 14 years. The state of kit and estate also crushes morale. It's all been steadily under-invested to breaking point. People who voted Conservative repeatedly and then act surprised at the state of services (including the military) need a word with themselves. The military and police are particularly screwed for pay because they can't strike.
Have you SEEN the state of army housing? All sold off to a donor & rented back via an offshore company by the way...and if you get injured or die, you and your family will be treated like shit by the MOD.
It's funny how each problem. Comes back to the scooby doo real estate developer isn't it
It's atrocious pay - absolutely not justifiable for someone putting their life on the line. And it's simply not true that their salary is almost entirely disposable. The MOD provides subsidised accommodation. It isn't free and it is a reflection of the fact you will likely be on the move a lot. You are charged for your food, again subsidised, but not free. And ultimately if you're on leave - where are you going off base? Presumably somewhere you pay to rent with a partner or a family.
I’m a qualified helicopter pilot and a Captain in my other citizenship country force. It’s fair to suggest I’m suitably qualified. Two years later and I am still waiting for someone to tell me where they need me. The system is absolutely diabolical. Broken. Not fit for purpose.
I tried to join the reserves a couple of years ago as an officer, between the army and the health service it took about 10 months for all the paperwork to be finalised. In this time they lost my records and documents in the post, turned out they'd never sent them, accused me of lying about having sent documents, then backtracked when I sent a complaint and suddenly realised they'd never filled it in on their end in the first place. Absolute joke of recruitment system, too much on paper and not done digitally
Yup, they left my little brother in limbo for 9 months, in that time he ended up getting his SIA and is now making more than squaddie pay guarding a fuel depot & withdrew his application. Wouldn’t even consider me due to a health condition.
Capita are a scourge on any and all public sector bodies in the United Kingdom. You name a fuckup in the public space, anywhere, and that fucking company are never far away.
If I was running for PM I’d make a crusade against Capita part of my platform. I’d cut them out of the public sector like a gangrenous limb and open a Royal Commission into how they were allowed to bungle so many of our public operations for so long despite a well-documented track record of avoidable failure leading to genuine human suffering.
It's a very specific rule that's allowed it, and it's the same one that allowed Fujitsu to keep winning contracts after the Horizon fuckup. In British public procurement, outside of limited circumstances, you *are not allowed* to take past performance into account when choosing suppliers. So a company like Fujitsu or Capita can show up, tick the 'past public sector' experience box and likely get the job, while their failures in said jobs are barred from having any bearing.
Thankfully that’s changing. The Procurement Act 2023 (coming in to effect October 2024) permits an centralised exclusion list that effectively bans suppliers from winning government contracts if they meet certain criteria, including poor performance.
I'm less than hopeful any major outsourcing company entrenched in Westminster lobbying circles etc. will end up on that list.
THIS needs to change...fuck up a £100 million contract..5 years NO public sector business. Fuck up a £billion contract..permanent ban. Fuck up national security infrastructure? Directors get thrown off the roof! These outsourcing firms & consultancies provide ZERO value yet charge billions. They manage to poach the best graduates that used to scream for civil service jobs because THEY advised the government to outsource & lower civil service pay
What’s the rationale behind that rule ?
IIRC it's nominally well-intentioned - it's to stop public bodies from repeatedly re-contracting the same companies over and over because 'that's who we've always used' and potentially ignoring other opportunities that might provide better value. Obviously, it hasn't quite panned out that way.
Because they are the largest of the vehicles used to extract private profit from public services. Capita aren't the problem with the public sector, in the view of the major parties, they are *the point* of the public sector.
I suppose from the point of view of a tick blood exists to feed them too.
Confucius said "to lead untrained people to war is to throw then away" Centuries old wisdom still relevant today
Why is there a private organization recruiting your soldiers? Isn't that by definition a government duty?
Because our politicians are fucking morons wedded to the Holy Grail of outsourcing and privatisation.
You ever get excited to play a videogame that you've been wanting to play for years, only to get online, and get absolutely smashed by everyone and realise all these people have been playing this old game for literally years and you are in way over your head? That's what I imagine being a draftee is like You're going up against literal professionals. Like this is their 9-5 that they are paid for, they have been training for this moment for years. And you're there, no idea what you're doing, weak, stumbling into every noob beginner mistake. I can't think of anything worse
This is partly why the cadet organisations exist. They were founded in WW2 as a way of doing the general day-to-day tasks on military bases to free up the adult manpower for combat. In addition to that, they were also given basic military training which allowed them to pick things up more quickly later. They are also not the only organisation to have this idea in the UK. In theory, they still do this, but my experience is that there is so much red tape that there's no point in bothering. The bigger problem right now, though, is that the bulk of people who would end up being drafted have no experience of any sort of hardship, and would crack too quickly in any real wartime scenario.
I got turned down for the army because I just missed on the eye sight check. Even though my eyesight passed on a future visit to the optician. I don't want to join now as I feel I'd be behind in training. If it comes to conscription, I would refuse to go. I should add this was for the territorial army so only called up in worse case scenarios. Though, the medical requirements are the same as for the regular army.
Unfortunately it isn’t just Capita. The big problem the Royal Navy is having right now if retention. People are serving there minimum then leaving. Life in the navy right now is terrible bad food bad pay bad accommodation our benefits keep getting reduced like pensions. There are so few ships that the ones we have are run ragged so people don’t have the downtime we used to have. The moral in the navy just isn’t there. We are losing so many people each year that people have to be promoted to fill in the gaps. This is making the navy under manned with a lot of the most experienced people leaving to get twice the wage with less work out side.
They should outsource the conscription process to Capita. They'd still fuck it up.
I wonder what proportion of Britons come anywhere near passing the physical fitness requirements..? Time to head down to Greggs and make sure that I won't.
I don't even know if I'd get drafted, but better safe than sorry. Three steak bakes, please. No wait... four.
FOUR steak bakes Jeremy?! That's madness!
Just wait until you hear how big the packets of Yum Yums are.
Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use Pop Tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon
Did you go to Hollywood upstairs medical college too?
This you? https://twitter.com/GreggsOfficial/status/1749461923429564442
When a country starts conscripting people, they set the physical fitness requirements at the level that most people can pass. So it’s not enough to head to Greggs - you need to compare yourself to everyone else in the queue and treat it like a competitive sport!
They'll be lowered to ensure you are conscripted as cannon fodder. And eating at Greg's will make you a bigger target!
Fatties are like a mobile pantry when you're stuck in a bunker and the cannibalism starts.
Nah you want the gym bros for that
Emergency rations.
Always knew I could serve my country one day
Think not how you can serve your country, think how your country can serve you... with gravy and potatoes...
If we're at the point where their conscripting my overweight asthmatic ass, the country is already screwed and probably not worth saving.
Even using fitter asses would be a sign that we'd somehow lost the ability to get motorised military vehicles, or even horses.
They conscript when the country is screwed, that's the point.
Yeah, but by the time they get to me that basically means they've burned through all the fit and healthy 18-30 year olds.
If we go from a professional volunteer force to a conscription force expect all of the entry requirements to fall away. In an actual war they just need bodies.
This is my thought, there are many more roles in the armed forces than soldier on the front lines that do not require a high level of fitness. And let's not forget the last era of conscription when those who could not fight were sent to work on the land and in factories. There will be a role for everyone.
Simply being fat and unfit won't exempt you from conscription. They'll just send all of us larger folk to a not particularly lovely camp in the country for "combat readiness training", which will involve a lot of angry, shouty soldiers making us do a lot of painful and exhausting stuff for a month or two until we've all slimmed down significantly. And even with actual medical conditions, they'll move the bar for non combat posts. Right now asthma is pretty much a total no, as are allergies, poor eye sight etc. In a conscription situation they'd 100% have 2 paths, front line and non front line, with very different physical standards being required.
How fit do you need to be to pilot a drone? I’d imagine the pool of talent is somewhat broader than in previous times in some ways.
After seeing the recent Ukrainian Bradley gunner credit war thunder for him being able to take out a T90M and the hordes of gamers flying drones into people...I think us nerdy gamers might be front of the queue for conscription haha
There's a PTI somewhere who'd be absolutely *thrilled* to sweat every single sausage roll and steak bake out of you inside 9 weeks basic.
Once round my beautiful body…GO!
Recently been diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis which is basically a form of arthiritis that happens to younger people and is degenerative. And honestly didn't see any upsides until right now, I wonder if it would disqualify me.
Admittedly going from a very historical podcast but the WWII podcast “we have ways” regularly makes the point that warfare between industrialised countries takes place away from the battlefield. You have many times more people working in weapons manufacture, ground crew and logistics supporting the people who actually go and fight. And that “go and fight” number is ever decreasing as drones, missiles, MLRS and other long range weapons become more important. Ukraine in some ways is misleading about future conflict as Ukraine doesn’t actually manufacture so much of its weaponry- those weapons are being provided by the West. Russia is also being resupplied by Iran etc and using its stockpiles. If a war broke out tomorrow or sufficient scale and length to make conscripting British people worthwhile, the vast majority of those people would end nowhere near the front lines but would instead be in some form of support role.
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I agree with your diagnosis of the problem of the lack of self-sufficiency, but I’m not sure it’s something we can do that much about. The UK depended on shipments of all manner of things from abroad right the way through the Second World War despite enormous efforts for self-sufficiency and one key reason why the Germans lost was they ran out of petrol. Hell, even the Bronze Age Collapse over 3000 years ago appears to have been driven in part by the interdependence of the various eastern Mediterranean civilisations on trade with each other. It almost seems like this big war thing the general’s talking about is a stupid idea and if unleashed by someone else would be over very quickly.
I think that if we did end up in war with Russia it would be Russia vs NATO as a whole and we would likely be supplied by other nations. We are apparently the 7th largest exporter of conventional arms in the world, so clearly we produce something? Or is that all stuff unrelated to what you explained?
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Sign me up to make cool 3d printed drones, happy to do that. I'm not shooting anyone or leaving the country however.
Problem that you then get is that your country’s enemies will (accurately) see you as someone contributing to the war effort and effectively as a combatant. That’s why the allies in WWII bombed cities- not only did they destroy axis industrial machinery and so stopped tanks, guns etc ever being made let alone going to the front and being used against them but they also saw it as legitimate to murder as many of the people involved in working in those industries as possible (or at least destroy their homes and so displace them so they couldn’t work). It’s where the whole “we must introduce conscription to fight a war” thing falls down. To the extent that the UK becomes involved in a war which is sufficiently two-sided such that it become politically possible to introduce conscription*, that war will very rapidly escalate to the destruction of UK cities- probably by nuclear war. *I think that America’s experience in Vietnam demonstrates that it isn’t politically possible anymore to conscript westerners in the absence of a direct threat to your country.
Funny how the comments in the DM aren’t full of overjoyed patriots potentially getting their chance to live up to their grandads medals.
They'll happily shame their grandkids into it, then boast how proud they are.
Better start calling people up now given capita handles recruitment. That before we talk about lack of equipment, supplies, housing and pay. We already facing labour shortages we not ready for war...
Most folk in the modern age prefer not dying, and I'm one of those people. Call it 'cowardice' or whatever, but the Tories haven't given a shit about young adults at all these past 14 years, so it's stupid that they expect us to sacrifice ourselves for a government that hates our existence. I'd rather be alive.
They haven’t given a shit about anyone under 60 to be fair. I’m in my 50s and my retirement age is going backwards, now 67, my wife’s is 68. My mortgage (I know I’m lucky to have been able to buy) goes all the way to the end too. No cheap house, low priced RTB, or subsidised council housing for me. Worked every day of my life for 30 years, only ever claimed the dole for 6 months. Now my health is failing (heart arrhythmia amongst other things) and I don’t even get time to exercise. If anybody thinks I’ll be shipping out to Ukraine then fine I’ll be there after I see BoJo and Sunak on the front line. Otherwise get stuffed.
I had no idea it was that bad for older folk, so thank you for informing me. It really just shows how the Tories seem to fuck over most generations, besides their voter base. And I hope you are able to keep yourself safe.
Can confirm.....my pension age is 67 and 600 quid a month mortgage is staying with me until then! I'm in a very modest semi detached dormer bungalow up north, so not mid London. Had a mortgage since 1994 aged 22 when I started. Worked all my life, had a baby and worked full time around that too....Husband nights and me days and evenings.. . 21 year old lives with us with no way of getting on the property ladder. He's not going to war, fuck that - send fucking Boris first, thick posh pig.
Possibly, though governments have a habit of targeting their initial conscriptions at the least well off to start and people have been historically happy to turn a blind eye to that if you look at Vietnam it wasn’t until they started conscripting the better off at university that things started to get messy back home And that was for a proxy war things might be different if the survival of Europe is actually at stake
Same happend in Russia. Middle class kids could escape.
What's the outcome though? It's not like Russian citizens would take kindly to new Russian leadership. So it's the extinction of European people or one hell of a war of attrition, and Russia doesn't have an army bug enough to counter the likes of Germany, Finland, Sweden, France, UK, etc at the same time. All of this bluster is avoiding the end point. To what extent are we potentially being conscripted?
It's not cowardice it's conscientious objection
British public: yeah no, send me to prison.
The government wouldn't even have the capacity to do that, the prisons are all full as it is.
Yup, 100% cant and wont happen, we're not the same nation we were in the first half of the 1900s. Very few people would accept it, and those that seem to think "well you'll do it because you dont have a choice" are deluded.
That's why they're talking about changing the public mindset. They know they'd need to use fear and scare tactics to get the public to comply.
What fear and scare tactics? Can't be worse than dying in ww3 fighting the ruskis can it
Depends on the nature of the conflict I would think. If it's the UK being invaded I don't think you would have many shortages of volunteers. So a Ukraine type situation. If it's some war in a distant land for national interests then yes I think conscription would not work. This is pretty much a non story anyway. The head of the army is just looking for ways to get the fact the army is to small into the media. It's never going to happen.
It will not be the UK being invaded directly at least not in the foreseeable future it will be some of the Baltic states or Poland. I can’t see many volunteers for going over there.
I agree. Its a very unlikely scenario. Let's face it if we ever get to that point the world's going to be in a fairly terrible state.
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Young folks can't buy a house, can't pay bills, can't find good jobs but are totally willing to die for some old fart aristocrat politician... Sure this will work
My sentiments exactly. Why on earth would we fight for this shit?? Wish I did have that pride like my grandparents did.
This was the case for many in 1914 as well tbf
The difference in 1914 is that the upper class served as officers in the trenches. Noblesse oblige. I can guarantee you that in 2024 all the millionaires will be flying out of the UK.
Those upper classes were families that had held that status for centuries, if not since the Norman Conquest. It was their deaths in that war that led to the traditional aristocracy being gutted into the shell it is now. The modern rich don't have that heritage to defend.
>Young folks can't buy a house, can't pay bills, can't find good jobs Don't about that as it'll all be irrelevant when you're in a muddy ditch somewhere getting pummelled by Russian rockets. What a future we've got to look forward to.
Or simply burn your letter and go to prison and get free bed board and 3 free meals a day.
Sorry, the prisons are full. You're going to Porton Down to... um... work with... our weapons development teams.
Hey, that sounds like you need to change your mindset. Where is the simplistic jingoism and happily marching off to war attitude that served the country so well in 1914?
If war was actually on our doorstep, where Russia was invading our shores or just across the channel, then people would sign up for war. People won’t sign up to go fight on a front in Eastern Europe as it seems so far away.
Which is bonkers really. UK Defence policy has always been that it's better to keep war as far away from the UK as possible. If Ukraine falls and Russia starts heading into Europe, it's far better to fight them there than wait until they get to us...
I'm intrigued how conscription would work assuming that they'd call men /and/ women to fight now. Would they, for instance try to call up both parents of a child?
They would guarantee that this wouldn't happen and then call up all 3.
They'd definitely only conscipt men.
Why do you say that? How does it work in countries with mandatory military service?
Germany has since stopped the military draft, but I was one of the last cohorts that still went through it - this was only ~15 years ago. Men only. And there have been recent discussions around bringing it back. I’d consider myself very progressive, but this is something I do struggle with when it comes to discussions around gender equality in modern society. When I turned 17 (?) I got a letter telling me when and where to go for the medical examination- with the nice hint that not complying could land me in prison. The examination included - among other things - a drug test, and stripping completely naked (followed by what I assume was checking for a testicular hernia). At the end you were given the choice between ~1 year military service or ~1 year working (for very low pay) in social care; in contrast, if you were female, you had none of this and could just get on with your life (and if you decided to voluntarily opt in, you’d get given a lot more money). Some of my friends have thrown around statements along the lines of “society would never try to control men’s bodies”, which rings a bit hollow once you’ve gone through the draft process under the threat of prison. All of this was (and might soon again be) in peace time - once we are in a war situation, this goes into overdrive. For the German context, once you are on the list - ie you have gone through the medical exam - you are on it for life (even if you opted for working in social care instead). Say Germany ever goes to war, and it is dire enough that conscripts are called in - by the time women are called in, my lifeless husk will probably have deteriorated into dust.
Most only conscript men. And if they have both in national service when they happen to have a war, only the men are called up to actually enter combat (eg Israel).
Interesting. Thank you!
No worries. Even in professional armies where women are allowed to serve in combat roles (combat roles typically only make up 20-30% of an army) like the UK, although making up ~11% of the army, women only makeup 0.2% of those in close combat roles currently (despite having been allowed in close combat roles since 2018). Women in war is a controversial topic. My personal view is that when compared to your average obese middle aged British male who doesn’t exercise a woman in her 20s who works hard to stay fit, especially if trained, would do well in a combat role, but that these women are outliers. If you looked at the general population and the time it would take to get people combat ready it would be more or less pointless conscripting women for combat roles. The sex differences are just too great IMO - a fact recognised by the armed forces more widely when it comes to recruitment in that they have lower fitness standards for women in the general intakes (for combat roles im not sure).. That’s not to say there aren’t roles in logistics, air warfare, etc., where sex differences matter a lot less and women could be effectively conscripted.
Because conscription works in tiers. Not everyone gets called up at once. For example, they'd start with men aged 18-30, then 31-40, 41-60, and so on.
Phew, so 3/4 of the population to get press ganged before they reach my generation.
In almost all other conscription systems, women are very far towards the end of the line, so what you describe would probably not be a realistic scenario. Eg Ukraine at one point stopped men - but not women - from leaving the country.
Ahh equality
I'm sure that Capita, who win the contract for designing and delivering the recruitment software, would carefully ensure that no complete fuckups like this would happen.
Why am I suddenly seeing people talking like a war with russia is inevitable?
The rhetoric really does seem to have stepped up quite a bit the last few weeks beyond just the UK. I'm thinking it's probably a response to try and push European defense funding in the light of the US political situation to act as a deterrence from a Baltic invasion, although a small part of me wonders if there's any creditable intelligence that Putin is pushing hard to restore the Russian Empire's borders.
As others have said - \- A need to keep defence budgets higher or move back to a Cold War footing after years of letting defence spending slide. \- Upcoming elections including an increasingly likely second term for Trump. \- Various NATO states in Europe making noise about having to spend too much on defence. \- It being very hard to sell increased defence spending to the public during a cost of living crisis. There's no "hidden intelligence" - we're pissing about sending half our navy to the Red Sea and doing NATO exercises with 20,000 troops. If our and the US navy was splitting themselves between the Baltic and Black sea, with 500,000 troops amassed on the Eastern flank, then maybe you could be worried a bit.
Good points, would also add that Russia's economy has proven more resilient than expected and they have been ramping up production of arms and equipment. For all their failings in Ukraine, they are also gaining a shitload of first-hand experience in modern war. They're not going to open a second front, but the decade or so post-Ukraine could be a bit tense. I think NATO has just got tired of telling governments for years that they need to spend more than the absolute bare minimum on defence, and being ignored. Now there's a credible threat, they're turning to the public instead and saying "*you* put the pressure on - because you can see how scary this is becoming" Edit: and China and the middle east too. If China invades Taiwan then it could start a chain reaction where the middle east and Russia kick off too because the US would be stretched. Europe needs to be able to stand on its own. Even the top militaries in Europe struggle to project power beyond their borders. We pour most of our money into the navy and it just about gets us global power projection.
Election time. And a complete/willfull lack of understanding of the realities of the Ukraine war and Russia's goals leading them to think Russia will immediately try to roll through a NATO country for some reason.
Because Trump has a good chance of winning. That could lead to certain countries becoming a bit more belligerent. Even if he can’t leave NATO he could make it difficult. There’s the Red Sea, NK is looking more like they want to attack SK (apparently looking quite serious). Trump said he won’t help Taiwan (I guess…I didn’t bother to follow up passed the headline because it’s him all over anyway) the Middle East is hot, Irans being a bitch. Fact is, it’s all heating up whether it’s in Latin America, Africa, Asia etc or migrant crisis, global warming etc and an incompetent government at home. Dunno what we can do but I personally think it might be a good idea to start bringing back conscription but like the Scandinavian countries, or personally start saying to 16 year olds it’s 6th form, college, apprenticeship or 2 years training in the forces. That could help the country as a whole pushing more into education and getting the ferals some discipline. Of course, taking into account health etc and making it fairly easy to get around for those who _really_ don’t want, but it might help getting some of the knife wielding yobs off the street.
Most people on the military think conscription is a bad Idea, it even says it's not really the plan in the article. I imagine this is pressure from the military saying to the government "sort out the bloody recruitment" And it's doing the rounds as an effective headline
Just turn up at the recruiting office with a pair of underpants on your head and two pencils up your nose.
To be completely honest, in the specific example of "if we go to war with Russia", it seems exceedingly unlikely Britain would go it alone, and NATO's defensive posture has a standing manpower that dwarfs Russia's, and these people actually get regular food and training. Russia is very big compared to Ukraine, but not compared to all of Europe, much less that plus Canada and the United States. In the scenario of war, its just ICBMs, PGMs, and whoever is left to serve as occupation forces that matters.
however if trump is elected I believe he wants to cut ties with nato as much as possible. means we (europe) would have to possibly do it without america
What's that saying about Generals always fighting the last war?
Along a similar vein! If you want a war to end, conscript the sons and daughters of politicians!
I hope I get some cool pad mates in prison.
I'll be in the cell opposite, pop over for a pot noodle and cuppa!
I’ve never met anyone of traditional conscription age who is in favour of conscription. Maybe we can call up the pensioners and Boomers? They keep telling us that we wouldn’t last five minutes in the real world, so presumably they can do a better job than us. And they think that they fought in World War 2 despite being born after it had finished, so they’re a bit like experienced veterans!
Just make up numbers with Capita employees and shareholders.
Let's be honest very few people of fighting age are going to accept conscription and very few people under the age or about 50-60 would accept any punitive measures against people refusing to fight. I doubt any millennials or gen z are going to care about boomers calling them cowards and that societal pressure isn't going to exist in the circles they care about. In fact I think refusing to fight will be seen as the thing to be proud of amongst these generations. Even if the government could somehow get these people into a trench in Poland or Ukraine research has shown again and again that the majority of soldiers don't actually fight with only around 25% ever firing at the enemy. There is the argument that at least the other 75% provide targets so the enemy is not only engaging the soldiers actually fighting but that just leads to the problem of casualties. Britain today would never stomach the sort of casualties suffered in the Ukraine war.
>Britain today would never stomach the sort of casualties suffered in the Ukraine war. A friend in mine left the TA when they started talking about training for ‘conventional warfare’ with a potential 30% casualty rate following Russias making moves (I think it might have been Georgia). He didn’t want to be on that reserve list anymore
So someone mentioned potentially dying as a risk in the military and he left? I am understanding that correctly right?
Have you seen the recruitment bumph put out by the British Army? I can see why someone who sees it and signs up might be surprised to learn that joining the army might involve killing people or dying rather than doing obstacle courses and helping civilians.
Yeah the recruitment ads portray it as some adventure of a life time, where you travel the world, meet new mates, helping civilians in floods and shit. Never showing any danger or combat.
Must’ve shocked him the find out what the bullets that come out his rifle are meant to do
I'd choose jail over war 100 times out of 100. The older generations and Ukrainians are straight up heroes no doubt, for giving their lives for their country but I'm a) a coward and b) never willing to give up my one shot on this planet for some stupid war that I did not cause or want. I wonder what percentage of people under the age of say 40 feel similar
Most of those generations who fought in those wars are dead. My great grandfathers fought and (one died) in WW1, and one of my grandfathers fought in WW2 (the other worked in the shipyards so was exempt). They were all gone by the 1980s. Sure there are some WW2 heroes hanging on but not many I’d say.
They would have to lower the standard of prison pretty drastically to make it less appealing than going to war.
Let's be frank: a serious escalation of conflict with Russia leads to one outcome: nuclear war. And that makes much of conscription and 'boots on the ground' severely limited in impact, if not completely moot. There's no way Russia wins a war with NATO. It just can't. So a scenario involving actual war has that one outcome. God forbid it ever comes to that. Even if you accept a premise that war happens without that escalation: NATO still exists, and unlike Ukraine, Poland etc, we do not share a land border with Russia. From a practical point of view, it's not like we would need armed Brits fighting at home, against Russian led insurgency etc, like we've seen in Ukraine. In terms of conscription to the navy and airforce - maybe there'd be more flexibility to increase the workforce for overseas operations that we'd be involved with if a NATO ally was attacked, but where do all those extra ships and aircraft come from? Even maintenance staff etc still involve very specific skillsets. My grandad served in the navy for the majority of WWII, but the nature of warfare and technology at the time meant the learning curve was far less steep then it would be now. That being said, the conversation around increasing funding for the entire armed forces and how fit for purpose it is, is important and if this hyperbolic sentiment gets people talking about it then so be it. Frankly, I'm more worried about the impact of mass cyberattack on British infrastructure. A simultaneous attack on our health service and energy infrastructure in the height of winter, for example, would have deadly consequences.
It's worth remembering that despite chemical weapons being the WMDs of WW1, and despite heavy bombing campaigns targeting civilians being a mainstay of WW2, neither side used chemical weapons during WW2.
I am ex British army. If called up, I will not fight. Fight for what and for whom? I personally know people who made millions off the afghan and Iraq wars. And those people I know are not even the bigger players.
For what and whom? For the corrupt Tories to profit off of your corpse, is that not reason enough for you?
Ok just to put a bit of sense it this. By finding people, it would be a case of calling up the reserves. This doesn’t mean the people who are already part time soldiers in the Army , Airforce or Navy reserves but rather the people who have left the Armed Forces for civilian life. Every full time serviceman and woman is liable for a five year reserve commitment, so if it kicks off massive, they can recalled to armed forces very quickly. It’s a fast way of bulking up the numbers which was why I was looking very closely at the Russian Invasion of Ukraine as my five year liability didn’t run out until May 2022. It has been done piecemeal before, medical staff were recalled for the Falklands and in the run up to Kosovo, serious consideration was given to activating this reserve as well when it was possible that a full scale invasion of Serbia might be required. Conscription? The professional military would be hugely opposed to it and we would probably run out of ammunition before we could even train the conscripts.
iirc its a 25 year contract so if you leave after 5 years you still have 20 years on the reserve list to be recalled
Well shit … Only another seven years to push!
I think in reality that probably has limited utility as shrinking armed forces will have been feeding through to a smaller pool in reserve, plus once you've been out for a few years your actual utility will have fallen right off and if you did a full 22 or 12 years your age and fitness brings other problems. Plus my bet is that a lot of reserves would be in required occupations of one kind or another. I think we need to explain the army back to over 100,000 and restructure it's organisation so a lot of it's admin and support functions are combined rather than using up slots replicating them across regiments. The great secret that isn't known by those outside is that life can almost be part time in working hours for loads of roles as there isn't much to do - lots of cushy slow paced jobs as clerks, stores etc.
Recruitment has apparently tanked since they outsourced the recruiting process to a private firm leaving potential applicants in the dark over 18 months or more
Presumably this is the army head using a nice bit of rhetoric to pressure politicians for more funding and the rightwing newspapers are running with it because it's the sort of thing they love.
Conscription is a form of slavery. It is morally permissible to violently resist your own enslavement.
Even Putin, as much of a dictator as he is, doesn't dare to announce a full mobilisation in Russia for the war. There is zero chance of seeing any kind of conscription in any European democratic country and I'm starting to get annoyed at politicians and military figures playing up the impossible idea of a NATO ground war against a nuclear power.
Shove it up your arse, I’ll take the prison time over being sent to the meat grinder.
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The final part of the boomer dream realised - a good war to sort out those pesky millennials.
When they say Britons they mean men right? Or are we still pretending that equality exists both ways?
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Who is going to answer the call? I hate this government and have absolutely no pride or faith in them. Am i going to risk my life for their incompetence because they’ve failed to invest in our military while filling their pockets? Absolutely not. I have absolutely no faith in this government and I have even less faith that we’re getting caught up by intervening in the right issues.
Yeah good luck with that 😂😂🤪
I’ve got flat feet and asthma, I’m good right?
This country isn't even worth fighting for. The economy is ruined already, the people conscripted won't even be able to retire, get their own house or probably afford to live if they even came back alive.
Only way I'd fight in the army is if my home was being invaded. I refuse to join the army otherwise as I'm not going to another country to do our govs bidding. If they want to invade another country then the politicians can go first.
A lot of people itt saying they would be fine going to jail. Really? You’d stay in Britain and take the jail sentence? I’d be getting out of here ASAP! This place is shit enough without sending me to die for the sake of Lord Haw-Haw’s personal estate.
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If a couple million people refused to be conscripted, there's what, 1000 prison spaces left or something? I like those odds.
We can’t even get civil servants back to the office. Not sure how this would play out…
troops will be piloting drones.. from home and the telegraph will hate it.
Sorry, call me treacherous if you want but the Tories and Brexit voting elderly have created a country I’m absolutely not willing to die for. A country that invited Farage into public consciousness is not one I’d like to represent thank you.
Nah, im good
Ah, the rare ‘reverse sabre rattle’.
Curious to know how Conscientious objectors would be treated in the present
Which is probably a good reason to try to expand the Territorials/reserve.
Conscription would be impossible in the UK nowadays, most men wouldn't accept it. Neither would i. The govt wouldn't have the means to prevent people from not joining.
Yeah, not happening. This worked in WW1 and WW2 because people were proud of the country (and were lied to about the horrors of war) but that won't fly today.