Spacekiwi wrote:
The capped percentage of the military is part of their constitution IIRC, to show the world and themselves that they wont ever be able to or be willing to attempt to form a japanese empire again. and even though its a low cap, their GNP is so high, they have a reasonably decent sized defense force.
Yup, even including a couple of baby carriers even if they´re only setup to carry helicopters.
7thsealord wrote:upgrading their army and air force to something like the Western model (high-tech volunteer istead of conscript)
"Western model"?
Ask the Czech what they think is better, they had a drastic drop in force quality after switching from conscript to volunteer only.
To the point where several generals seriously asked to have conscription back.
Sweden did the same switch just the other year and despite the force shrink is already experiencing a similar effect. And they still have lots of ex-conscripts to recruit from, in theory.
And Sweden used to have among the best quality in the world, using conscripts, with conscripts kicking the rear ends of other nations "pro´s" in joint exercises on an almost regular basis. (with coast rangers (about 50% conscripts) repeatedly playing whack-a-mole with SEAL teams))
And the reason for that is because conscript vs volunteer is an almost irrelevant difference.
Before 2001, at one point, a US officer commented that he felt it embarassing, that Sweden had more "manhours" of serious field exercises, than USA had, not just per soldier, but in
total...
Essentially, a Swedish conscript in the 90s & early 00s, in usually around a year of service, had more training than a US grunt got in his first FIVE years of service(or not seldomly, more training than the grunt EVER got).
With even greater difference for specialists.
Meanwhile, the quality of the average recruit was vastly better here, because with the initial military reductions in the early 90s, pretty much only those best suited were actually recruited.
So while US army in the same timeframe had an average IQ on recruits of around 90-95(sometimes even below 90), Swedish conscripts had an
average above 110, with similar (but less easy to quantify in numbers) differences in physique.
And the same has been true for nearly all nations that have used
highly trained conscripts.
Because THAT is the difference.
Doesn´t matter how they were recruited, if you start with mentally and physically better people, and then have them go through 8-14 months of intensive training, with at least 3-4 good field exercises, often several more, you´re going to have a much better force than if you start with clearly less able recruits, who then spend some months on much less serious training, with additional low intensity training occasionally over the following years.
There´s a world of a difference compared to the bad old Soviet conscript style, which at it´s worst point was barely a couple of months of halfassed training and then just spending the rest of 2 years taking orders, and if really lucky, getting maybe one or two halfdecent field exercises in during that time.
