The mixed army recruitment model helps to ensure a sufficient number of soldiers with ordinary ranks in the Lithuanian Armed Forces, but the ambitious needs of filling the Lithuanian Armed Forces structure during peace and war require systematic solution to the remaining staffing shortfalls, improvement of recruitment and retention in service measures, development of Lithuanian Armed Forces personnel reserve system:
- The personnel policy must create conditions for the balanced recruitment of Lithuanian Armed Forces units by soldiers of the professional military service (hereinafter – PMS) and permanent compulsory initial military service (hereinafter – PCIMS), ensuring the readiness requirements for the units;
- The number of PCIMS soldiers must be increased, taking into account the possibility of moving to universal compulsory conscription for men and women, provided that the political and financial preconditions and proper preparation of the army are in place;
- The Lithuanian Armed Forces personnel reserve system must be adapted to the needs of defence by practically implementing the assignment of active reserve soldiers to the army units, finding decisions on the use of specialists required by the army in the event of mobilization and war;
- Addressing the shortage of officers, attention should be paid to raising the prestige of the Lithuanian Military Academy as a higher education institution and its ability to attract the most talented and motivated young people, teachers and military scientists;
- The Lithuanian Military Academy must ensure the development of the competencies required by the Lithuanian Armed Forces: the basic training of officers must be strengthened and the system of professional development of officers must be improved, focusing on the training of officers of different management levels;
- Great attention should be paid to the continuous training and capacity building of officers and to ensuring the transparency of selection and appointment processes;
- In order to reduce staff turnover and increase soldiers’ satisfaction with the service, the general package of motivation and social guarantees for PMS soldiers must be further improved and a microclimate research system based on the dissemination of good practices must be developed to directly identify specific needs for improving service conditions.
Aim – even and balanced development of the Lithuanian Armed Forces:
- Staffing the peacetime and wartime structure;
- Provision of modern armaments, machinery and equipment;
- Ensuring increased infrastructure needs for national and allied forces;
- Maintenance.
