Italy is today facing a strategic paradox. The Italian Armed Forces suffer from a shortage of manpower that is not episodic, but structural: there is a lack of sailors to guarantee rotation on ships, technicians to keep drones and aircraft operational, and young soldiers to feed infantry, artillery and genius divisions.

It is in this context that a debate that seemed archived is back in the news: conscription; or rather, its more realistic and sustainable version for a country like Italy: voluntary military conscription. It is not a question of turning back the clock, nor of recreating a twentieth-century model. The point is not to oblige all young people, but to offer an educational and paid path to those who want to serve the country, while filling dramatic personnel gaps.

Voluntary conscription meets three simultaneous needs:

• rebuild the critical mass of personnel, without which no technology can work;
• offer professional and technical opportunities to young people
• create a mobilisable reserve, indispensable in a more unstable Europe .

Voluntary conscription is not a return to the past, but an attempt to face a future in which security is no longer guaranteed, and in which the price of inaction could be much higher than the cost of a year’s service.

Due clarification on conscription in Italy: not abolished, but suspended

In Italy, conscription has never been abolished: it was only suspended by Law 226/2004, which came into force in 2005. This means that compulsory military service still exists in the legal system and could be reactivated with a simple government decree, without the need for new laws. This is a detail often ignored in the public debate, but it is fundamental: Italy should not ‘reintroduce’ conscription, but decide whether to reactivate an existing obligation or transform it into a modern, voluntary form

Navy: 35,000 needed, 6,000-7,000 missing

The Italian Navy is perhaps the most pressurised armed force.
With around 50 main ships (including FREMMs, PPAs, submarines, patrol vessels, logistic and amphibious units), Italy theoretically has one of the most modern fleets in the Mediterranean.

The problem is that he cannot put them all in the sea at once.

A minimum of 35,000 sailors would be needed to ensure a minimum rotation of one crew on board and one ashore during training and recovery.

Today we have about 29,000.

6,000 to 7,000 men are missing, and this has very serious social and operational consequences:

• gruelling shifts;
• personal and family life almost impossible;
• difficulty in guaranteeing minimum rest periods;
• maintenance delays;
• impossibility of maintaining the level of presence required by NATO in the enlarged Mediterranean.

In summary: Italy has very modern ships, but not enough manpower for personnel shifts

Air Force: looking for specialists

The Air Force is experiencing a similar problem, aggravated by the fact that:

• F-35s require more qualified and numerous personnel;
• NATO airspace commitment grows;
• maintenance technicians, radar operators, cyber and drone operators are needed.

The most realistic estimates speak of the need for at least 3,000 to 5,000 new personnel in the coming years, mainly technicians and specialists.
Without these numbers, the Air Force risks having aircraft in hangars that cannot fly due to a shortage of personnel, as has happened in the past.

The air force and navy, however, suffer less from the problem of a shortage of troops as it is more congenial to have a large number of non-commissioned officers and officers in their ranks.

Army: 15,000-20,000 young people missing to reach minimum operational strength

The Army is the most numerous Armed Force, but also the one that has suffered the most reductions over the past two decades.
On paper it numbers around 96,000, but:

• only 55-60,000 are fully operationally deployable;
• the force required to guarantee training, shifts and employment would be at least 15,000-20,000 more young people.
• The average age of army operatives is in the 40s.

This explains why Defence is evaluating:

• increased recruitment;
• expansion of the operational reserve;
• return of a form of compulsory or selective service.

The Army simply does not have enough young people.

Because there is no defence made only of engineers: without infantry, artillery and men on the ground there is no deterrence

In recent years, a convenient, almost consolatory narrative has spread:
“the wars of the future will be waged by satellites, drones, engineers”.

It is a fascinating, neat, technological idea. And, unfortunately, profoundly false.

Past and very recent history shows that all modern wars, even the most technological ones, are won or lost on the ground.
Not in command centres, not in algorithms, not in the orbits of satellites.

Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria: everywhere, the decisive factor is always the same: the physical presence of units of infantry, artillery, genius, exploration, capabilities that no artificial intelligence can replace.

It is not true that ’10 engineers are enough and you don’t need 100 Alpine soldiers’.

This popular phrase on talk shows reflects a profound misunderstanding of modern warfare.
Drones observe, satellites detect, algorithms process.
But who occupies a bridge?
Who defends a village?
Who cleans a trench?
Not engineers: alpine soldiers, paratroopers, riflemen, artillerymen, scouts, engineers.

Technologies increase capabilities, but do not replace the critical human mass needed for:

• support a front hundreds of kilometres long,
• rotate departments under stress,
• occupy the land and maintain it,
• moving materials and logistics,
• operate in situations where human error costs lives.

The temptation of an ‘Italian foreign legion’

This is where the most controversial issue comes in, the one that some people privately evoke but politicians fear:
why not recruit foreigners, as France does?

The answer is simple: in Italy you cannot. It is illegal.

Italian law stipulates that to enlist in the Armed Forces one must be an Italian citizen.

An ‘Italian Foreign Legion’ would be needed:

1. change the law, allowing non-citizens to enlist;
2. defining legal status, pathways to citizenship and rules of engagement;
3. overcome enormous cultural and political resistance.

The issue, therefore, is not just military but identity.

What is the Selected Reserve (RISEL)

A so-called reserve already exists in Italy, the Selected Reserve is in fact a pool of civilian professionals who can be temporarily recalled to the Armed Forces when technical or specialised skills are needed that are not permanently present in the departments.

It is provided for in the Code of Military Order and has a few hundred people, so we could see it more as a reserve of brains than of bayonets.

The cost of inaction: because the choice on leverage is a strategic decision and must be made.

The proposal put forward by Defence Minister Guido Crosetto to reopen a serious reflection on a form of military service, selective or voluntary, capable of strengthening the Armed Forces without slipping into twentieth-century nostalgia, fits into this framework.
This is not an ideological provocation, but an answer to a real problem: a tool to fill personnel gaps that today undermine the country’s military credibility and its ability to meet its NATO and EU commitments.

The debate, however, is often reduced to a sterile opposition between ‘individual freedom’ and the ‘militarisation of society’. This is a misleading simplification.

The real question is another: how much does it cost to do nothing?
The cost of inaction is not only economic, but strategic and political: fleets that remain in port, aircraft that do not take off, units that age, deterrence that thins out. In other words, sovereignty eroding.

A modern voluntary conscription would certainly have costs – training, salaries, infrastructure – but it would offer benefits that are difficult to replace: young personnel, a mobilisable reserve, widespread technical expertise, national cohesion, and greater deterrence to a possible enemy. It would also avoid far more controversial solutions, such as enlisting foreigners or outsourcing security.

The decision before the government is not about the past, but about the future of Italy as a strategic player.
Because a defence without men is not a technological defence: it is an apparent defence.
And in a world that is once again speaking the language of force, choosing not to choose and remaining in the limbo of recent years is already a choice and the most risky one of all. There is no more time today.