It's healthy to not want to fight, says General Sir Richard Barrons, but young British people may realise they have to be conscripted if war erupts between Nato and Russia
  • HumanPenguin@feddit.ukEnglish
    401·
    9 months ago

    That will be down to the UK government not NATO.

    It is certainly possible. But our current military leaders have made it clear in the past,

    1 career milatary volunteer is worth 100s of untrained forced fighters.

    The cost of training huge numbers of conscripted fighters. When fighting a modern battle. Is not going to be the first choice of our military by any means. Moving from a total voluntary army to conscription would take a huge change in our forces. More so then the US that at least still keeps records suitable for drafting young fighters.

    • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I don’t know about you guys but anyone close to Russia probably understands the usefulness of conscription.

      • HumanPenguin@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Given russia has taken 2 years to fail to win a war it expected to win overnight. And it conscription draws from a population 3 x the size of the Ukraine. Most would be less then impressed with the effectiveness of forced labour fighting in a nation they do not care about. Vs people defending their own home.

        And that has been the point the UK military leaders have argued in the past. Conscription is only effective when folks need to defend their family. Not fight for political/ politicians gain.

        • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I think this was about defensive use?

          The British people must be prepared for military conscription and making other sacrifices to defend the UK if Russia attacks, a former senior army commander has warned.

          He said the country needs to snap out of thinking war is always an “away game”.

          “You’re not mobilising because you’re going to invade somebody else’s country. You’re mobilising because someone is threatening yours – and your family and your livelihood.

          “If we were to go to war with a power like Russia, we would have to secure the homeland, guarding things. We would have to play a bigger part in deterrence – and fighting on continental Europe.

          Ukraine probably wouldn’t exist today without conscription. Their manpower reserves is one of the huge assets they have.

          You can have professional troops for overseas service and conscripts for defense. And you’d have more ability to send those professionals abroad when you have capable soldiers at home. I think that’s what they’re talking about in the article anyway.

  • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    9 months ago

    I’m doubtful. Conscript soldiers are great for filling trenches; for specialized and technical fields that first world armies like the UK and rest of NATO employ, it’s not nearly as useful. The training is simply too involved and time consuming.

    • Ummdustry@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      I mean, if there were to be conscription it probably wouldn’t be for technical roles like mechanics or artillery coordinators. It would be for logistical duties (drive this truck, mop this floor, cook this soup) and for dads-army-esque garrison duty. That then frees up the career soldiers to do what they are trained for. Mass mobilisation for an infantry-focused army I cannot see happening, mostly because Russia would be rubble by the time we get that desperate.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    19·
    9 months ago

    Both my grandfather’s on both sides fought in both world war 1 and world war II and all four were killed, so there doesn’t really seem to be much future in conscription.

    • HumanPenguin@feddit.ukEnglish
      121·
      9 months ago

      Also UK military leaders have been against it for decades. It is just an expensive way to get cannon fodder. Maybe useful in 1930s trench warfare. But rarely of value for modern technical warfare.

      It will just leave the milatary with a huge training bill.

  • Skeezix@lemmy.worldEnglish
    182·
    9 months ago

    This is bullshit. There will be no war between NATO and Russia of the type that needs Britons to conscript. Russia has few meat sacks left to send into any war. Having sacrificed 350,000 of its youth in Ukraine, Russia is scraping then bottom of the barrel for chumps willing the have their guts splattered on distant frozen farm fields. Russia now has to resort to mining prisons and third world countries for troops. What remains of Russia’s war materiel (tanks, vehicles, etc) is antiquated. When it comes to conventional warfare, Russia is a joke.

    Now nukes and missles on the other hand, that’s a different story. Russia has plenty of them. But again, if Russia hits NATO with something like that, retaliation is like-for-like, and no foot soldiers are needed.

    But it won’t come to that because in spite of Russia’s blustering and the media’s fear mongering, Russia knows that such a strike on nato would mean the end of Russia. And Russia wants to continue to exist.

    • Rickety Thudds@lemmy.caEnglish
      17·
      9 months ago

      Russia will not be seeking to get a firm NATO response in the form of troops mobilised; they will be seeking to carefully undermine confidence in article 5 with small offenses that “should” trigger it but (they hope) don’t, causing fractures in the alliance that will allow them to be more brazen. They don’t want to deal with blocs of countries, they have more leverage in 1:1 negotiations and will seek ways to force more of these on NATO members.

        • Rickety Thudds@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          They’ve always been like this. Their spy game has always been better than ours, where we excelled at cryptography

      • blazeknave@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Which they’ve done blatantly since Georgia. Well put friend. I’ve been trying to articulate it this succinctly. Always think of raptors testing the cage.

      • FarceOfWill@infosec.pubEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Yes, or attempts at lightning strikes that force the response to not be defence but invasion of a recently invaded country.

        The attack on Ukraine was an attempt at this, and would have fractured NATO had it worked because it would work just as well against Estonia

  • HexesofVexes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    9 months ago

    The math says no - UK youth is too disillusioned with its nation to reliably fight for it under pressure.

    Nationalism is the domain of our older citizens, while our youth has grown up under a government that has slowly stripped them of their rights. We do have a lot of propaganda around, but most of it is anti-government, so no loyalty gIns there.

    A draft would only be likely if an invasion of the UK were a possibility - and I suspect folks would fight against occupation.

    This article is just clickbait, nothing more.

  • TWeaK@feddit.ukEnglish
    132·
    9 months ago

    The great Tory plan to just kill off and thin the heard rather than address the social issues they’ve caused.

    • Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      They need more workers through endless population increases to maintain the system though. No immigration allowed though, of course.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        A lot of this attitude stems from the fact that the Tories don’t seem to think more than 30 seconds in front of their own face anymore. They are only interested in the next problem, and they never think about the ramifications, so even the moderates want to bring down immigration because they think it will be good for their polling numbers.

        Not a thought is ever given to the fact that if they actually do bring down immigration to zero the economy would collapse, because that next week’s problem, and who cares about that guy.

  • doublejay1999@lemmy.worldEnglish
    107·
    9 months ago

    Totally radicalised by military careers. They think every problem should be solved by soldiers and tanks.

    We rightly call out extremism in many forms and this should be no different.

  • jabjoe@feddit.ukEnglish
    52·
    9 months ago

    Thing will be, will the population support this? Do they care enough about countries not their own? It will probably be Poland, do people care enough about Poland to get fired up to fight? Nationalism/Brexit/racism has been demonizing Pols as both taking our jobs and scrounging benefits. Plus Russia is whispering in their social media feeds and so they don’t think Russia is that bad. We’re in a right old state.