End of conscription and problems of manning: The case of Slovenian Armed Forces

Although the Slovenian army is only 17 years old, it is characterised by many changes that most other armies never go through or that would require many decades to implement. Some examples of the stormy history of the Slovenian Army include the transition from the territorial defence as typical reserve to a relatively small but highly effective (post)modern army with compulsory military service and clear defence goals; the NATO approach; constant restructuring, and also the manning dilemma (conscript military service vs. all-volunteer army with career and professional soldiers). If in the first phase the largest problem was a UN weapons embargo, and therefore, as a logical consequence, the technological deficiency had followed, structural and doctrinaire difficulties also appeared very early. Some of them were the consequence of changes in the external security environment, and some were followed by different internal political ambitions and public expectations. However, the classical/conventional tasks of home land defence stepped ever more into the background, and in the foreground stepped the peace operations, increasing crisis/disaster management activities and at the end the absolutely different public requirements for the Slovenian Armed Forces.