Units for making beds

The introduction of military service, according to "Serbs are happy to join the army", as announced by the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, will slowly make sense. Regardless of the cost - and it will initially cost 70 to 100 million euros, since the soldier needs to eat according to the prescribed "tables". To that should be added dormitories, heating, quartermaster services... Training soldiers is an expensive process, even if Serbia has barracks to receive them. And in those barracks they should have basic living conditions that do not exist now. It is clear that we are talking about cooks, boiler maintenance technicians, plumbers, and so on.

The author of this text talked to several people who once worked with ordinary classes of soldiers in the former JNA, from generals to sergeants. All of them believe that the initial price of 70 million euros is only the minimum and that the reintroduction of military service will cost much more.

"Just take the fuel for the trucks that will drive them to exercises, ordinary infantry. And where are the tankmen, air defense and others? Well, it's not a toy tank, it costs millions of euros, and you put it in the hands of an 18-year-old kid to operate it in three months," says one of the interlocutors.

Among the few who want to speak by first and last name is the retired ensign first class Goran Drobnjak. He trained generations of infantrymen and border guards, an average of three classes a year, and claims that only ten percent of young men would join the army with will and enthusiasm if a decree on compulsory military service would now be passed. Everyone else would consider service a compulsion and would be eager to get out of that obligation.

FATHERS AND SONS

Drobnjak and other interviewees of "Vremen" consider the words of the President of Serbia that those young people who will go to the army will learn what responsibility is and how to make beds to deceive the public.

"I forced my son to volunteer in the army so that he would understand what the country is and how to protect it, fight for it. It has nothing to do with making the bed that Vučić, Vulin and Stefanović are talking about. When you sleep in the Land Security Zone and experience an attack, no one asks you about the condition of the bed, that is, the sleeping bag you were in," a war veteran, a police colonel, told Vreme.

Ever since Vučić made public the idea that he would propose the introduction of mandatory military service for a duration of three months, in addition to the on-duty military-political analysts who spend the night at Pink and Hepi, it has also been supported by politicians, the first among them being Ivica Dačić. He informed the public that he is sending his son Luka to the army for voluntary service. Danilo Vučić has not yet made a statement about the eventual military service of his older son. Otherwise, when one looks at how many sons ministers, their assistants and state secretaries have, who themselves did not serve in the army (by force of law or voluntarily), one cannot help but wonder why the introduction of this obligation.

And what does 90 days of military service in the ordinary infantry mean? Not to mention other races, for example tank drivers. Someone with three months of training is not even qualified for basic duty in a tank, and especially not in some of the more subtle units.

"At three months, they can learn to cut the grass in the barracks, which professional soldiers refuse to do," explains one of the retired officers. "To be a tank driver, you used to need five months and 22 days of training, every day."

Infantry ensign Drobnjak explains that in three months a soldier can learn to master basic skills: "The mental and physical preparation of soldiers after joining the army lasted for three weeks, and then the first combat shooting, and only then the swearing-in and then further training by gender. It was five months and 22 days of training, of any kind – from infantry to artillery to tankmen and midshipmen. Then you get a complete soldier."

When asked what can be obtained in 90 days of training, Drobnjak answers: "Nothing, only a trained individual, who did not even go through the exercise "Department in attack".

IT'S ALL IN POLITICAL MARKETING

The retired colonel tells "Vreme" that company or battalion-level assault exercises were planned once a year because it required resources. With the camp, it was only about "roof training". And in 90 days of training, you simply cannot master all that knowledge, he stated. From his experience, retired ensign Drobnjak, who has nothing against the introduction of mandatory military service, believes that such an umbrella exercise could not be carried out in today's situation, and the question is whether there are officers and non-commissioned officers who could "take it to the with their backs", as far as they are trained.

"Today we have various courses for non-commissioned officers, which last - from one to the next - seven or eight years, and before that there was a secondary military school of the Land Army of the JNA and you received a complete senior officer and pedagogue 'on trial' who was able to enter the brain of his soldiers because he was their age at the start, at the beginning of his career", says Drobnjak. "Today it cannot be explained to anyone. A man goes to a six-month course and becomes a non-commissioned officer, and the only thing he learns is to yell at the army. And not on conscripts, but on professional soldiers".

A retired colonel, an infantryman, tells "Vreme" that all the stories about the introduction of military service are nonsense, because the first politicians in power will not send their sons there, except for marketing reasons. "Where have the sons been until now? Maybe they will open a unit in Belgrade where military service will be served just for such father's sons, so, like Aleksandar Vulin, he will be outside the barracks more than in it", says this interlocutor.

He mentions retired general Dragan Kolundžija as one of the positive examples: while he was the head of one of the most important administrations of the Serbian Armed Forces, his sons served their military service in Bela Palanka without any privileges, none of the officers knew that their father was a general.

Another interlocutor of "Vremen" from the army asks: "And who will train these people, do we have the staff for that?" Or those young men will come in handy to cut the grass around the barracks and military facilities. That is what is missing now".