Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting in modern techowars, especially one with a declining demographics situation as Germany is ... draft older people!

From a policy standpoint, it means less "lost productive years".

I get that historically grabbing dumb and easily inspired disposable males was the way because there was almost always disposable males in the old demographics for the last 10,000 years.

But modern urbanized society isn't like that. Children are precious, old retired people are disposable.

The West is being far to passive on Ukraine. There should be large amounts of European forces in Ukraine right now. I'm talking 100,000 minimum.

Russia has openly stated its goals to attack NATO if/when it gets Ukraine. Putin views Europe as a fat pig ripe for conquest, full of weak and cowardly leaders.

Total population mobilization has to be planned now. The Polish and Balkans, the most willing fighters in NATO in the next line of countries, should likely be actively mobilized for total conventional war.

We can look at what's happening in Ukraine right now to see how well that's working. The truth of it is that no matter how much technology is deployed land can only be held with infantry.

Being infantry is still physically demanding and cannot be usefully replaced by technology. Maybe they aren't marching hundreds of kilometres on foot anymore, but they still need to endure the weather, minor injuries, and move through forests carrying heavy packs.

Physically, being infantry is beyond most people in their sixties.

That’s all true, except that something like 2/3 to 3/4 of most armies are not front line troops (support, logistics, intelligence, admin, etc.) it seems many if not most of those roles could be adequately fulfilled by people that are not particularly fit (e.g. you don’t need a 28yo doing aircraft maintenance or driving a truck)

Ukraine seems to be trying to find a middle ground here. Until recently, they only drafted men over the age of 27 (last month it was lowered to 25). Of course, even that age is still going to wreck your demographics. On the other hand, I'm not sure that retired old people have enough stamina to last long on the battlefield. Many of Ukraine's units have been fighting for over a year with no R&R.

All Soviet countries fell into sharp demographic/fertility collapse in the 90s when the USSR collapsed, and most never entirely pulled out of it, including Ukraine. So most have severe demographic issues in the ~20-30 year old range. Conscripting this group is reckless for these nations, because not only are there not many of them, but they're who should be creating the next generations. Here is Ukraine's population pyramid [1]. For contrast this is what an extremely healthy population pyramid looks like. [2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine_population_pyrami...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#/media/...

Depends on the type of fighting being done, especially if there's a confrontation with an enemy filled with younger soldiers. You do lose agility and speed as you age.

Additionally, there's the matter of obedience. If you're being conscripted because you're "disposable" and closer to death anyway, you're more likely to ignore orders you disagree with. Even incarceration carries less of a threat.

On the obedience front I’m inclined to disagree, if you tell a 19yo private to go scale a wall and clear a house you don’t get a lot of questions, if you tell a senior NCO to do that, you get all sorts of questions (most very pertinent) and may likely get told to sod off unless you have good answers!

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