The Swedish government has decided to re-activate conscription from January 1st 2018.

The Swedish armed forces is planning for 4000 recruits annually in basic military training in 2018 and 2019.

According to the Swedish government:

“The security environment in Europe and in Sweden’s vicinity has deteriorated and the all-volunteer recruitment hasn’t provided the Armed Forces with enough trained personnel. The re-activating of the conscription is needed for military readiness.

Trained personnel are fundamental for building military capability. In 2016 the Armed Forces lacked 1 000 active squad leaders, soldiers and sailors as well as 7 000 reservists.

Recruitment to the Armed Forces will be both voluntary and conscription. Individual motivation, interest and will should to be considered as much as possible.”

The conscription is understood to be gender neutral and will include both women and men.

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

4 COMMENTS

  1. I’m very interested to see how this goes, and whether it works well enough to be of some interest to other European states.

    • bringing it back in the u.k would take some of the hoodies off the streets, it would certainly help with the navy manpower shortages

  2. It will not work out well, simply because the re-activation of the conscription system (on a low scale) is under-funded. It will be costly and therefore ironically decrease the readiness and strength the existing forces I am afraid

    It is not a step to activate the conscription on a larger scale, so only a few will be forced into military service, wich is slightly odd IMO.

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