Copied from For background original title was Conscription in East Timor Hi Do you know if East Timor currently has military conscription in place This 2008 UNHCR sponsored report says it was introduced in 2007 but the CIA World Fact Book says that there was no conscription as at 2008 Short answer no RS I spoke to an official in the UNMIT Security Sector Support Unit in April May The force size is 717 579 new recruits from December 2009 minus 11 deceased 150 of those new recruits are going to the naval component Those recruits implied were volunteers as you wrote yourself thousands tried for the few spots in the 2nd Battalion earlier Much of that should be reflected in the link above which is a powerpoint briefing from the chief of the U S Office of Defence Cooperation at the Embassy in Dili TMR is now a Major General Lere An Timor a Brigadier A third battalion is under consideration and the force size aim is still 3 000 by 2020 Note in your link that there is no confirmation that this legal provision is to be enforced like the Selective Service System in the United States OK thanks a lot for that and for the very useful link It s proving rather interesting updating the F FDTL and Australian Defence Force articles at the same time Done though it s pretty similar to the US Embassy s report on its engagement with the F FDTL during 2009 which I ve been using as a citation Hi I hope that you don t mind me undoing this edit but that is the figure the IISS gives for just the Army with an additional 82 for the Naval Element I ve reverted your revert Let me explain why Effectively there is a single armed service with two battalions and a whole bunch of company sized units including the HQ and the logs comms units and the navy The navy has always been roughly company sized ie 120 So separating the army and the navy is a mistake The IISS data is not very good quality here it is downright misleading The U S Embassy figures of 719 579 for the entire armed forces match almost exactly the UN figures I quoted above of 717 579 The difference may be in the way they account for deceased soldiers Both are 2010 On the other hand the IISS figure 1250 is an approximation they may have found from ANYWHERE They ve just released their three armed forces analysts and have just the editor of the MilBal at the moment I usually use their data as a first rough cut for anywhere not something to rely on In this case 1250 82 would put us over 1300 which is well outside the other two figures Thus I would strongly recommend that in this case with better data available we do not quote the IISS figures on the size of the armed forces OK that sounds very sensible Thanks for the background knowledge