Indonesia - Military Personnel

The Defense Ministry’s policy on the Zero Growth in Personnel (ZGP) and Right Sizing is a strategy to overcome the problem of inefficient budget spending on the maintenance of personnel. The Defense Ministry expected as of 2013 the percentage of personnel expenditures to decrease gradually so that there would be more budget allocation for defense equipment. Looking at the personnel, which consisted of 438,410 people in 2013, the policy is expected to reduce the number to 390,000 people.

In 2009 there were some 302,000 personnel in Indonesia’s active armed forces, and the military budget totaled US$3.4 billion, about the same military budget and force level as Thailand, a country with less than one-third of Indonesia’s population, and Burma (Myanmar), which has only one-quarter of Indonesia’s population. Singapore, with a population less than 2 percent of Indonesia’s, has more than 72,000 active-duty military personnel—a force more than nine times larger than Indonesia’s on a per-capita basis.

There are official and unofficial militia-style paramilitary formations throughout Indonesia in addition to the regular armed forces. Once a formidable force estimated between 70,000 and 100,000 strong, the official militia units have been largely disbanded or integrated into the army. The far more dangerous unofficial militia-style units act as surrogate forces, usually for Kopassus, and have a reputation for violence and intimidation. Many are little more than criminal gangs protecting their “turf,” often around markets and shopping centers, where they collect “security and protection” money. They also have provided manpower for political demonstrations and intimidation. Militia units trained by army cadre were responsible for much of the wave of violence that swept East Timor in 1999.

The size of the armed services — approximately 302,000 in 2009 — is small in relation to Indonesia’s large population. The military is also small in comparison to the forces of other nations of comparable population, and in comparison to the forces of other Asian countries. The army is by far the dominant branch of the Indonesian military, with approximately 233,000 personnel; the navy and marine corps total about 45,000 and the air force, about 24,000.

The Indonesian constitution states that every citizen has the right and obligation to defend the nation. Conscription is provided for by law, but in light of limited civilian-sector employment opportunities, the armed forces have been able to attract sufficient numbers to maintain mandated strength levels without resorting to a draft. By 2008 almost all service members were volunteers who had met the criteria set for conscription. However, officer specialists, such as physicians, are occasionally conscripted for short-term service. Most enlisted personnel are recruited in their own regions and generally train and serve most of their time in units near their homes.

The combined officer corps for the three services was estimated to total some 53,000 personnel in 2008. Until 2005 the mandatory retirement age for officers was 55, but a 2004 military act passed by the DPR provided for a gradual extension to age 60. Virtually all career noncommissioned officers (NCOs) serve 20 years and retire in their mid-forties, thereafter often going into private business. With personnel strength mandated to remain static, a steady balance between new officer accessions and losses (through death, attrition, and retirement) seems likely to be maintained.

For the first 20 years of independence, entry into the officer corps was very competitive. According to both patriotic and traditional values, a military education and military career were regarded as highly desirable. Since the late 1970s, however, the armed forces have experienced difficulty attracting a sufficient number of the best-qualified candidates to the Armed Forces Military Academy (Akmil), the national service academy at Magelang, Jawa Tengah Province. Field commanders have long complained of not getting enough high-quality young officers from Akmil. Improved job opportunities in Indonesia’s advancing economy have persuaded many of the brightest and best-qualified high-school graduates to attend civilian degree-granting universities (Akmil does not grant academic degrees). In the late 1990s, the armed forces began to expand their source of officers by instituting a program similar to the U.S. Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and experimented with educating a small number of cadets in overseas civilian colleges.

The armed forces have maintained cohesion and a professional esprit de corps, in spite of problems with officer recruitment. Maturation through institutionalization, increased education, and an emphasis on national (rather than regional) loyalty have produced a military that is a far cry from the factionalized and ideologically diverse force that existed at the time of the 1965 coup attempt. Uniting the services under a strong central command and eliminating “warlordism” and regionalism by routine rotational assignments have contributed to this cohesion and minimized the impact of the occasional emergence of personality-driven cliques.

The senior officer corps reflects the ethnic composition of the national population. The TNI does not publish data on ethnicity in its personnel rosters, but a review of the names of 60 top officers in TNI headquarters and the three services suggested that in 2008 about 55 percent were from Java (ethnically Javanese, Sundanese, or Madurese), a proportion approximately reflective of the national population. There is a continued trend toward assignments based on ability rather than ethnic or religious considerations.

Although army recruits receive their basic training in a local training facility located in each Kodam area, specialist corps training is provided at the appropriate national corps centers. NCOs must attend training courses and pass examinations in their specialized fields prior to promotion. The army maintains a large tactical training area at Baturaja, Sumatera Selatan Province, where selected units undergo small-unit training on a rotational basis.

The TNI operates a central military academy headquarters charged with curriculum standardization, but the three service academies are under the control of their respective service chiefs of staff. Cadets begin a one-year training program at the Armed Forces Military Academy (Akmil) in Magelang, which is followed by three-year courses in the specialized branches of Akmil run by each service. The army branch, referred to simply as the Military Academy, is located in Magelang as well. The Air Force Academy is located in Yogyakarta and the Naval Academy, in Surabaya.

The TNI also maintains a joint headquarters for the Armed Forces Command and Staff School (Mako Sesko) and the three service command and staff schools, but control of the individual command and staff colleges is under the service chiefs of staff. Cohort ties formed at the service academies and at the command and staff school are strong unifying elements among officers. The joint TNI Command and Staff College (Sesko TNI) trains officers at the lieutenant colonel level, and the National Resiliency Institute (Lemhanas) provides training at the colonel and brigadier general levels. Half of each is filled by senior civil servants and leaders of the business community. In 2009 Dephan established the Indonesian Defense University (Universitas Pertahanan Indonesia), modeled on the U.S. National Defense University in Washington, DC. It is the first military school in Indonesia to award academic degrees.

Compensation of all TNI personnel is on a sliding scale according to rank and is uniform nationally and across the three services. Officers and enlisted personnel receive housing for married service members of appropriate rank, subsistence items and rations paid in kind, and a variety of allowances in addition to base pay. Especially at the lower ranks, compensation is so low that the need for supplementary income is a significant factor in service members’ involvement in outside, often unsavory, employment.

The retirement age for officers was 55 until passage of the 2004 military laws, which raised the retirement age to 60 effective in 2009. Retirement at age 42 is mandatory for enlisted personnel. The president has the authority to grant an unlimited number of one-year extensions to active duty; these usually go to officers in key leadership posts. Officers are eligible for small pensions at age 48; those who have failed to gain promotion to lieutenant colonel are required to retire at that time. Two years before retirement, personnel can be placed on preretirement status, in which they draw full pay and allowances while beginning to develop civilian careers.

Each branch of the TNI and the National Police has a women’s component: the Women’s Army Corps, the Navy Women’s Corps, the Air Force Women’s Corps, and the Women’s Police Corps. According to official publications, women members of the armed forces are “set to work at places and in functions conform[ing] to their feminine disposition.” More specifically, women are assigned to administrative work, intelligence work, English-language instruction, and activities to improve the health and social conditions of armed forces members and their families.They also specialize in the welfare of women and children. Despite the advance of women in the civilian workplace, including one former president, several cabinet members and legislators, and important business leaders, women do not advance to comparable rank in the armed forces. Women police officers are said to “play an important role in solving problems [of] drug addicts and juvenile delinquents.” Some police commands in large cities also have rape/gender-based violence units staffed by female officers, but these are still rare.

The chief of staff of the Indonesian army, General Andika Perkasa, announced 11 August 2021 that the army will no longer conduct virginity tests on women applying to join the forces. He was referring to the invasive two-finger examination that was conducted to determine whether female applicants' hymens were intact. The practice, used in the past by the military to determine recruits' morality, was long condemned by rights groups who called it degrading and traumatic. The army chief's announcement was welcomed by women's rights activists and female cadets.

The presence of the hymen is not a reliable indication of vaginal intercourse, let alone someone's moral dispensation. The test had been carried out in the Southeast Asian country for decades, and was even extended to the fiancées of male soldiers as a prerequisite to receiving their commanding officers' written approval for the marriage.

But there were also worries that the ban might not last long as the army hasn't so far released any guidelines to make it permanent. There was a period when the discriminative virginity test was banned by a high-ranking officer in the police force in the 1980s. However, the ban only lasted for two years before the practice was reinstated without reason.