In a bid to find a qualitative edge against a Russian enemy that has quantitative superiority, Ukraine is digitising its army personnel record keeping for both full-time regulars and those listed in the reserve force, including, potentially, receiving conscription outcomes by mobile app.
Military aged males in Ukraine aged at least 25 years of age can be conscripted into service, unless they have a valid waiver, such as being a full-time student or having a medical disability.
The move by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) to digital record keeping and tracking is intended to remove the paper trail that has long plagued militaries around the world as they monitor the development of personnel and manage the influx of new recruits.
Teething problems were found after the initial launch of Army+, the MoD stated on 27 September, where “some service members” found that information about their service was not visible in the app.
According to Ukraine’s MoD, the cause was due to “the personnel” at Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers failing to “digitize” the updated information.
At a press conference attending by Army Technology in the western city of Lviv, Kateryna Chernohorenko, Deputy Minister of Defence for Digital Development, Digital Transformation and Digitalization, told reporters on 27 September the Reserve+ app would incrementally take over the old paper-based conscription process.
Chernohorenko said military age males currently had to make visits to conscription centres at periodic intervals in order to extend their service deferral, but through the Reserve+ app the process would be become more “automated”.
However, Chernohorenko said that the MoD needed “tech counterparts” in other ministries in order to fully implement the Reserve+ app.
“Naturally, this will take some time,” Chernohorenko suggested, stating that additional upgrades to Reserve+ will be issued in the first half of October.
It was also hoped that service contracts could be signed via the app, rather than going through the conscription process.
Online training made available through Army+ app
Another feature that will be available for Ukrainian military personnel through the Army+ app will be online training videos, with the inaugural course specific to uncrewed technologies and small drone operations on the battlefield.
Additional courses will be made available through the Army+ app, with suggestions able to be made by personnel in the months ahead.
The burgeoning digitisation of the military personnel management and recruitment process is also building large quantities of data, which is now being fed into a “dashboard”, known as Delta, from which real-time updates on recruitment, force numbers, and other administration, can be discerned.
The Delta dashboard has been developed according to Nato guidelines, Chernohorenko said.
It is thought that around one million Ukrainian personnel are currently serving in various branches of the military, reserve, paramilitary, and parapublic forces.
The bloody metrics of the Ukraine-Russia war
The huge number of military casualties on both sides that have resulted from the brutal combat following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has caused personnel issues for both sides as they look to replace battlefield losses.
While neither side is willing to disclose their own casualty figures, it is understood that more than 600,000 personnel on both sides have been killed and injured in combat.
Russia has sought to resolve its personnel problems through partial mobilisations of its civilian population, though this has generally eschewed affluent urban areas and instead focussed on smaller towns and villages.
Notoriously, prison convicts were also recruited into Russian military service on purported short-term contracts, such as with the notorious Wagner Group, and thrown into action on the battlefield.
