The UK is moving ahead with plans for a military gap year, with officials looking at models in countries like Australia and Denmark for inspiration.
Many youngsters in Denmark see the military draft as a form of paid gap year, said Henrik, a 32-year-old Dane who completed his military service in 2013 (he asked that his surname not be used). In four months, he went from a teenage chicken farmer to a serving member of the Danish military.
Denmark has had mandatory conscription for over 18s since 1849, but so many young people choose to volunteer that forced conscription by lottery is actually relatively rare. So what can the UK learn from the Danish model?
Chicken farmer to teenage soldier
Henrik’s experience of a year in Denmark’s military was a lot like stereotypes of army life, he said. The eight-month programme began with 16 weeks of basic military training spent largely in the woods, learning how to march, dig positions, patrol and fire rifles, including with live ammunition.
They slept in bunk beds in 12-man rooms on barracks Monday to Friday, and were allowed to return home on weekends. Days began at 6am, when the recruits put on their uniforms, ate, cleaned the living quarters and were inspected by the sergeant, before moving on to war drills and training in the forest.
Exercises finished between 4pm and 6pm, followed by cleaning and maintaining equipment, a meal and relaxation.
Recruits were paid around 10,000 kroner a month (£1,164). “Far from a full-time job payment if you were an adult,” said Henrik, but as a young person living at home, it was still enough to save a little.
Henrik shortly before joining the Danish military voluntarilyHe said it was “definitely more interesting” than his previous job, and not necessarily harder. Still, it wasn’t a “luxury experience”, and the mattresses felt like they had been there since the Cold War.
After the initial training period, Henrik undertook a further four months with Denmark’s Royal Guards on full operational duties, guarding military sites and royal palaces. He wore a bearskin hat similar to the Tower of London’s Beefeaters.
UK ‘needs to step up readiness for war’
Lithuania, Sweden and Latvia have brought back mandatory military service in recent years, with Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkevics, saying that other European nations should “absolutely” introduce conscription to counter threats coming from Russia.
Denmark, too, has expanded its recruitment; since last year, the Danish draft also applies to women, and the length of service has increased from four to 11 months. About 4,700 Danish men and women undertook a short period of military service in 2024 – about 24 per cent of them being female volunteers.
The new conscription rules are expected to bring the overall number of Danes undertaking military service annually to 6,500 by 2033.
Henrik said the changing geopolitical climate has made the case for conscription stronger, but the reality for draftees has become more difficult.
Junior soldiers parade as they graduate from the UK Army Foundation College in Harrogate, which takes students from 16 (Photo: Ian Forsyth/Getty)“I did my stint in a very peaceful Denmark in 2013, when defence spending was something you could cut and enemy scenarios seemed a bit far-fetched,” he said. “To serve as a conscript in 2026 – especially in a frontline state like the Baltic nations – is bound to have a level of seriousness to it than I didn’t face.”
“That’s exactly why it’s logical for more countries to make this choice now,” he added. “I just hope that any time politicians put more young people behind a gun, they do even more to make sure they don’t have to fire it.”
The UK has created a military gap year scheme to bolster recruitment.
Due to open for recruitment next month, under-25s will be able to join the Army, RAF or Navy for broad military training with programmes lasting between one and two years. This is seen as a step towards a new “whole of society” approach to defence, and is aimed at engaging Gen Z in particular.
It follows repeated warnings from senior defence figures that the UK is unprepared for war and must upskill the population.
The UK’s Strategic Defence Review, a blueprint for the future of the Armed Forces, released last year, specifically recommended faster, more flexible options for recruitment, including military gap years and a “whole of society” approach to defence.
In Denmark, that concept is normalised. Henrik’s father and older brother both voluntarily took up the draft, and two of his six cousins. He found it “extremely natural” to follow.
Danish military forces participate in an exercise with hundreds of other Nato troops in Nuuk, Greenland, in September 2025 (Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)Henrik is not sure he would be ready for deployment today, but said military service equipped him with life skills.
“Denmark doesn’t have a reserve structure that includes draftees. So for a few years, I might have had the knowledge. But if I’m being honest, I don’t think a lot of generals would put me on the field right now, these 12 years later,” he said.
However, the programme “gives you a basic knowledge that will never really leave you… You learn discipline, you learn how to do your duties. I took that with me.”
Military service ‘helpful on a CV’
While some in Denmark use the military programme as a “stepping stone” to a professional military career, Henrik never considered becoming a full-time soldier. He had always planned to take a gap year after college and found the draft an attractive option – a way to both have an income and a “meaningful experience”.
“Theoretically, speaking, someone could have been forced to do draftee duty. But it is so normal and frankly speaking, popular, to do it, that very few people are actually forced to do their drafting.”
Danish forces performing military drills with German and French troops in Greenland in 2025 (Photo: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)The camaraderie on the programme has also given him friends for life and he has included it on his CV and was asked about it in job interviews. “Employers will read into it, and think it says something about you.”
Given all that, would he recommend a military gap year to young Britons considering signing up?
“As long as people take their time to realise what they’re going into, what they’re committing to, I don’t think it’ll be a bad experience for people to do this kind of thing,” he said. “If it’s anything like it was in Denmark, with my experience, it was definitely positive.”
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