okay i don't know if anybody cares, but i'm currently finishing military duty in switzerland and i have tons of time to be on twitter sooo:

fav: random fact you probably don't know about swiss m (if you're not swiss)
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Fact 1:
124 days of basic training, 6x19 day every year around 30 for every soldier and 4 extra day to check if you're qualificatied and giving stuff back away etc. so a min. of 245 days

can be a lifetime thing with thousands of days if you bring the commitment

f2: you get 80% of you're current salary, which is kind of okay, you pay nothing for food&rent

if you have been a student before the start of basic training / just finished your first job degree you get some borderline minimum wage job salary as default if i remember correctly

f3: we had no military refresh course last year (I think nearly all refresh courses got cancled), but now we're doing service with testing, isolating people, wearing masks, expect when you're eating, sleeping, smoking and in your own room

f4: swiss who don't or can't do military service, pay a tax of 3% every year until 37, but for a max duration of 11 years

which can be a ton of money

you can reduce the amount by doing other "community work", depending on the length and type of service to zero

f5: there was a referendum some years ago to end the military duty, but it failed clearly (for different reasons imho, proposed by very unpopular radicals and swiss culture imho)

which also showed, a great surprise, that military duty is way more popular in female demographics

f6:
having a high rank in the military was high status until (idk maybe sometime 90es or until 2000? You got better chances in jobs etc.

now it's often seen as a burden, because you will be missing out on more than a month every year for hundreds of days, which is critical

f7: army knife looks like this, we can keep it, mostly used for cutting stuff or to open cans

f8: you do a fitness test before entering the military, more points give you access to more things to choose from
your function will be decided in a talk with a recruiter, you can name your wishes and preferences, but at the end some dude in a chair will decide your function

f9: if you don't want to go to the military, you can (nowadays easy, was a huge discussion) do some civil service as an equal substitute, which consists of jobs like helping in a retirement home

duration is 1.5 × of your military duty (which is kind of fair, you go home daily)

f10: normally you have "holidays" on every weekend, going home saturday morning, coming back sunday evening

exception is guard, which happens depending on your luck 1-4 times during a regular military duty

we have to stay now (corona)

fuck i miss my girlfriend way too much

f11: alcohol is a huge part of the culture

the only thing soldiers are allowed to do during free time is basically to get fucking wasted (even encouraged in different ways), but there are more or less strict rules when you're allowed to drink and when not

f12: alcohol culture

military tends to organize evenings with beer, they try to get people drinking in public spaces instead of their own rooms

there is this huge get drunk and do stupid shit culture in swiss military which results in random fun stuff, arrests, accidents etc.

f13: weed is a part as well (quite popular in the demographics of 20 years old in switzerland), but that's pretty hidden, you get fines and prison sentences (a few days)

f13: some function know (mine at least) do a ritual called hamburger baptism, the new ones (the hamburgers) will drink hot beer, run around, play stupid games against each other and drink some nasty shit of kitchen leftovers until they puke

f15: military spending is around 0.73 (2019) of gdp, or 7.3% of government spending

pretty stable, just a little bit under pressure over the last decades

f16: if the military wants to introduce big changes or wants to spend a lot of tax money for things like new jets, swiss will vote on it

normally they are accepted, but the last one in september 2020 was lost, people did not want to spend tax money for saab jas 39 gripen jets

f17: you can send packages to soldiers for free (up to 5kg) over the swiss postal service

i just received a package from a good friend i know since highschool

i was schocked by the amount of advertising in playboy

f18: rooms look more or less like this everywhere

this is a freshly renovated building, so everything looks new and nice, when i did my basic training in 2012/2013 this building was an absolute shithole

f19: we take our stuff home after we finish our yearly duty, heavy materials are carried in trolley cases
(smiley is there to cover up name)
i don't know the official name (i think nobody does), we call it muschi which is swiss german name for pussy, yes female organ not the cat

f20: probably the most ridiculous fact about the swiss army

the airforce has opening hours like regular work, from 8 to 12 and 13.30 to 17.00

24/7 coverage only around events / in special situations like world economic forum in davos

oh i was wrong on this one, they updadted it from 6 to 22 pm

f21: the swiss army is neutral, but we do have troops abroad

for example swisscoy (founded in 1999), max 165 people for peacbuilding in kosovo and other initiatives together with non profit organizations

f22: we take our personal equipment home after duty to store it at home until next year, including our weapons!

This is something which is sometimes discussed, some people argue that it should be stored in an armory

f22: sig 550 or as we call it assault rifle 90 (because it was introduced in a reform in the 90es) is the standard weapon every soldier learns to use in close combat and for the distance of 300 meters

f23: higher ranks use the pistol p220 aka pistol 75

f24: religious food preferences are respected

vegans can serve in the military, they try to provide alternatives, but i never saw a vegan in the military, even a vegetarian was an od ball in my experience

f25: during ww2 there was a back up plan if germany would have attacked

basically go back into the mountains and use them as giant in indestructible fortesses

as i understand, it's unclear how effective that would have been, but the idea itself is kind of cool

f26: we have a lot of secret bunkers all over switzerland, some very pretty ones around the border to france

f27: we did our 2nd corona test today and people who are c+ or had contact, have to go into quarantine

around 6-7 soldiers and sergeants came back out of quarantine a few days ago, they had contact with a c+ from another unit

next & last test will be 2 days before going home

f28: a lot of young men start smoking in the military

i don't have numbers, but my guess is that it's somewhere in the low 1 digit %, which is still huge

i would guess around 60%-70% smokes or consumes other nicotine products, at least in my military bubble

f29: we don't have any woman in our company, but i saw one in another one while waiting for the corona test

women make up to one percent of the armed forces, but the army hopes to increase this number up to 10% until 2030

f29: some soldiers having a lunch break at a nice place

f31: some important dude just arrived with his helicopter

he is doing an inspection, which is a super normal thing in the swiss military (and other militaries as well as far as i know)

f32: there is a cat at our armory, everybody calls it the general

it just jumped in our room

f33: sorry for the long break guys, idk if anybody is still reading this so

today we have fahnenübergabe (flag handover)

we took it at the beginning of the repetition course, 2.5 weeks ago and we're giving it back now

we will do a formation, listening to the nat. anthem&speech

f34: the military is probably the only place where you have signs that you're now allowed to puke in the urinal

f35: i can go home today!

we're waiting to give our building back, which can be a pain because the military stuff wants everything back in perfect condition

f36: i was here for three weeks and i miss home so much

i miss being able to sleep in a room without snoring people

i miss deciding when and what to eat

and i miss my gf soo much

f37: i'm in the train home and i will try to finish this thread with my experiences and opinions

swiss military can be absurdly inefficient and wasteful