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Comment by pilsetnieks | Hacker News Reader

You literally cannot use conscripts for anything of "operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers." First of all, most of them take at least a year to get up to speed, if not more, and they have to maintain their competence. You cannot just release a conscript after his year long stint, and call him up ten years later - the ten year old tech he was trained on will probably have been replaced, and even if not, he'd have forgotten most of his training. Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

So you're looking at guys to dig holes and sit in them with rifles and maybe some supporting jobs (administrative, kitchen, IT, construction, etc.)

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Well, both the Swedish and Norwegian Armies have a long tradition for using conscripts to do a lot more than what you think. E.g. on the main battle tank (Leopard 2), everyone except the tank commander (i.e. driver, gunner, loader) is a conscript. My brother-in-law was in the forward sigint ops division as a conscript. 90% of ship crews are conscripts, as are most of the air force support personnell.

To make sure these skills are not just forgotten, some portion of each years conscripts are selected for regular returns to the army for drills. (Army pays your employer for the time it takes, you get your regular dayjob salary.)

That used to be the case in Sweden, but if I understand things correctly, the GSS system (professional soldiers and NCOs, the system that replaced conscription in 2010) will still be in place, and that tank crews may be GSS/K and not conscripts.

A rumor I heard was that the now voluntary GMU will be replaced with conscription.

This anecdotal, but it was suggested that after the Dutch government suspended conscription, the military lost easy access to lots of highly educated people. There is quite a large group of people with a university degree who can very quickly pick up the theory behind complex systems. The same group group will not sign up voluntarily.

They will sign up voluntarily for a military that is decently funded (having to shout 'pew pew' in training because your training rounds have ran out is ridiculous.. and yes this is real). Plus a wage that would be semi-competitive with the civilian sector.

A few years ago we had a french student (ENA) placement for a year and he had sorted out his national service with the force de frappe.

This is actually true. When we took 100% of all able men in Norway, the got the top guys as well as the lump. Now, when it's gotten a lot easier to get out of conscription, a lot of the well people with other ambitions skip this.

I think it's not that bad. When you've had a conscript military for decades, the service is a fact of life. Just like school and taxes. People get over it.

Also my impression is that a lot of military equipment isn't very high-tech precisely so that it doesn't require that much expertise to operate and service in the field. So you need only a limited amount of specialists, and conscripts can just become trained users.

I think a lot of people equate the march of technology with complexity, but this isn't even typically the case. Advances in tech often make less complicated weapons more workable. Think steel production techniques enabling better armor. Armor's not getting more complicated, just better.

The M1A1 Abrams tank is extremely simple to operate and man. Regardless, it's quite formidable.

I bet the M1A1 is more complex to maintain and operate that say A Sherman or a Grant and you have one less crew member

I was a conscript, and while calling me a "SIGINT operative" would be too much, I worked in a SIGINT role, with security clearance and all that.

There are always things you can use rather unqualified (but generally intelligent) people for.

I don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure I could fill that role again after a day of re-training.

It's interesting - Johnny Cash was a SIGINT operative in Europe in the 1950s. I mean headsets and notepads.

That's probably where he got a taste for amphetamines, at least one biographer thinks. "Here, take this, son. It'll keep you awake."

> You literally cannot use conscripts for anything of "operators and maintainers of the hi-tech death machines, sigint operatives, radar operators, tank crews, missile forces, officers." First of all, most of them take at least a year to get up to speed, if not more, and they have to maintain their competence. You cannot just release a conscript after his year long stint, and call him up ten years later - the ten year old tech he was trained on will probably have been replaced, and even if not, he'd have forgotten most of his training.

The Singapore military puts their men in the reserves after they're done with mandatory service, and calls them back for 10 years of reservist training or until they hit 40 [1].

> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

Why do you say this?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservist#Singapore

I don't think we can use the Singaporean army as an example of a proven effective fighting machine.

And anecdotal, but my Singaporean friend showed me picture after picture on Facebook of his friends serving their terms...there were many, many well polished tanks.

> I don't think we can use the Singaporean army as an example of a proven effective fighting machine.

Perhaps not, and I would prefer for it to remain that way. It's mainly to serve as a deterrence for would-be aggressors, and also as a form of indoctrination.

> my Singaporean friend showed me picture after picture on Facebook of his friends serving their terms...there were many, many well polished tanks.

I don't know if there was any hidden meaning intended, but most photos on social media are intended to portray the military in a positive light. Cellphones with cameras are still prohibited in some places, and we have the military justice system for everything else.

Concept of "reserve officer" in a context of conscript force is not limited to Singapore.

But here is the thing: conscripts is everybody, including the best of the best. Professional soldiers have a tendency to not come from ivy league schools, and are often recruited from the less well off parts of society (citation needed).

You probably won't find Gates, Zuckerberg or Jobs in the US Army, but he quite possibly would have been in the Swedish one.

> You probably won't find Gates, Zuckerberg or Jobs in the US Army

In a conflict like WW2, you would find individuals like that in the Armed forces.

Well, in WW2 US had a draft too...

Real professional soldiers come from the Service Academies and while they're different from Gates & Zuckerberg, they are among our nations finest people, at least when hubris doesn't get 'em.

> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

There are different definitions of "officer". In Finland conscripts are trained to rank and file, NCO (Corporal/Sergeant), and junior officer (2nd Lieutenant) roles. Both reserve NCOs and officers may be later promoted if they accumulate a certain amount of refresher training days and are otherwise seen fit for the promotion.

This system, where the majority of junior officers are conscripted, has been the basis for the Finnish Defense Forces for the whole Finnish independence, and it has been battle-tested during both hot and cold war.

Wasn't one Linus Torvalds a conscript 2nd lieutenant in the Finnish forces?

> Oh, and officers by their very definition cannot be conscripts.

That isn't even true in the US. There are avenues for folks that start at the bottom to become an officer, at least in the US Navy. I don't see why conscripts wouldn't follow the same path of promotion that an enlisted person would. Besides, you are assuming all of the people in the conscript start at the bottom, when it would be more intelligent to train those capable of being an officer to use their skills more effectively.

Israel.

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