How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

31 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

Attempt to change direction of thread..

Way back we discussed the striking difference between amounts of Russian soldiers coming from big cities (almost none) and those from rural area's (loads).

And I stumbled on this surprising video from a guy who checked out British Army demographics and recruitment-issues.

Do not be fooled by the title of his video, this is not a crazy rightwing nutcase or woke-hating dumbass.

His research and investigation are quite factual as far as I can see, and the title of his video is based on the fact that the UK government and Army for years and years tried to make the Army as inclusive as possible by making it easier for women, LBTH, minorities etc, ("Woke influence") to join up, but he discovered that it did NOT work out as planned. And partially because of that, the British army has huge problems with getting enough recruits/volunteers.

My understanding is that this problem is also playing up in the Netherlands, and I suspect in more West-European countries. (No idea if it is a problem in the USA). It has a possible profound effect on the near-future strenght of (some) Nato-countries. Which connects this issue directly to the Ukraine-Russo war, because of escalatory possibilities.

If you do think his conclusions are unjust or too far fetched, please let me know.

I sampled it.  I think it's the usual uninformed political bias that is there to get clicks.

There's a huge number of very complex reasons why recruitment in the military is down across all democracies, and being "woke" is most likely not one of them.  The biggest problem is that there's a general labor shortage across the board.  Try getting an electrician or a truck mechanic or a roofer.  Can I not get someone to build my porch because of "wokeness"?  No.  The US is short 80,000 long haul truckers.  Is this because there are gender neutral restrooms at truck stops?  How about the pilots who can earn $400k a year who are in short supply?  Transgender flight attendants?  These are jobs that tend to appeal to the same socioeconomic demographic that the military recruits from.

I could go on and on, but I'm giving this BS more time than it deserves already.

As for the US, there definitely is a shortage of recruits.  This has been going on for some time now, even before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan put a strain on recruitment.  The number one reason I see cited is because people can make more money, safer, and with less constraints on their life elsewhere.  This means the military is now appealing to people who want it for a career rather than a way to pay for college (the huge incentive to get people to sign up).

Steve

[JonS]

55 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

based on the fact

No, I was responding to your interpretation of it by noting that the British Army has *always* appealed to "minorities" in order to support recruiting efforts.

Edited January 25 by JonS

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

There's a huge number of very complex reasons why recruitment in the military is down across all democracies, and being "woke" is most likely not one of them.

I think most people have no idea just how bad things are.  If “woke” means “accessing as much of a nations human capital as one can” well then I guess we are all jumping on that social justice train.

As you note demographics are but one reason modern militaries in the west are straining to keep up.  Being largely orientated towards “one model recruit type” is not helping.  One driver is to look more representative of the society paying for the whole thing.  But the larger driver is looking more representative so that a broader demographic set will actually join up.  In Canada we are running out of males of European descent.  So we get with the program or continue to suffer.

To my eyes “woke” has been so over used that I am not sure people pointing at it even know what it really means anymore.

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

I think most people have no idea just how bad things are.  If “woke” means “accessing as much of a nations human capital as one can” well then I guess we are all jumping on that social justice train.

As you note demographics are but one reason modern militaries in the west are straining to keep up.  Being largely orientated towards “one model recruit type” is not helping.  One driver is to look more representative of the society paying for the whole thing.  But the larger driver is looking more representative so that a broader demographic set will actually join up.  In Canada we are running out of males of European descent.  So we get with the program or continue to suffer.

To my eyes “woke” has been so over used that I am not sure people pointing at it even know what it really means anymore.

This. 

I've spent time with someone who was responsible for recruitment for an entire service and 'wokeness' wasn't even on the radar. His take was the problem was remuneration, demographics and also a military culture that wasn't well oriented towards recruiting towards the needs of a more digital warfare. 

[Seedorf81]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I sampled it.  I think it's the usual uninformed political bias that is there to get clicks.

There's a huge number of very complex reasons why recruitment in the military is down across all democracies, and being "woke" is most likely not one of them.  The biggest problem is that there's a general labor shortage across the board.  Try getting an electrician or a truck mechanic or a roofer.  Can I not get someone to build my porch because of "wokeness"?  No.  The US is short 80,000 long haul truckers.  Is this because there are gender neutral restrooms at truck stops?  How about the pilots who can earn $400k a year who are in short supply?  Transgender flight attendants?

I could go on and on, but I'm giving this BS more time than it deserves already.

As for the US, there definitely is a shortage of recruits.  This has been going on for some time now, even before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan put a strain on recruitment.  The number one reason I see cited is because people can make more money, safer, and with less constraints on their life elsewhere.  This means the military is now appealing to people who want it for a career rather than a way to pay for college (the huge incentive to get people to sign up).

Steve

Well, I think he is less biased than the title implies, he says himself (9 minutes in video) that the recruitmenttroubles cannot be explained by woke-issues alone.

He mentions:

 - changing motives from the new generations,

- the effects from social media and internet,

- income,

- the fact that young people want fun, succes and more pleasant things than being in the Army,

- the fact that people aren't driven to join the army through poverty anymore,

- the "lessening "of patriotism, of being proud of your country,

- the difference between rural and urban numbers,

- the difference in recruitment numbers between England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

-  that Poland ("Not so woke") and Japan have the same recruitment problems, 

and more.

So he concludes himself that wokeism isn't the main problem. He says that he current recruitment is a problem, and a serious one.

Like I said, I agree on that point and I see that it is happening in the Netherlands, too. Young people just don't wanna join the Army as young people did decades ago. (I can't blame 'm, btw.)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 25 by Seedorf81

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

As for the US, there definitely is a shortage of recruits.  This has been going on for some time now, even before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan put a strain on recruitment.  The number one reason I see cited is because people can make more money, safer, and with less constraints on their life elsewhere.  This means the military is now appealing to people who want it for a career rather than a way to pay for college (the huge incentive to get people to sign up).

To follow up.  I also do not think most people realize just how weird this moment in history has become from a military power standpoint.  The Cold War came off the back of WW2 and was actually an exercise in downsizing to fit the requirements of the intense strategic competition between the two global power poles.  Defence and Security architectures were largely scaled down from their WW2 architectures to fit the Cold War environment.  The competition then became sustaining competitive advantage in that context, along with negotiations with an evolving social calculus that occurred rather slowly (eg civil and gender equity).

We then won the Cold War and re-scaled again.  We first created military power to intervene in sustaining the global order. And then after 9/11 built the architectures aimed narrowly at a problematic niche.  Social evolution continued but began to accelerate as the Information Age emerged and began to deepen.

And then in just a few short years - let’s take 2010 for arguments sake and say 14 years - we saw the re-emergence of a Cold War-looking strategic competition, a hyper acceleration of the Information to whatever the hell this thing is now and, the largest pandemic in over a century.  This has driven social change pressures to crazy levels - like “let’s storm capital hill/defund cops/cancel-mob rule” levels.

And suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, we are seriously talking about military requirements we have not seen in over 35 years. NATO has just run the largest exercise since the Cold War and we likely had to build things we forgot entirely how to do.  HQs and staffs, force generation, and military capability have all changed dramatically but we are still looking at a massive upscaling requirement to align with strategic realities.  Don’t even get me started on intelligence and security architectures, which have been entirely focused on hunting terrorists and now are being asked to consider under the threshold strategic disruption against other states - those are enterprises that take decades to get right.

We may look “ok” but we are not “ok”.  We have a very significant expansion in front of us in order to 1) create deterrence,  2) contain expansion of influence, and 3) create new strategic options…on top of an already stressed out social situation - f#cking “woke” is the least of our problems.  Rebuilding entire defence and security strategic power structures to be able to do what we found challenging over 30 years ago while the fabric of warfare appears to be rippling under our feet; while our domestic populations appear really intent on losing their f#cking minds in about 30 different directions at once…is our new Tuesday.

At this point senior military staff don’t care if someone is gender-fluid, multi-racial and bestiality adjacent - if they can fill a chair better than the forest of traffic cones that we currently have…welcome aboard!

(did that video get all that?)

[Seedorf81]

27 minutes ago, JonS said:

No, I was responding to your interpretation of it by noting that the British Army has *always* appealed to "minorities" in order to support recruiting efforts.

Thanks for your honesty.

I understand that there may be some difference in the interpretation of what "woke" is. I for one do not have a clue where something is woke or not, but it seemed to me the guy in this video meant that (he says so in his conclusion) giving less qualified (in physical and mental, motivational and intellectuel and yes, also gender-related area's) people more chances than better qualified persons, is "woke". And does not seem to work in the long run.

A friend of mine followed a one and a have year long computer/office-training programme. At the end of that course a job at a municipality department was available, and from the thirty graduates about ten or twelve of them wanted that job.

They gave the job to the least capable person, because they wanted a woman with an "emigrational background". That didn't make the other applicants very happy. I found out that she had scored by far the lowest on all tests/exams from all students (I never told my friend about that), and for some years I had to have an occasional business-like contact with that women and really, she was incompetent. Not only because she didn't understand relevant parts of the Dutch language, but she was unneccessary rude, and didn't really knew how to use the computersoftware.

I never understood why they gave her that job, and not to one of the (much) more qualified applicants. It was, like a said, municipal job, so except for annoying people and slowing down things, no harm was done. But I think that in an Army it is vital to choose people that are the most capable if available.

I think that has more to do with common sense than with being woke or racist or mysogynistic or intolerant.

 

[JonS]

Yeah, but that depends on how you measure capability.

If the only thing you care about - the only thing you measure - is the ability to lift heavy things and carry them a long way uphill in the rain, then cool; you and all your muscle-bound mates do you. And you'll have a world class heavy lift capability.

But if you want to, you know, talk to people, or engage with the whole population (rather than just the 50% who can sport a good hipster beard), or fly a drone competently from the other side of the world, or make sense of a social influence network, then you're probably not going to get there with 18inch biceps. You might instead need to "woke up."

Or maybe would that be too commonsensical.

Edited January 25 by JonS

[dan/california]

I don't think this has been posted yet. Let Ukraine fight Russia with Russia's money is the obvious plan B if Congress can't get it together. There might be a small plus in that Ukraine might be able to somewhat rationalize their equipment if they are paying cash.

If it comes through step one ought to be a truly massive order for the drones parts and EW components Ukraine can't set up to make itself. A cash order for a couple of million shells might get Rheinmetal and BAE to actually crank up shell production, too.

[Kinophile]

5 hours ago, Vacillator said:

Exchange?

Circle-jerk, more like...

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

Well, I think he is less biased than the title implies, he says himself (9 minutes in video) that the recruitmenttroubles cannot be explained by woke-issues alone.

He mentions:

 - changing motives from the new generations,

- the effects from social media and internet,

- income,

- the fact that young people want fun, succes and more pleasant things than being in the Army,

- the fact that people aren't driven to join the army through poverty anymore,

- the "lessening "of patriotism, of being proud of your country,

- the difference between rural and urban numbers,

- the difference in recruitment numbers between England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

-  that Poland ("Not so woke") and Japan have the same recruitment problems, 

and more.

So he concludes himself that wokeism isn't the main problem. He says that he current recruitment is a problem, and a serious one.

Like I said, I agree on that point and I see that it is happening in the Netherlands, too. Young people just don't wanna join the Army as young people did decades ago. (I can't blame 'm, btw.)

 

 

 

 

 

And yet, the title is "Wokeism is DESTROYING The British Army".  How do you square that and his conclusion that the British Army should get rid of every single thing it is trying to do to make recruitment as broad as possible?

He's also using statistics to try and prove that diversification efforts don't work.  As with most people who are pushing an agenda, in my sampling of the video I didn't once see him say what the British Army would be like if NONE of those things were in place.  And yet, he confidently concludes all those efforts should be ended, implement a pure merit based approach, and the British Army will once again be great.  Ignoring the possibility that new way was tried only after the old way didn't work.

This is an agenda driven video designed to get clicks.  There's better discussion about the issue in a couple of posts here than that video.

Steve

[Kinophile]

17 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And yet, the title is "Wokeism is DESTROYING The British Army".  How do you square that and his conclusion that the British Army should get rid of every single thing it is trying to do to make recruitment as broad as possible?

He's also using statistics to try and prove that diversification efforts don't work.  As with most people who are pushing an agenda, in my sampling of the video I didn't once see him say what the British Army would be like if NONE of those things were in place.  And yet, he confidently concludes all those efforts should be ended, implement a pure merit based approach, and the British Army will once again be great.  Ignoring the possibility that new way was tried only after the old way didn't work.

This is an agenda driven video designed to get clicks.  There's better discussion about the issue in a couple of posts here than that video.

Steve

His stupid expression as the video featured image is the not-so-subtle indicator of pure tripeness.

[kimbosbread]

I have heard the woke-ism is destroying the US army trope, and while there is some truth to it (lots of conservative white guys in fighting units, lots of senior officers just tired of politics), the bigger problems are that we have had 20 years of pointless wars fighting sand people (not a worthy opponent), and the modern youth are fatter, druggier and less mobikalizeable than before. China has the other side of the coin- spoiled single boys, and families where there is a single grandchild. Not exactly great to get that kid’s face blown off by a drone.

This is the biggest upside to Replicator and the whole drone-ize everything in my mind. The recruiting problem isn’t a problem if we (or the enemy) don’t need as many people, and we can scale training and learning as fast as we can scale our datacenters. Obviously that’s a bit sci-fi, but for some of our problems we may need sci-fi solutions.

[sburke]

23 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

I have heard the woke-ism is destroying the US army trope, and while there is some truth to it (lots of conservative white guys in fighting units, lots of senior officers just tired of politics), the bigger problems are that we have had 20 years of pointless wars fighting sand people (not a worthy opponent), and the modern youth are fatter, druggier

druggier?  Umm I'm throwing the challenge flag on that one.    I think the mid/late 70s have this generation beat on the druggie thing ESPECIALLY in regards to the military.

Funny thing, having integrated army units was once the "woke" thing.  Other than a few NAZI types running around I doubt anyone gives a second thought to integrated units anymore.

 

I'll admit to being confused sometimes by this generations challenges to orthodoxy but given what I've seen in my lifetime I take it for granted that my not understanding stuff has zero value on its importance to someone else so I mostly keep my trap shut and nod benignly as my neighbors kid goes on a rant and I understand only maybe half of it.  Just so long as their friends stay off my lawn.

[Aragorn2002]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

To follow up.  I also do not think most people realize just how weird this moment in history has become from a military power standpoint.  The Cold War came off the back of WW2 and was actually an exercise in downsizing to fit the requirements of the intense strategic competition between the two global power poles.  Defence and Security architectures were largely scaled down from their WW2 architectures to fit the Cold War environment.  The competition then became sustaining competitive advantage in that context, along with negotiations with an evolving social calculus that occurred rather slowly (eg civil and gender equity).

We then won the Cold War and re-scaled again.  We first created military power to intervene in sustaining the global order. And then after 9/11 built the architectures aimed narrowly at a problematic niche.  Social evolution continued but began to accelerate as the Information Age emerged and began to deepen.

And then in just a few short years - let’s take 2010 for arguments sake and say 14 years - we saw the re-emergence of a Cold War-looking strategic competition, a hyper acceleration of the Information to whatever the hell this thing is now and, the largest pandemic in over a century.  This has driven social change pressures to crazy levels - like “let’s storm capital hill/defund cops/cancel-mob rule” levels.

And suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, we are seriously talking about military requirements we have not seen in over 35 years. NATO has just run the largest exercise since the Cold War and we likely had to build things we forgot entirely how to do.  HQs and staffs, force generation, and military capability have all changed dramatically but we are still looking at a massive upscaling requirement to align with strategic realities.  Don’t even get me started on intelligence and security architectures, which have been entirely focused on hunting terrorists and now are being asked to consider under the threshold strategic disruption against other states - those are enterprises that take decades to get right.

We may look “ok” but we are not “ok”.  We have a very significant expansion in front of us in order to 1) create deterrence,  2) contain expansion of influence, and 3) create new strategic options…on top of an already stressed out social situation - f#cking “woke” is the least of our problems.  Rebuilding entire defence and security strategic power structures to be able to do what we found challenging over 30 years ago while the fabric of warfare appears to be rippling under our feet; while our domestic populations appear really intent on losing their f#cking minds in about 30 different directions at once…is our new Tuesday.

At this point senior military staff don’t care if someone is gender-fluid, multi-racial and bestiality adjacent - if they can fill a chair better than the forest of traffic cones that we currently have…welcome aboard!

(did that video get all that?)

Well said!

[Sojourner]

"Wokeism is DESTROYING The British Army".  ???

A bit suspect, I think

 

[Offshoot]

8 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

If you do think his conclusions are unjust or too far fetched, please let me know.

After the Cold War was won, the UK had decades of downsizing their armed forces (A brief look at the British Defence Budget in the 1990s). According to that article the number of personnel in 1990 was 306,000. So by 2000 (according to the chart shown in the video), they had lost (cut) 200,000 or close to two-thirds and woke hadn't even been invented yet. That aside, he slaps "woke" on some memes but doesn't provide any real evidence for it's effect on recruitment, just some quotes from some nobs in the Torygraph and some broad assumptions.

But here are some numbers:

-as at October 2018, people from ethnic minorities (not including White minorities) made up 2.5% of officers in the UK regular armed forces, compared with 2.4% in April 2012

-for ranks below officer, 8.8% of all armed forces personnel were from ethnic minorities, compared with 7.9% in April 2012 ( https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/workforce-and-business/workforce-diversity/armed-forces-workforce/latest/ )

-that number has gone up to 10.1% as of April 2023 (compared to an estimated 16.1% of the total UK population). ( https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7930/ )

The disparity between the proportions for officers and non-officers shows me that the British armed forces really need to up their wokeness game.

And yeah, people should stop using the word woke if they don't know what it actually means.

 

Edited January 25 by Offshoot

[paxromana]

"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannise their teachers."
-Socrates

“They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
- Aristotle

I was a High School Teacher for 40 years and my colleagues would occasionally come up with comments about how standards of behaviour/study/anything at all had changed dramatically for the worse ... nope. Not in my experience. And, as you can see, this sort of complaint has, shall we say, a long grey beard and should be put down with extreme prejudice.

YMMV

[Eddy]

Perun did a recent video on recruitment which is a perhaps more detailed look at manpower recruitment 

Here is the first part of a summary 

Quote

In the YouTube video "How Demography Destroys (or Builds) Armies - Recruitment, Retention and Manpower," the speaker discusses the global challenge of finding and retaining personnel for militaries, with a focus on demographic factors, historic examples, and potential solutions. The speaker emphasizes that military organizations around the world are facing recruitment challenges due to aging populations, low birth rates, and social and economic factors. Historical examples, like the Spartans and the Swedish allotment system, illustrate the importance of sustainable recruitment strategies. Modern militaries, such as the US, UK, Japan, and South Korea, also face demographic struggles, with some facing a significant manpower deficit in the coming decades. The speaker proposes solutions, including improved recruitment practices, use of foreign manpower, and technology to address these challenges. The discussion also covers the significance of eligibility and willingness to serve, as well as the impact of societal perception, competition from the civilian job market, and geography on military recruitment. Throughout the video, the speaker highlights the importance of investigating various drivers and limitations of military manpower to build effective military forces

Summary is generated using this site => summarize.tech: AI-powered video summaries 

Just pop in the YouTube URL and a few seconds later a summary is generated. Saves a lot of time working out whether something is worth watching or not. Or just getting the gist of a video.

Edited for inclusion!

Edited January 25 by Eddy

[Holien]

16 minutes ago, Eddy said:

Just pop in the YouTube URL and a few seconds later a summary is generated. Saves a lot of time working out whether something is worth watching or not. Or just getting the gist of a video.

Sweet....

Thanks now I get to use AI...

Ohh to be a graduate again.... 

 

[akd]

11 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

I for one do not have a clue where something is woke or not

I assure you that anyone employing the word “woke” in any serious context also has no idea.

[Carolus]

Girkin got 4 years in the slammer.

With the recruitment of prisoners, will he finally get his command over a Shtrafbat unit?

Edited January 25 by Carolus

[zinz]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-25/hungary-reverses-opposition-on-new-eu-weapons-fund-for-ukraine

More steady aid for Ukraine. It's getting likelier 

[Bearstronaut]

In regards to the US military's recruitment woes there is a major issue that people are overlooking. When I joined up in 2010 the DoD didn't pull your entire medical record at MEPS. If you had been prescribed ADHD medication or antidepressants in high school your recruiter would straight up tell you to lie to the MEPS doctors. If the MEPS doctors couldn't find something wrong with you during your examination at the facility that day they cleared you. Now, they pull your entire medical record so if your parents got a pediatrician to prescribe you meds when you were 14 and had no idea that you were going to try and join the Marines when you turned 20 then you are SOL.

[billbindc]

8 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

I have heard the woke-ism is destroying the US army trope, and while there is some truth to it (lots of conservative white guys in fighting units, lots of senior officers just tired of politics), the bigger problems are that we have had 20 years of pointless wars fighting sand people (not a worthy opponent), and the modern youth are fatter, druggier and less mobikalizeable than before. China has the other side of the coin- spoiled single boys, and families where there is a single grandchild. Not exactly great to get that kid’s face blown off by a drone.

This is the biggest upside to Replicator and the whole drone-ize everything in my mind. The recruiting problem isn’t a problem if we (or the enemy) don’t need as many people, and we can scale training and learning as fast as we can scale our datacenters. Obviously that’s a bit sci-fi, but for some of our problems we may need sci-fi solutions.

Way less druggie, actually: 

https://monitoringthefuture.org/data/bx-by/drug-prevalence/#drug="Alcohol"