A lot of people are interested in the size of Israel's military forces that are involved in the war against Hamas in Gaza and against other actual and potential adversaries.
What Wikipedia says
Naturally people go to Wikipedia and it says that Israel has:
a) 169,500 Active personnel; and
b) 465,000 reserves.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel#IISS2021
If you go to the source for this information, Wikipedia cites The Military Balance 2021 or 2023 a publication by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) (a London based think tank).
However this document is not publicly available and costs over $700, so it is not possible to verify that this is actually what the IISS says.
Wikipedia is badly wrong
In any case it is clearly and obviously wrong.
Wikipedia misses IDF Conscripts
These figures do not include the 200k+ 18-21 year olds doing compulsory military service of 3 years for men and 2.5 years for women (both recently reduced by 6 months but being increased again in light of Oct 7).
This is a glaring oversight. Especially as it is a unique and defining feature of both the IDF and Israeli society that the vast majority of men and a majority of women do military service.
It is extraordinary how a blatant and obvious mistake gets copied and cross referenced around the internet and no one thinks to do a sanity check.
Israel is also unique in that military service is seen very positively in Israeli society.
There is great competition to get into the best units as there is a direct and lucrative path from top military units (particularly intelligence, pilots and special units) into well paying positions in the private sector.
Indeed Israel's huge high tech industry was substantially created by and is today fed new entrepreneurs and employees from top military units. Service in units such as 8200 or Talpiyot is one of the most sought after qualifications in the technology sector.
Very few countries today have serious compulsory military service and those that do conscript for sufficient time to actually train a combat soldier (at least 1 year) have much higher avoidance rates than Israel.
For example Turkey has only 6 months which can be reduced to 1 month by paying a fee and a huge rate of exemption. Russia only has one year with a large avoidance rate.
How many Conscripts are there?
Israel does not seem to publish figures for how large its conscript forces are, but it is possible to roughly calculate numbers from the published historical birth figures and the percentage of men and women serving.
In 2005, (18 years ago) there were 105,121 Israeli births in the "Jews and Others" category (which are subject to compulsory military service) and 2533 Druse (who are also subject to compulsory service and have very high rates of enlistment). These figures are from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.
That's 107,654 Israelis turning 18 in 2023. There are also Jewish immigrants and the children of immigrants since 2005. There were 380,000 Jewish immigrants between 2005 and 2022.
I estimate that 2% of these immigrants will turn 18 in 2023.
This bring the total number eligible for military services to 115,254.
Applying a 72% enlistment rate (which includes the low service rate of the Ultra-Orthodox) you get 82,983 conscripts each year with an average service length of 2.75 years.
This is 228,202 conscripts serving in 2023.
On top of this about 1500 Bedouin and a small number of Israeli Arabs volunteer for IDF service.
So the IISS and Wikipedia have missed the largest component (230k) of the Israel's active military.
It is notable that over the next 5 years from 2005 to 2010 there was a dramatic increase in the number of births from 105k to 125k. So the size of the conscript force is due to increase almost 20% over the next few years. Also the rate of enlistment of the ultra-orthodox and Israeli society generally is likely to increase substantially post Oct 7.
Wikipedia mischaracterises and underestimates IDF Reserves
The Wikipedia / IISS figure for IDF reserves also ignores the massive difference between Israeli reserves and other countries' reserves.
Israel's main reserves are a ready reaction force capable of combat deploying over 100,000 troops in 24-48 hours and 360,000 fully equiped, combat ready troops in 2 weeks.
By way of comparison:
- when Russia mobilised 300,000 reserves last year it took then 6-9 months to equip and train them so they were ready to fight;
- NATO's "Ready Reaction" brigades are so poorly equipped and at such low readiness that they would take substantially longer (2-7 days and 30 days) to deploy than IDF "Reserves".
These reserve troops are fighting in Gaza with performance levels that meet or exceed the excellence of the IDF's full time professional units. No country in the world has reserves anywhere near as high quality. Indeed because the reserves are older and bring more life and multi-disciplinary experience they are better at adapting and innovating on the battlefield.
The Wikipedia/IISS figures also vastly understate the true amount of combat trained reserves available to Israel in extremis.
Around 75% of all Israeli men and about 55% of Israeli women in the 21 - 65 age group have done compulsory military service. This means that there are 3-4 million militarily trained Israelis in addition to the official reserves.
Total Size of IDF
Thus Israel's military actually comprises:
a) ~180k full time professionals;
b) 230k compulsory service
c) 360k "rapid reaction" reservists.
d) 3M+ inactive reserves who did compulsory military service but have not maintained active reserve status.
Thus Israel has around 800k battle hardened, highly motivated troops with the best military tech in the world, plus a backup of 3M+ militarily trained citizens.
This is actually one of the largest and most powerful militaries in the world.
800k is similar to the US Army, Marines and Reserves combined.
I will publish a separate post with more detailed comparisons to other military powers.
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