With the standardization of units, weapons, and tactics accompanying the formation of the Warsaw Pact, training was accomplished in Romania as directed in translated Soviet manuals. In the Warsaw Pact system the training cycle starts when a conscript arrives at his duty organization for individual training. This includes strenuous physical conditioning, basic instruction in drill, care and use of personal weapons, and schooling in a variety of subjects ranging from basic military skills and tactics to political indoctrination.
Individual training develops into small group instruction, usually around the weapon or equipment the individual will be using. As groups became more proficient with their equipment, they use it in exercises with larger tactical units under increasingly realistic conditions. Romanian forces have not participated since the late 1960s in the Warsaw Pact exercises that are usually held at the conclusion of the training cycle.
During early individual training, men are selected for a variety of special schools. Short courses, in cooking and baking or shoe repairing, from which a man emerges ready to work, do not require volunteers and do not extend the mandatory duty tour. Longer courses may involve schooling for most of the conscript tour or require time on the job after the school is completed to develop a fully useful capability, leaving no time for the newly acquired skill to be of value to the service. In such cases, selections to a school are made from volunteers who are willing to extend their period of active duty.
The most capable and cooperative conscripts are offered the opportunity to attend noncommissioned officer schools. They must accept voluntarily and agree to a longer period of service.
Frontier troops receive much the same individual training as ground force conscripts. Their later instruction involves less large-unit tactics and more police training and special subjects dealing with order documents and regulations. Larger percentages of naval and air forces personnel are required in mechanical or electronic work. Most of those who attend technical schools are required to serve for two years.
Reserve training receives little publicity and probably has low priority. A few reserves are sometimes called to active outfits for short refresher training, but there is little, if any, formal reserve training in local all-reserve types of units. The militia (a paramilitary organization subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs) would probably be drawn upon to augment the services in an emergency. It could be expected to provide better trained personnel, in better physical condition, than would be acquired calling up untrained reserves (see ch. 12).
The General Military Academy in Bucharest—usually called the Military Academy—is a four-year university-level school whose graduates receive regular officer commissions and who are expected to serve as career officers. It also offers mid-career command and staff types of courses. An advanced academy, the Military Technical Academy, requires that its applicants have a university degree; they may be military officers, but they are not required to have had military service or military education of any sort. The academy offers advanced degrees in military and aeronautical engineering and in a variety of other technical areas.
Morale and Conditions of Service
The mandatory tour of duty for basic ground and air force personnel was set at sixteen months in 1964. Naval conscripts and some air force personnel are required to serve two years. The length of extra service required of those who apply and are accepted for special training or who wish to become noncommissioned officers varies with the amount of training required, with the rank attained, or with the added responsibility of the new duty assignment; but it is accepted or rejected on a voluntary basis.
Officers and noncommissioned officers serve voluntarily, and morale is usually satisfactory within those groups. The service experience of the noncommissioned-officer applicants and the long training period required of officer candidates assure that both leadership groups understand and freely accept the conditions of service before they assume their duty responsibilities.