Belarusian Ministry Of Defense Reveals Details On ‘Cyber-Squadron’

Why are programmers drafted in the army?

The Ministry of Defense revealed the details of the information technology squadron that is being formed in Belarus, on its official website. It will appear in the armed forces at the end of this year.

In particular, it is reported that "the unit will be staffed by conscripts to military service from the number of people who have achieved the greatest successes in the field of information technology, usually have higher professional education in specialties which interest the Ministry of Defense, and have expressed the desire to perform military service in the said squadron."

The Ministry of Defense promises that for each specialist of the IT-squadron they will appoint a supervisor of studies "in order not to lose the qualification". In the interests of the military department, soldiers will carry out specific scientific and applied tasks, as well as continue their participation in the research programs that have already been started.

The Ministry’s website claims that "the appropriate legal documentation is being developed, and a complex of measures to equip special working places is carried out in order to create all the conditions that are necessary for work."

In addition, the resource dev.by published the "Common list of staff competencies and areas of interest for the project", which specifies the requirements the drafted programmers should meet. The military institution needs professionals in the field of embedded systems, Computer Vision (OpenCV), designing and creating databases, creating mobile applications for Android, iOS, Web-programming, coding and testing of software.

The Ministry of Defense did not disclose what the specialists will be dealing with in the IT-squadron - "giving a more detailed description of problems which are to be solved is impossible as this information is classified," but there are three general project areas - "Creation of embedded systems", "Creation and maintenance of databases, as well as analytical tools for them" and "Creating mobile applications".