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The amendment will extend the liability for military service by 15 years for the rank and file and by five years for officers and non-commissioned officers. Now the upper age limit for reserve service is 50 for enlisted ranks and 60 for officers and non-commissioned officers.
In five years, Finland’s reserve force will number roughly one million.
That’s a lot for a 5.6 million pop.
Considering the eastern neighbour, we don’t really have much choice on the matter
Crazy how the rank and file have longer terms. 3x longer
Main threat just means the largest. By which calculation can Russia win a conventional war against Europe? The threat comes when China is involved.
It depends on how united NATO actually is with the growing amount of sovereign instability right now.
How strong is Europe alone, without the US?
@schizoidman
There is Finland, a country that was committed to neutrality since WWII. Then, in 2023, it joined Nato, and now this. I am wondering why this is?
Isn’t it obvious?
edit: damn, a troll just used the same line in a related matter. I am not a troll so I better explain:
Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This was perceived as a threat to Europe as a whole, and rightly so. There, that is why shortly thereafter Finland (and Sweden) joined NATO and has been ramping up its defenses. Not that they weren’t aware of the threat from the East before that.
Sometimes it’s hard to portray satire and sarcasm over the web. Just look at OP’s post history, their contributions have all the same anti-European, pro-China/pro-Russia spin.
My question was rhetorical, I apologize for the confusion ;-)
Neutrality was always a gamble that ‘they’ won’t go after you next. Alliances were always a gamble that you would be sucked in eventually anyway (or that by losing a major partner your life would be worse even if they don’t come)
sweden played neutrality after wwii but had private assurance from various nato powers that if anything happened they would be there, but neutrality was better for nato. (We fortunatly have no idea if those promises meant anything)
Finland’s “neutrality” was very different from Swedens.
To put it very shortly:
In the aftermath of World War II, following the formation of NATO in 1949 and throughout the Cold War, Finland maintained a position of neutrality, in what became known as Finlandization, in the face of its often complicated relations with the Soviet Union.
…
Foreign policy was guided by the Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine, which aimed to ensure Finland’s survival as an independent sovereign, democratic, and capitalist state next to the Communist Soviet Union. This was to be achieved by maintaining good enough relations with the Soviet Union to avoid war with its eastern neighbor. The Finnish government refused foreign aid from the United States under the Marshall Plan due to Soviet pressure.
And there was concrete reason for that, the SU had Finland by the balls, or at least by one ball, but I don’t remember right now why or how exactly that was.
Stupid decision. Even for high-rank officers. People older than 60 are completely useless in the army.
I don’t know about that.
You probably don’t want a near-retirement-age person hauling a rifle on the front lines, but something like 90% of a modern military doesn’t directly engage in combat. If you can drive a truck to keep the logistics chain moving or something…shrug
If you can drive a truck to keep the logistics chain moving or something…shrug
Most 60-year-olds cannot do that. Most of them are chronically ill. They need warmth and pills.
lol 60 year olds in Finland will friggin pass you twice on the sports track before you had even time to tell them they’re chronically ill.
There are countries where this is true. But AFAIK, not in (most?) European countries.
*wheezes in American
One of the national pastimes in Finland is running between a sauna and jumping in snow/an ice lake and back, those 60+ year old are fine especially when it comes to cold.
To form this opinion, I assume that you have worked closely with quite a few high-ranking military officers over the age of 60. Were they really that bad?
I have encountered Lembot_00?? accounts before, and they were all borderline trolls. This one is only 15 days old rn and exhibits the same tendencies. Frankly, I don’t believe them when they say they have actually worked in the army.
You assume correctly. In my country major is considered a… no idea how it is called in English. We called it “higher rank officers”. And yes, I worked to some extent with these people during the actual war when they had to do more than just breathe and wear a hat.
And Finland really needs an army, not a kindergarten of old farts. You can look at the map to see why.
I’m still not quite understanding what their age has to do with whatever the problem is. The routine makes them fat and lazy after enough years of their job being to “breathe and wear a hat”? Maybe that wouldn’t apply to reservists? Or maybe they don’t run things that way in Finland?
I’m still not quite understanding what their age has to do with whatever the problem is.
(shrug) Sorry, I can’t explain this. Some things are so obvious that they are very hard to formally explain.
In my experience, if you can’t explain a thing, it’s usually because you don’t understand it; that ability to explain is practically what it is to understand a thing (with notable exceptions for eg. language difficulties, or for simple hand-eye tasks, which this shrugging abdication(abnegation?) of explanation does not even pretend to try to meet).
Hi again lembot, could you do us a collective favor and just increment the count again with your next alt to save the modmail time?
Or better yet, cite some sources in your comments rather than airing mechanical exhaust in the chatroom?
What sources do you need to understand that “60 is old”?
You go to war with the army that you have, not the army that you want.
It is more complicated than that. At some situations a few old/fat/stupid/etc soldiers could decrease the overall effectiveness of the unit. In too many cases, no soldier at all is better than a very bad soldier.
Sure, I don’t disagree that a very bad soldier can make things worse than by not being there, and the factors you mentioned have a negative correlation with performance, but I don’t think you can automatically determine people will be that level of bad of soldiers based solely on those factors, particularly age.
Especially since people still work at that age, even in physically laborious jobs.
Armies also tend to have more support troops than combat arms anyway.
Winston Churchill was 64 when WWII started
