Conscripts or professionals?

In my opinion compulsory military service is a way to keep the army in touch with the people, following the citizen-soldier concept.
Naturally there must be a number of highly trained professional soldiers too, for elite and specialized units.

My: who want to be soldier, certainly don't want to be conscripted. More like he wants to be proffesional, with salary.... like in a civil job. Who don't want... let's not force them. Maybe something like 10 % tax monthly from salary, for the rest of the life... or something like.. combined with 2 weeks training in every year.

Iama

i voted professional. i do not believe wars this day can be fought on numbers

I dont think will be healty to have an army formed just by professional soldiers.Think about army reserve,in case of war.To train than a new soldier,without any previous experiance,will be much hard and longer,with bad repercusions for war.Even the USA(and i dont speake about Israel),who most of the peoples consider is the most professionalized army,have a reserve and National Guard,who is not a professional army,like US army,or US navy.We must have enough peoples connect some how with military sistem,even if dont knows about electronic warfare,or fighters plains tactics,but who knows some basic stuff.So i am for a hibrid army.Mabe the period of conscription be shorter,but not eliminated.

Professional, too...

I voted "hybrid".

In the present days, keeping the drafting menace over the head of the average citizen may temper sometimes the warmongering enthusiasm.

This post has been edited by Florin on January 30, 2005 04:44 am

I vote for a "hybrid" army.
Romania cannot afford a fully professional army. We should have a professional core who should be completed when needed with recruits.

I think fully professional armies are only suitable for limited conflict. Any serious war (and I don't mean terrorism or border skirmishing) would deplete a professionals only army in no time (not to mention completely ruining the economy). And compulsory military service does temper some people's willingness to send others to die (as already stated by Florin).

Maybe the only countries able to stick to a professional army and still not worry about numbers would be China and India . I don't know why I'm laughing about this. It should actually give me the creeps. I guess both are still too far away.

In my oppinion its almost impossible for present Romania to have a good army of conscripts. We have to choose between a millions poor trained soldiers - wich will be just a "gun meal" in a serious conflict and a small but good army. The campaign of 1916 was a good example for us - a large (at romanian scale) poor trained and equiped army in opposition with the 1917 campaign ... less units but much better trained and equiped ..... and its usseles to talk about the how different its the present modern weaponary - how complex its a modern MBT for eg ...

Well, check "Gardianul" newspaper, this Saturday issue.

According to that, a conscript receives from budget 0,5 $/day (50 cents!!!) for his nutritional needs, while a convict gets 10$/day!!!

Is that stupid or what? No wonder we cannot support a small conscript army, we use the funds for a large army locked up in our jails, and made up of "volunteers".

I guess if someone attacks us, they'll release the convicts as Saddam did in 2003.

That could be quite a strategy....

This post has been edited by Imperialist on April 02, 2005 07:50 pm

Hi Guys,

Different countries have different requirements. The Anglo-Saxon countries have almost always had small professional armies, but they could only get away with this because their fleets protected them from the much larger and more powerful continental conscript armies.

Continental countries have to go by what their neighbours are doing. In Western Europe there is a move by many countries (including France, where modern conscription was invented and was regarded as a legacy of the Revolution binding population and army together) towards smaller professional armies, because they no longer fear their neighbours.

Doubtless this mood will spread to Eastern and Balkan Europe in time and Romania may then end up with a small regular army like its neighbours may. However, until then some level of conscription is probably in the national interest.

Cheers,

Sid.

Well, it's official. The last conscripts in the Romanian Army will be incorporated in October 2006. The last reduced term conscripts will be drafted in June 2006. The officials declared there are already more applicants for proffesional soldier jobs than jobs

Hi Victor,

Interesting.

Can you acquaint me with the wider picture? What is the current concript/professional situation of Romania's neighbours?

Cheers,

Sid.

Sorry, but I don't know exactly. I believe that our allies (Hungary and Bulgaria) are also turning to professionals.

It is to be noted that in case of war, the conscript service will be reinstated.