Finland can be known for many different and amazing things from its lovely culture to its charming people and let's not forget
Its unique scenery and national landscape home to proud people who have had a history of defending themselves
Against aggressors who desire the territory and has also been a society that has fought for its independence
And will do what is necessary to protect it and in reference to protection today
We are looking at the military power of Finland and finding out. What is rather unique about it
Hey
Everybody what's going on and welcome to FTD facts the channel where we talk about people cultures and places from all around the world now
My name is Dave Walpole the host with the most and today. We are gonna look at the military of Finland now
I know a lot of you guys are probably like ah you know Finland
Ah, don't really think of Finland and military put together. I know it's a rather peaceful nation like of course
You don't think of Finland and think of something like the United States that spends billions of dollars on stealth bombers
or you just don't think of it as a major offensive country like one that has attack helicopters aircraft carriers and
even nuclear capability
No, you don't think of that when it comes to Finland however
although Finland may be small believe it or not it does pack quite a punch and we're gonna look at that today now before we
Get in this episode guys. Just letting you know here on the channel. We don't just look at militaries
We also look at the countries as a whole and one of the reasons
We're doing this is because we've done videos on Finland in the past and you guys want to learn more about
Finland or its neighboring countries guys
I'm gonna put some links up here right here in those little boxes going up above my head
Or I'm just gonna put them at the end of the video whatever you guys prefer, but cool
Let's get started and with that in mind guys
I also want to know if you guys could join the military what branch would you be in would you be in the Air Force?
The Navy or the ground forces let me know which is also called the army you know put it down there
Let's get going alright cool. Now. First of all when we look at Finland. It has a population of approximately
5.5 million people now of that its manpower sits at approximately 2.3 million people and of that only about
1.9
million people are fit for service now its total personnel sits at
262 thousand fifty people with only an active personnel of twenty nine
Thousand three hundred and fifty and the rest of them which is
Approximately two hundred thirty two thousand seven hundred people are all in reserves now you may be wondering
Why are there a lot of reserves within this country well one of the reasons is because this country still does in fact use
Conscription as a matter of fact
There is Universal conscription for males that are of the age of 18 years old and for them
They would have to participate in a service of
165 days 225 days or
374 days now for women when it comes to this conscription rule
It's not really taken into effect because women in the country are there but for non-military service
And/or participate in volunteer service that are just strictly for women now one of the main reasons why they have
conscription is because Finland's official policy states that they have to have a wartime strength of
Two hundred and eighty thousand people as a deterrent now when I give you those numbers saying there was about two hundred and sixty-two
Thousand of them keep in mind guys the numbers that I give you are not a hundred percent
It's kind of just a rough ballpark
So I'm willing to bet that there's probably at least
Two hundred and eighty thousand people within the military and that's only due to the fact that it's based off of that rule
That's all also when it comes to the conscription
No one can come into the military
After the age of 49 and for that they say approximately 80 percent of the Finnish males who turned 30 in 2011
Had finished the service, and if you actually refuse going you can spend approximately one hundred and seventy three days in prison
Yikes, that's a lot as well when it comes to this conscription about twenty seven thousand people are trained a year due to this law
Which actually makes Finland one of the top countries with the highest conscription rate?
That's pretty insane now. Also when it comes to the military power of Finland
It should be noted that it is the only non
NATO EU country that borders Russia now one of the reasons for that it might be due to the fact that they buy a lot
Of equipment from Russia they also buy a lot of equipment from other places around the world, but speaking of equipment
Let's get into that let's break down this military even further for this. Let's take a look at their aircraft
they have a total aircraft strength of 150 3.now of that there are 55 fighters all of these which are
Fa-18 sees and of course they also have about 55 attack aircrafts
31 transport aircrafts and their trainer aircraft sets at approximately 66 however their helicopter strength sits at 27 and
Finland does not have any attack helicopters of any sort they don't have like Apaches or anything like that
They just don't need them, and of course you might be thinking yourself
Why does Finland have such a small Air Force well one of the reasons is because?
Of the rules that date back to the Second World War
Now for the Second World War when it comes to aircraft a lot of them were given by Germany now
Although if you look at the Finnish Air Force at the time you'll notice that there is the Nazi or the Luftwaffe symbol?
But that doesn't mean the people of Finland were actually really allies with Germany now one of the reasons why Germany
Invested in them was because Finland actually had a major conflict with Russia
Which actually ended in approximately 1944 and to keep the peace with Russia?
They actually had to turn around and beat the Germans out of their country was pretty awesome
however after the Second World War the peace talks in Paris
Limited Finland to certain rules they were to have no more than 60 combat aircraft and none of these
Aircrafts were to have bomb Bay's nor could they have missiles or atomic weapons
On top of that they were not allowed to use German weaponry or German parts in their
aircrafts Finland couldn't have any offensive weapons and a maximum of
3000 people in their military now of course rules from the Second World War they don't really apply to today because by
1963 they were allowed to rearm
themselves and of course because of that they tried to remain on Russia's good side by buying equipment from them and of course trying to
Remain on good terms with the west by buying equipment from them and like I said one of the reasons why?
Finland has a small military is if you kind of look at Japan after the Second World War
They were pretty much not allowed to rebuild a military and even in today's world
They don't really have a big military because of the rules that were put in place way back in the day
But let's jump back. Let's take a look at some of the other equipment that this country has for example. They have approximately
160 combat tanks of that a majority of them are there leopard 2a4 and the - a6 and there's approximately
20 more coming from the nether for 2019 they're armored fighting vehicles set at
1370 which is balanced between the Swedish
cv90 30 and the Soviet BMP to their artillery
Self-propelled sits at 90 and their artillery towed sits at 871 and as for the rocket projectors
They have approximately 58 of them now
Let's jump over to the Navy now the first thing we should mention is that our call signs generally always start with F
NS now the total Navy assets set at approximately
270 and as for this it's really hard to get some numbers because they don't really have any big
Big ships as a matter of fact
They have a lot of patrol boats about eight of them
Which are also classified as missile boats and of these most of them are called squadron 2000?
There's also transports landing crafts mine sweepers and mine layers as well
They're developing a squadron called squadron 2020
Which is another type of missile craft and patrol craft which was stated to be in the design phase of planning in
2018 and of course Finland doesn't have any aircraft carriers
They don't really have any submarines and of course they don't have any Corvettes destroyers or anything
That's huge so that is a rundown of the forces of Finland
It should also be noted that Finland does not have any nuclear weapons as that is forbidden within its legislation
However, they can indeed fire a ballistic missiles as well when it comes to Finland since 1956 they've sent over
43,000 troops for UN peacekeeping missions
That's insane and of that keep in mind only approximately 39 of their soldiers have lost their lives during these missions Finland
Also has a law that states the maximum
They will lend for UN peacekeeping missions is 2,000 and what makes Finland's military amazing besides its defensive capability is they've also
participated in operations in Iraqi Kurdistan
They've also been in Lebanon Afghanistan Bosnia mallya
Somalia Pakistan and other
Peacekeeping missions around the world and with all this in mind
We should look at one last thing and that is how much this military costs for the entire country now currently
It's been reported that Finland uses about
200,000 barrels of oil in a day now whether or not that is for the military or that is
And government services is uncertain however when it comes to the budget Finland's military is estimated in
2017 to be at
2.8. Billion euros and in 2017 that made the defense budget equal
1.3. Percent of the GDP for that year and because of all these factors its budget its equipment its conscription rules that
Has almost every single male citizen
contributing to the military its homeland defense willingness against a superior enemy ranks at
76 being one of the highest in all of Europe so there you have it guys that again is a look at Finland
Let me know your thoughts on it down there in the comment section below
But thank you guys for watching and again if you guys want to watch some more videos on Finland boom check out some of these
Cards right here or just wait till the end of the video
We've also got some other countries around the world where we talk about their militaries
So keep an eye out for that sort of stuff
but other than that guys my name is Dave Guapo hit the subscribe button if you guys want to and we'll see you guys the
Next one cool. Bye
So alright guys here's those videos that I was telling you all about feel free to check them out
We got some really cool stuff that you think you guys will want to learn about
It's great learning about Finland and other countries around the world and what the people of these countries do
So thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one buh-bye