Military Announces Action Plan To Address Shrinking Personnel

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan's defense ministry has announced plans to tackle the military's growing personnel crisis. In addition to the number of officers leaving their service prematurely, the armed forces are also struggling to attract new recruits.

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00:00Taiwan's defense ministry has announced an action plan to tackle the country's military

00:05personnel crisis.

00:07Recent reports show a steep increase in the number of officers choosing to leave service

00:11early, quadrupling in the last four years from around 400 in 2020 to almost 1,600 last

00:19year.

00:20And that's not all.

00:21The total number of volunteers and military personnel, currently around 166,000, has also

00:26dropped over three percent in the last year alone, a trend that looks set to continue.

00:32The defense ministry is saying that there's more competition for young talent these days

00:36and people are generally just less interested in military careers, and have outlined an

00:41action plan.

00:42They want to reduce the number of people leaving military service, increase retainment figures

00:47— meaning keeping more personnel on for longer — and improving recruitment efforts.

00:53I spoke to a security analyst earlier about what he thinks Taiwan might do to try and

00:58address these retainment and recruitment issues.

01:23How do recruitment issues actually impact Taiwan's military?

01:43Of course, the dangers of having an understaffed military are obvious.

02:05Taiwan is still waiting on huge orders of military equipment from the U.S., but without

02:09the muscle to operate that equipment, Taiwan will be left vulnerable.

02:14The country's firepower and ability to defend itself naturally impacted.

02:18Ryan Wu, Scott Huang and Rhys Ayres in Taipei for Taiwan Plus.

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