They can't legally be deployed in combat situations until they are 18, so I guess they do other stuff.

But once they turn 18 they can be ordered into combat based on a decision they made when they were still a child.

Recruits can leave up to the end of their first six months of service. After that they are committed until they are 22.

Meh. Lets not pretend like a 16 year old signing papers to join the army was too dumb to understand it meant they were joining the army. 16 is hardly fingers-in-the-wall-socket level of understanding the world.

No. Pretty obviously they are not as mature as 18 years old which is why they should not make these decisions. They are more naive easier to manipulate and more of kids the adults.

10 years old understand joining army means joining army. And still don't get to make those decisions.

Some kids should probably have been allowed to vote since they were 12. Some adults probably shouldn't be trusted with glue. Yet for some reason its taboo to say, some kids really do know what they're doing when they signed up for the army and should be allowed to do it, and some adults really have no damn clue what they're doing when they vote and should maybe not be allowed to.

Age cutoffs are an arbitrary and shitty substitute for a test of competency, prone to both high false negative and high false positive rates.

Seriously? Why do you think we recruit teenagers and not 25 to 30 year old men, who are stronger, tougher and more mature?

Because teenagers are easy to manipulate and control, don’t value their life, and think with their dick.

On what basis do you think 25-30 years old is a more capable fighting demographic? Are you basing this assertion on literally anything? Have you looked up any information about demographics and fighting effectiveness before sharing your opinion? Do you have literally anything other than the small window on the world of your immediate general area and personal life experience / gut feeling?

I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say by sheer coincidence you're in that 25-30 year old male demographic, and in about 5 years you'll be of the opinion that actually its 30-35 year olds who are clearly the strongest, toughest, most mature and capable fighting force and all them 25-30s are a bunch of idiots that don't value life and think with their dick.

muscle strength peaks at 25, this is a well known fact. Likelihood of crashing a car or doing something stupid with a car drops sharply as you mature to 30. This is common knowledge and is easilly verified.

Nobody claims that 40 yeat old men are peal of physical perfection.

You say muscle strength peaks at 25 as if it supports your point about the 25-30 year old fighting condition, when the same fact could equally well support the case for the fighting condition of the 20-25 year old demographic.

Car accident rates have an obvious confounding factor. Of course the people with +5 years experience driving have a lower accident rate than the people who just got their license. Skill comes from practice. If you pushed the legal age for a drivers license to 25, the 25-30 year old demographic would probably suck at it and get into accidents in their first ever years on the road. There's no way around the fact that driving judgement has to be learned at some point, and is not just bestowed by the maturity fairy when you hit the big three ooh.

Muscle strength is far from the most valuable military skill in most roles these days, and arguably hasn't really been since the 19th century when most combat became firearms oriented. Yes, it still plays a role, and for some jobs, it is among the most important, but they're a minority.

Ability and willingness to follow orders is probably paramount, along with reflexes, and some common sense and logical abilities. And then of course, proficiency in your role.

18 year olds are typically right out of school, so learning new roles comes easy. They've also typically come right out of a situation in life where the expectation of following commands is pretty fresh, even if they perhaps weren't the best at following through (the military has ways to fix that).

And perhaps most importantly, for folks that are staying in for the career, or at least longer than the minimum level of service, joining at 18 means that you've had time to get training and experience so when you DO hit that "prime muscle strength" time of life, you're a well honed killing machine. Waiting til you've hit that point means you'll be going in cold, and get suboptimal results.

> But once they turn 18 they can be ordered into combat roles based on a decision they made when they were still a child.

That is an uncomfortable situation, but it's not worse than countries that conscript 18-year-olds, who don't even get to make a decision at all.

Systemically, conscription can be "better" if it is randomized and includes everyone. "Volunteer" Armies just means that rich parents can decide to start wars without worrying that their kids might be sent to fight.

It’s definitely more equitable.

It also gives everyone the same incentive to not start shit (even though few ppl are in position to instigate a war) because it could be you and your family that’s sent to fight it.

However, when you’re actually fighting, you want to trust the person fighting next to you. And if that person was conscripted and didn’t want to ever be there, that’d cause a lot of issues.