Foreign Army Query

barneysplash

Hi all

Is it true that most the foreign nationals working in Ireland from Poland, Latvia
Lithuania etc. all do 2 years in the army?

JIZZLORD

barneysplash wrote: »

Hi all

Is it true that most the foreign nationals working in Ireland from Poland, Latvia
Lithuania etc. all do 2 years in the army?

wikipedia and google ftw!

* Personel - ~168,000 (~118,000 professionals, ~50,000 conscripts)

why the hell do you want to know anyway?

Lockstep

JIZZLORD wrote: »

wikipedia and google ftw!

* Personel - ~168,000 (~118,000 professionals, ~50,000 conscripts)

why the hell do you want to know anyway?

ConscriptioN?

Oh my.

Manic Moran

The lads would stand a good chance of it, anyway. Only Israel conscripts the women. A lot of countries offer the choice of a form of national service outside of the military as well.

Bear in mind that fully volunteer forces are still a minority in Europe, though the proportion of volunteer-to-conscript within those armies has drastically increased in recent years.

NTM

Dub13

Wasn't there talk of bringing Conscription back into the US a year or two ago...?I am sure that did not go down well with the average American.

Manic Moran

Dub13 wrote: »

Wasn't there talk of bringing Conscription back into the US a year or two ago...?I am sure that did not go down well with the average American.

No, there wasn't.

There was fearmongering by the Left that if the war continued, then the US would be forced to bring it back, but virtually nobody in authority was in favour of it. Certainly not the Army.

There's one notable exception, a Congresscritter from New England, Democrat, I think, who has been trying to get conscription back on the books for years. Every year he submits a bill to renew it, and every year it goes nowhere.

NTM

Dub13

Interesting....I must have picked that up somewhere and did not verify it.

I know the US military are overstretched but are they undermanned...?

IRLConor

barneysplash wrote: »

Hi all

Is it true that most the foreign nationals working in Ireland from Poland, Latvia
Lithuania etc. all do 2 years in the army?

From Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook:

Poland: 40% conscript military, conscripts do 9 months (since 2005, before that it was 12 months). They aim to be all-volunteer by 2012.
Latvia: Switched to a fully volunteer army, last conscripts left at the end of 2006.
Lithuania: 12 months of service.

So Poles and Lithuanians will probably have done military service and Latvians might have, but none of them would have done 2 years unless they wanted to.

Manic Moran

Dub13 wrote: »

I know the US military are overstretched but are they undermanned...?

Not really. The recruits have not been coming in as they used to, so the military is throwing money at the problem. Enlistment bonuses are insane, but the army's treating it as simply a competitor in the marketplace: People don't want to work for you, you sweeten the pot. They've also reduced the minimum entry requirements a bit, to the level that they were at in the 1980s. Once in, retention is good. As a result, the military which had been at more or less their authorised strength when the war begain, is now bigger than it had been, and is growing to reach the newly authorised cap faster than initially anticipated.

NTM

arybvtcw0eolkf

Dub13 wrote: »

I know the US military are overstretched but are they undermanned...?

Yes they are.

I read a report in work last year when the US forces in Iraq were at 150,000 troops stating that the US army is logistically top heavy.

It takes between 4-6 logs per's to support one front line soldier in the US military, effectively giving the US military in Iraq less than 50,000 boots on the ground. And operating in a country bigger than France.

The US military in Iraq is massively undermanned.

Fast_Mover

Was working with polish students when I was in Amercia during the summer and I think they said that if you don't go to college then you have to spend time in the army.

Manic Moran

Yes they are.

I read a report in work last year when the US forces in Iraq were at 150,000 troops stating that the US army is logistically top heavy.

It takes between 4-6 logs per's to support one front line soldier in the US military, effectively giving the US military in Iraq less than 50,000 boots on the ground. And operating in a country bigger than France.

The US military in Iraq is massively undermanned.

There's a difference between overstretched and undermanned. The Army is not undermanned, indeed, it's over-strength when compared to the size it's supposed to be at this time. It is, however, being tasked with missions more which are stretching the strength. It's like saying the Defence Forces, which are at their full strength of 10,500 and thus not undermanned, would be overstretched if tasked with providing four UN peacekeeping battalions at once.

Part of the reason the US Army has such a large tail-to-teeth ratio when compared to other militaries is that it is pretty much the only military with such power-projection capabilities. You're looking at moving craploads of equipment and resources to the theatre, and once there, there's all the associated support. For example, to make a comparison to Ireland (or indeed, pretty much any other country), the US Army has a much larger ratio of helicopters to soldiers. Each helicopter requires a number of maintenance crewmen, which adds to the tail ratio. Doubtless if the US military reduced itself to the same lack of logistical capability as Ireland, the tooth/tail ratio would be much the same as well.

NTM

arybvtcw0eolkf

But it still amounts to the same thing IMO.

I'm not one of the anti-American brigade, and I hate to see that your lads are getting a bloodynose in Iraq.

But politically I don't think you can win the war in Iraq, and at present over-stretched or under-manned militarily you can't win either.

I do however think you could bomb just about any country back to the stoneage, but losing the war on the ground has exposed the USA to so many more dangers.

Either way this is something we could throw around forever and get no where. I'll just wish you and your lads all the very best for the new year, no matter where you find yourselfs servings.

barneysplash

Back on topic please

What about other former Warsaw Pact countries like Ukraine,
Russia, Georgia etc...

IRLConor

Did I not give you enough sources to go and look for yourself?

JIZZLORD

Fast_Mover wrote: »

Was working with polish students when I was in Amercia during the summer and I think they said that if you don't go to college then you have to spend time in the army.

i worked with two polish lads who serfved in the navy together, and they said this too.

Dub13

Fast_Mover wrote: »

Was working with polish students when I was in Amercia during the summer and I think they said that if you don't go to college then you have to spend time in the army.

Thats probably why Poland has a very high % of people going to college.Dam hippie students....:)