Indonesia’s proposed military conscription scheme raises concerns about its effectiveness and financial costs. With modern warfare increasingly shaped by technology rather than troop numbers, strengthening military professionalism and technological capabilities offers a more effective approach to national defence.
In early October 2026, on the 81st anniversary of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia/TNI), Said Abdullah, a member of the House of Representatives (DPR), floated a proposal for limited conscription of Indonesian citizens aged 18. He argued that defence threats are “growing more complex as asymmetric and hybrid warfare expands”, so the TNI cannot carry the burden of national defence alone and should be supported by conscripted civilians.
To be fair, the proposal makes clear that civilians would not replace the TNI in the country’s defence posture. Yet the idea, which broadly aims to enlarge the pool of personnel who could be mobilised in wartime, ignores how modern warfare has evolved and the pressure on the defence budget. It also rests on an outdated reading of Indonesia’s Total People’s Defence doctrine (Pertahanan Rakyat Semesta).
Quality, Not Quantity
Modern warfare shows that the winning side is often not the one with the most troops. In The Kill Chain (2020), Christian Brose argues that military advantage now depends on how quickly and accurately a defence system can understand a situation, make a decision, and act on it. In practice, modern wars are won by whoever can cripple an adversary’s vital networks quickly and precisely through cyberattacks, deploy swarms of drones, and strike targets with missiles from beyond visual range.
Take the 1990–91 Gulf War, in which a US-led international coalition destroyed Iraq’s armed forces. At the time, Iraq had the world’s fourth-largest military, with more than one million personnel, 5,500 tanks and over 700 military aircraft. Yet a coalition force with fewer troops defeated it, supported by GPS, long-range missile strikes, and well-organised, integrated communications.
A more recent example is the Russia–Ukraine war (2022–present). Although both sides have mobilised troops on a massive scale, the largest share of deaths has been caused by strikes from high-tech weapons such as drones, artillery rockets and missiles. Various sources suggest that direct firefights between soldiers account for less than 6 per cent of deaths on this battlefield, further evidence that technology, rather than sheer numbers, increasingly decides modern warfare, even if both sides still rely heavily on mass mobilisation.
Geography matters too. Indonesia is an archipelago surrounded by several large seas, and the biggest threats to its stability come from the sea, for instance, in the South China Sea. Stationing huge numbers of troops along the coast is hardly a strategic choice. It makes more sense to deploy detection and maritime strike capabilities, such as radars and anti-ship missiles, along Indonesia’s maritime borders so the country can detect potential threats from further away and be ready for an asymmetric conflict that could break out at any time.
This is where Samuel Huntington’s 1957 work on military professionalism becomes highly relevant. Military professionalism rests on expertise built through thorough education and training. As future threats increasingly depend on technological capacity, a conscription programme focused on discipline and moral character, as the proposal envisages, seems increasingly irrelevant. Operating radars, air defence systems, or cyber tools, all crucial in modern warfare, cannot be taught to teenagers quickly. It requires gradual, systematic training.
The High Cost of Conscription
The next problem is money. The Ministry of Defence received Rp187.1 trillion in 2026 and was allocated Rp189 trillion for 2027, an increase of only about Rp2 trillion. Indonesia’s defence spending hovers around 0.8 per cent of gross domestic product, and roughly half goes to routine costs such as salaries. At the same time, the government is setting up 750 territorial development battalions by 2029, which will clearly require enormous personnel-support costs.
If conscription were introduced, it would add another personnel-heavy expenditure to the defence budget, covering basics such as barracks, training, rations, uniforms, and insurance. Even a limited scheme would add to these costs. At the extreme, assume that all of the 18-year-old Indonesians were conscripted, it would mean paying for around 4.4 million people, which is more than ten times the TNI’s active strength.
Since the debate coincides with the TNI’s anniversary, it is worth recalling the armed forces’ own slogan, PRIMA—Professional, Responsive, Integrative, Modern and Adaptive. If the government is genuinely committed to it, it should make the TNI a truly modern and adaptive force by adapting to the realities of contemporary warfare, rather than introducing conscription.
Countries adopt conscription for one of two main reasons. The first is a small population, as in Singapore, Austria, and the Nordic countries, which makes it hard to recruit enough professional soldiers. The second is a real threat of conflict, as in South Korea, Ukraine and Russia. Indonesia falls into neither category. In 2025, TNI had more than,000 active personnel, plus nearly 50,000 reserve members serving under the Komponen Cadangan (Reserve Component) unit, which should be more than enough to defend a country whose potential threats remain ambiguous.
Rereading Total People’s Defence
The Total People’s Defence doctrine, formulated by General A.H. Nasution in 1953, grew out of guerrilla warfare, when the young republic had no modern weaponry. However, Article 30(2) of the 1945 Constitution explicitly names the TNI and the National Police (Polri) as the principal forces of national defence and security, underlining the role of a professional military, not conscripts, in defending the state.
Using Total People’s Defence to justify conscription, simply because it casts ‘the people as a supporting component of defence’, is an outdated reading. Rather than legitimising a personnel-heavy conscription scheme, the doctrine should be read more critically, as a call for comprehensive preparation for modern warfare. That means strengthening the defence industry, mastering information technology, and developing a semiconductor industry, a dual-use technology that can also be used in war.
As modern warfare grows ever more complex, the military needs to become more professional and more technologically capable, not less. Conscription is not only costly and ill-suited to modern war; it would also pull the armed forces further away from professionalism. Instead of focusing on their own training and preparing for a range of combat scenarios, soldiers would be ‘required’ to militarise civilian life to churn out new ‘soldiers’.
Alfin Febrian Basundoro is a junior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at Universitas Airlangga and Research Coordinator at the Center for National Defense and Security Studies, a Surabaya-based research community.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
Photo: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Marcus Beason via DVIDS (Public Domain)
