A retired senior Army officer has suggested that young people in the UK who are not in work or education should be given the option of undertaking military service, amid renewed debate over manpower pressures and national resilience.
Major General Tim Cross said there is a need to expand opportunities for service within the Armed Forces, adding to a growing discussion about whether the UK should introduce a national service-style programme.
Maj. Gen Cross told Times Radio: “I understand there are something like 800,000 youngsters between the ages of about 18 and 25 who are not in work, not in training, not in education.
“We are short of soldiers, sailors and airmen. What are we doing paying these youngsters welfare money when we could be saying to them: ‘You’re going to join the military’?”
He said that the armed forces would have difficulties recruiting vast numbers. He added, “We can do something, and we can begin that process.”
He stressed that he was not calling for compulsory conscription, but rather for a structured pathway to participation in military life.
The comments come against a backdrop of wider European reassessment of military recruitment models. Several countries, including Germany and France, have recently expanded or revisited forms of national service or reserve-based schemes as part of broader efforts to strengthen defence readiness.
In the UK, the Ministry of Defence has already introduced a voluntary “gap year” style initiative aimed at under-25s, offering exposure to military training and service experience as a potential recruitment pipeline for the professional Armed Forces.
The debate is unfolding alongside official figures showing that between October and December 2025, approximately 957,000 people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in employment, education or training. Advocates of expanded service programmes argue that such cohorts could be engaged through structured national service opportunities that combine training, discipline, and skills development.
He told Times Radio that the government is “probably going to have to pay more for defence and other things are going to have to suffer,” Maj. Gen Cross added: “Every other generation has had to do it.”
However, the UK Government has repeatedly stated that there are no plans to reintroduce conscription, maintaining that its defence model remains centred on a fully professional volunteer military rather than compulsory service.
Defence analysts note that while manpower challenges are a recurring theme across NATO countries, any move towards mandatory service in the UK would require significant political consensus and structural reform, and remains unlikely in the near term.
As a result, Britain is reviving Cold War-era contingency planning to prepare the country for a major conflict, as senior military figures warn that the risk environment facing the UK has hardened significantly in recent years.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, Chief of the Air Staff, said the Government was revisiting historic civil defence-style frameworks designed to ensure the state could function in the event of war, including coordinating military, police, health services, and critical industries.
“I think that’s right,” Sir Richard said when asked about the renewed focus on national-level preparedness, adding that modern resilience planning must take account of “a different threat environment” than during the Cold War.
The work, led by the Cabinet Office, is understood to involve updating elements of the historic “war book” planning, once used to guide the mobilisation of government and essential services during crises. Officials are said to be examining how such systems could be adapted for modern infrastructure, digital networks and supply chains.
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