Military conscription

[Donotpanicoknowpanic]

There is lots of talk about if ww3 happens then military conscription will happen

This is basically people who sit in an office safely saying we need to either send ourselves or out children to fight and die in horrible conditions

Am I unreasonable to think that anyone who thinks this is a good idea

They should be the first ones to sign up and to lead by example

Any politicians who think this is a good idea, there children should be the first to go

Russia is literally sending troops in wheel chairs and crunches to the front line

So age, disability and gender will not be a problem for anyone who supports any conscription policy's, they can go first

Also the UK will not be invaded, we are not Ukrainian, If we were more like Ukraine I would be more in favour of this as the country itself is under threat

That’s great for you. I don’t think it has to be young people. Those who are keen can offer first.

That’s really kind of you to say, thank you.

It's enlightening having an alternative view of someone on the thread who is currently aware of conscription in their country and going through it with family members in the future.

Seems an absolutely alien concept to many in peace time in the UK. I am unsure myself about the whole thing and need time to look into it more.

The privilege of being an island nation has its drawbacks, making people more complacent, but nowhere is safe from Russia these days, the threat just comes in different forms. So perhaps in the future Brits will think differently (though of course I hope it never comes to that)

It would have been an "adventure " back then but now people are more aware and have mobile phones to make them bone idle.

It won't be young people first here anyway, it'd be the professional military and the reserves, most of whom are older (up until 65)

The way I look at it, is what is the alternative? The alternative isn't being left alone by the aggressor because we don't have enough people to fight, its violence, rape, torture, repression, and mass misery. I don't want that for me or my children so fighting is the only viable option.

It should definitely be older people to be conscripted first. Who’s going to be here in the future when all the old people die out in a few years. Plus no one to take care of them.

From what I can gather, people who have family outside of the UK and Europe wouldn’t hang around here. They’d leave. I don’t think there’d be enough volunteers and conscription would be necessary.

Haven't thousands of rich Russians legged it to Dubai to avoid conscription?

Quite.

The people claiming they'd run away or refuse to participate would be well advised to look at what tends to happen to indigenous populations when ideologically opposed nations invade each other.

They wouldn't be attempting an invasion of the UK just to remove Keir Starmer from office, so thinking you can just sit it out and watch it all roll past you is extremely naive. Being shot, blown to bits, or incinerated on the front line would be a mercy compared to the alternative.

This isn't just something that happened in the dim and distant past when nations were less civilised, it's been going on in occupied Ukraine since 2022.

He says he’d do whatever is needed in the national interest..

Yup. Some people are just very naïve and think they can just ignore war and nothing will happen to them, someone else will deal with it for them. Hopefully they never have to discover the reality in person, but instead learn from what's currently happening in the world, like in Ukraine.

Isn’t that a fair few posts on here? Posters saying they’re too old but someone else will deal with it for them.

One change since WW2 is that women play a much more active part in the armed forces. My DM was in the WAAF during WW2 and one of her roles was sitting on the edge of the airfield counting the aircraft in and out. With the advent of technology that role would now be obsolete. Women would very much be on the frontline and fighting.

During the Falkland War my friends were very concerned about what they would do if things escalated, would there be conscription. I decided I would be a Conscientious Objector as I was so frightened of the alternative. If the UK introduced conscription I am now too old to be any use to anyone but would think of the futures of my cousins children and grandchildren with the same sense of fear.

I don't know what the answer is but I do understand completely peoples fears. For those saying they wouldn't fight for Kier Starmer the Falklands was in the days of the much hated Margaret Thatcher.

It appears that too many people have a degree, but don't understand the purpose of education.

Putin is a dictator, who has manipulated the Russian electoral system to stay in power all these years and has mercilessly gone after all political adversaries. Having said that, Russia I don't think he has any territorial ambitions. He attacked Ukraine because it did not want another (potential) NATO country on its border.

Putin has zero interest in a small country like Britain, but sadly too many armchair generals remember the good 'ole days when we ruled the seven seas.

Hmmm..naive is an interesting word, so are "human rights", in a world where over 15,000 people die each day from hunger, where their bodies literally shut down and cease to function. If we cared so much about human life, a relatively easy problem to solve right??

It's rarely about human...rights.

Also, if conscription is so great, then why did Argentina manage to lose a war on home territory to an invading force a fraction it's size ?

I'm going to presume you are talking about the Falklands Conflict here and not the Cisplantine War since combatant strength in the latter was roughly equal. If so, then the Falklands was not by any stretch "home territory" for Argentina.

Argentina could not reliably maintain, supply, or support any significant force on the Falkland Islands from the moment the UK decided it was going to actually defend them. Due to the presence of UK submarine patrols, it could not send any significant seaborne resupply, could not defend the sea around the Falklands, could not deny harbour to the RN and the UK's merchant marine aside from attacking it by air using it's very limited supply of missiles, which it almost fully exhausted in any case, and bombs which were frequently improperly fused and failed to detonate. The Falklands may as well have been thousands of miles from the Argentinian mainland as far as its actual ground troops were concerned.

The troops it did deposit on the islands were poorly equipped and supplied, lacking in morale and motivation, as soon as the blockade was established, pretty much ignored by Argentinian high command and left to fend entirely for themselves. They did not even have adequate cold weather clothing. Go look at the Argentinian surrender and you can see for yourself what a ragtag, sorry looking bunch they truly were. At no point, even prior to the arrival of the UK expeditionary force, did Argentina truly establish air superiority over the islands either. They could not employ any sort of lingering picket to deter raids, they had nothing with which to intercept or repel the series of RAF Black Buck raids.

The professional pilots of the FAA acquitted themselves well, as did the professional soldiers in the Argentine Marine units, but the conscripted soldiers were enormously failed by the Junta even before they got to the Falklands. Whether they had been conscripts or otherwise is largely immaterial because there was no real prospect of Argentina successfully holding the islands in the longer term unless the FAA completely destroyed the UK expeditionary force, and Argentina didn't really have the means to achieve that anyway.

I should also point out that all of the major players in the victorious nations in both World Wars employed significant conscript forces, so there is not necessarily anything inherently flawed with the concept of small standing armed forces supplemented by civilian conscription. If you conscript a whole load of demotivated civilians, then fail to adequately train, equip, or supply them, then of course results are likely to be poor.

During WW2, I'm told that most of my male relatives tried hard to enlist, prior to conscription. They lied about their ages and their occupation.

All but one was refused. They all worked in the Pits. And coal was needed to fire the furnaces for the Steel Workers who made the armaments. So workers in these industries were exempt from conscription.

Nevertheless, they lied because they understood the need for sacrifice.

There surely comes a point for most people, where doing the right thing, not the safe thing, is more important?

Do I think those with money and influence maybe used that to safeguard their own children during the last war? Probably.

Would it happen again if another war happened? Probably.

Do I think that's the right thing to do? Absolutely not. Trumps father got his vile son medically excused from conscription during America's war with Vietnam. And look how he's turned out.

I'm not at all sure that conscription would be required if a war were declared between, for example, America, Russia, China or any of the Middle Eastern States.

I fear we'd all be dead by then.

No one will be too old, but many will be too old to actively fight, instead they will be put to doing useful work instead. But it's the ones that are saying they will just refuse, or they don't want to fight for the current government that are truly naïve, the first lot at least recognise that people will need to fight

I'd hazard a guess that most young people today are not going to go off to war even if conscripted, so it's a non-starter. Britain today is completely different from the 40's.

Not happily, no.

Would you happily live under Putin if it came to it?

Of course it’s easier to say I’ll do some work and be put to use over being targeted by drones. The latter doesn’t take much, as horrendous as it is. Anyone could do it.

How would a mass of conscripted soldiers help combat cyber-attacks and drones? By the time a land invasion reached our borders, we’d be well-advised to surrender.

I imagine Ukraine in 2022 was a completely different place to what it was in the 1940s.

Young people still went off to war.