Comment, analysis, news

Your country needs your children – MoD targets teens to fix recruitment crisis

Amid ongoing controversy around the MoD’s struggling recruitment campaigns for the armed forces, figures published this week reveal that the Army has resorted to increasing numbers of 16-year-olds in an attempt to fix the recruitment shortfall.

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UK under fire for recruiting an ‘army of children’

MoD finds itself in the company of countries such as North Korea over use of teenage soldiers

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Questioning military academies and free schools

This article explains what we mean by  'military academies' and 'military free schools', and explores the concerns that they raise: the lack of evidence that they will raise attainment; that they can employ unqualified teachers; their limited accountability to the local community; the fact that they can set their own curriculum. Crucially, there are various agendas behind military academies and free schools, including providing employment for the growing number of veterans, and encouraging pupils to join the armed forces after they leave school. There is also unease about what military-style discipline would look like in a school environment.

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Drone Wars: Pilots reveal debilitating stress beyond virtual battlefield

"To extinguish a person's life is a very personal thing. While physically we don't experience the five senses when we engage a target — unlike [how] an infantryman might — in my experience, the emotional impact on the operator is equal."

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Arms and the Woman: Militarizing Gender Wars

You know the British Army is experiencing a crisis in recruitment when they start to make noises about ending the ban on women in combat roles.

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Take arms firms out of the Big Bang Fair

Letter signed by over 100, including ForcesWatch

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Defence Committee report challenges the MoD (again) to produce a ‘robust and thorough’ review of under 18 recruitment

The Defence Select Committee have today released their report of inquiry into the MoD's Future Army 2020 plan. Amid the concerns about the strategy of increasing the proportion of reservists in relation to regular forces, the report calls on the MoD “to respond in detail to the argument that the Army could phase out the recruitment of minors without detriment to the Army 2020 plans”. Read our submission to the inquiry here.

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FUTURE ARMY 2020: Defence Committee increases pressure to MoD to raise enlistment age to 18

The Defence Select Committee has increased the pressure on the MoD to stop enlisting minors, in a report published today.

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Disaster militarism

The country’s military institutions must not be seen as deserving of special consideration. Once the ethos of public service has been smashed and discredited by neoliberal restructuring, the danger is that it will take more than an army to bring it back. By Vron Ware.

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Gove’s Troops To Teachers ‘A Costly Flop’

Michael Gove's scheme to train ex-squaddies as teachers was labelled an "expensive flop" yesterday after it was revealed the Tory Education Secretary mustered just 132 recruits.

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