Italy also plans to establish a state auxiliary military reserve, with specific specialties to increase the current armed forces by at least ten thousand personnel, through voluntary conscription, ready to deploy when needed. This time, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, after announcing his idea several times, is ready to present the bill to the Council of Ministers for discussion in Parliament. "It's a plan not much different from the German one, because it's voluntary. The German one is automatic, while the French one is entirely voluntary," Crosetto explained during his visit to Paris. According to him, the draft bill must guarantee "the country's defense in the coming years: the document will not only address the number of soldiers but also organization and rules."

And the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies' Defense Committee, Nino Minardo, adds his own proposal: "It would be useful to simultaneously evaluate the reintroduction of 'auxiliary Carabinieri' to relieve the Army of public order duties," says the MP, echoing the minister, who has long been considering the return of soldiers from their role of guarding Italian cities as part of the "Safe Streets" operation. Generally, the reserve could consist of no more than 10,000 personnel, a provision already introduced by Law 119 of 2022 by the previous government, which delegated this to the government. The reserve—once recruited, trained, and periodically retrained—could be composed of former military personnel or personnel with specific qualifications (always on a voluntary basis), deployable when necessary during potential international conflicts and crises. They would not be deployed directly in theaters of operation but rather for logistical support and cooperation, without excluding interventions in times of disaster, as is already the case with the military. These would be professionals available to the country, constantly updated with periodic training and activated in specific cases: therefore, it would not be a mandatory service, precisely because the defense today needs experts more than ever.

This would help close the gap, repeatedly lamented by the armed forces regarding the low number of men and women serving in the Defense Department, which currently stands at just over 160,000. Already in recent weeks, in a speech to military leaders at the headquarters of the Joint Operations Command, the Minister of the Interior had stated bluntly that Law 244, which sets the limit on Defense personnel at 170,000, should be "thrown away" because "the spirit with which it was born is dead" and the numbers must be increased by at least 30,000-40,000. Not only that. In the informal document recently presented by the same minister to the Supreme Defense Council, chaired by President Sergio Mattarella, the minister spoke of the need for 10,000-15,000 new personnel to be trained in new technologies and artificial intelligence to combat the ongoing hybrid warfare: 5,000 of these would be needed in the cyber field alone.

(Unioneonline)

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