Muhammad Fauzan Malufti – When journalists or policy experts fretfully discuss arms racing and military buildups in the Indo-Pacific, they tend to focus on Northeast Asian autocracies rather than Southeast Asian democracies.
And yet Indonesia, a historically non-aligned nation with no recent history of great-power war, is currently engaged in a process of unprecedented military expansion. If fully realized, this sweeping set of reforms will grow its total active-duty personnel to over 1.2 million in just five years.
This expansion will mostly come from the plan to establish "territorial development infantry battalions" in the army by 2029. Indonesian Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin announced that each battalion will consist of 1,000 personnel. That means these new units will add over 750,000 soldiers to an already sizable force. Indeed, Indonesia currently boasts around 450,000 active military personnel, and, in addition to the aforementioned territorial development battalions, there are other major force enlargement efforts currently underway within the army, navy, and air force.
Such an ambitious expansion with an extremely short timeline demands scrutiny. What threats justify a force build-up of this magnitude? Can the country realistically fund, manage, and sustain such an expansion without undermining modernization and professionalism? How will this policy affect Jakarta's role in regional security?
By engaging in an analysis across four key dimensions – threat perceptions, budget, institutional realities, and manpower quality – it can be argued that these new battalions could leave Indonesia with a bigger but ultimately less-effective military.
Threat Imagination?
The most fundamental question behind the creation of 750 new infantry battalions is simple: What threat is Indonesia preparing for? From a purely defense-driven perspective, perhaps the only scenario that could plausibly justify such a massive land-force expansion is the belief within the current President Prabowo Subianto's administration that Indonesia may face a large-scale land invasion, particularly one targeting its major islands.
To be fair, this mindset is not entirely new. Protracted warfare, total-people's defense, guerrilla warfare, and other "preparing for foreign invasion and occupation"-related mindsets have long been embedded in the Indonesian military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia) doctrine and national defense planning. The Indonesian military's wargames also regularly include a scenario where the country is invaded.
These ideas were designed to prepare for worst-case scenarios in which Indonesia mobilizes all elements of its national power to resist a foreign occupier – an approach historically rooted in Indonesia's experience of colonial occupation and the independence struggle. Yet, no previous government implemented these concepts at anything near the scale now envisioned. By planning to establish 750 battalions across the archipelago, the current administration signals a much stronger belief in the possibility of invasion than its predecessors. Among other factors, this shift may stem from growing anxiety over an international system perceived as being increasingly unstable, as reflected in Prabowo's repeated warnings that invasion, occupation, and even World War III remain possible.
Yet, Indonesia is not facing the kind of geopolitical isolation or imminent threat that would normally drive such preparations. The current administration itself has never identified a specific state or non-state actor with both the intent and capability to launch such an attack. Nor has it updated its decade-old defense white paper or issued any comparable publicly accessible documents. This absence makes it difficult to identify, much less justify, the strategic logic underpinning this massive buildup.
So far, official statements have offered only broad justifications, framing the new battalions as necessary to safeguard territorial integrity, protect national interests, and boost national preparedness without providing any further explanation on the specific threats or scenarios they are meant to address.
In today's security landscape, Indonesia should instead focus on defending its vast maritime areas and airspace, where future challenges clearly exist. This would mean investing more in, to name a few, air-defense and coastal-defense systems; surveillance satellites; command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities; and enhanced counter-drone and cyber-defense units to detect, blunt, and delay any hostile force long before it reaches Indonesian territory.
This becomes even more urgent when we consider Tentara Nasional Indonesia's current force posture. Despite being the world's largest archipelagic state, with a territorial expanse comparable to the distance from London to Central Asia, Indonesia only has around 50 frontline fighter aircraft, four submarines, four modern frigates, and one ground-based medium-range air defense unit.
Moreover, any entity bold enough to attack Indonesia would almost certainly be a major power or a coalition with significant power projection capabilities. Considering Indonesia's archipelagic geography and heavy reliance on sea lanes, such an entity would not need to conduct a complex and expensive territorial conquest. Precision strikes (both kinetic and non-kinetic), air superiority, naval blockades, and limited raids would arguably be enough to force political concessions, much like the blockade or quarantine strategy many observers believe China could use against Taiwan. In this view, the idea of massive-land-force expansion, let alone the one that mainly consists of lightly armed infantry units, is even less convincing.
Given their extensive non-warfighting duties, the new battalions' combat value in modern battlefields is even more uncertain. As the name suggests, they are not "normal" infantry battalions. Each of them will include livestock, agricultural, and construction companies to support local development programs, such as food security. Therefore, soldiers assigned to these battalions would spend much of their time managing agricultural land, raising livestock, assisting with construction projects, and performing other civilian-oriented tasks.
Governments have long justified this approach by arguing that the Indonesian armed forces can deliver development programs quickly and across the entire archipelago, especially in areas where civilian agencies struggle to operate effectively. This reasoning also rests on a long-standing doctrine within the Indonesian military that its mission extends beyond combat to nation-building. Under the current administration, this also reflects the securitization of development goals, particularly food self-sufficiency, which the government increasingly frames as matters of national resilience and security.
While some might claim these units could support resistance efforts in the later stages of (a highly unlikely) major invasion scenario, their capacity to deter or delay a capable adversary is minimal. More-plausible pacing scenarios for Indonesia are less about a direct land invasion and more about regional crises that put pressure on its air and maritime domains. These include spillover from a South China Sea conflict that could challenge Indonesia's sovereignty through coercion and gray-zone actions, or a Taiwan Strait crisis that could disrupt sea lanes, force large-scale evacuations of Indonesian citizens, and lead to a surge of foreign military forces operating in – and in the worst case fighting within – Indonesia's airspace and waters. In these more realistic scenarios, lightly armed territorial units designed primarily not for combat offer limited, if any, strategic value.
The aforementioned weak link between the expansion and any clearly articulated threat(s) may lead some observers to question whether non-external security motives are at play, especially amid the already-growing military intrusion into civilian affairs.
Budgets stretched, modernization squeezed
The financial implications of almost tripling the Indonesian military's manpower are enormous. Such an expansion will inevitably divert resources away from Indonesia's already-delayed military modernization. The current administration has drastically raised the defense budget to $20 billion this year, but maintaining a massively enlarged force will absorb a considerable portion of this increase, leaving less funding for the capabilities Indonesia actually needs to face current and future security challenges.
This unprecedented expansion could worsen Indonesia's long-standing budgetary imbalance. For years, analysts have pointed out that too much of the country's defense budget is spent on personnel costs and routine spending, while too little is allocated to equipment, readiness, and investment in modern capabilities. This issue remains unresolved. Just last July, the defense minister stated that 50 percent of the defense budget goes to personnel expenditure.
The long-term fiscal risks are even more concerning. Unlike in many countries, where military service can be relatively short-term, almost all Indonesian military personnel serve until they retire, thereby imposing decades-long financial obligations not only on them but also on their family. Consequently, future administrations will inherit this burden.
Unless Indonesia's fiscal capacity expands significantly and consistently, or the next administration reverses the expansion, the country may end up with an unaffordable military institution that limits its ability to invest in modern weapons, sustain readiness, and adapt to evolving threats. Despite ambitious targets of 8 percent economic growth by 2029 – the same year the massive military expansion is supposed to be completed – recent shortfalls in tax revenue and a widening budget deficit raise further financial concerns.
Institutional bottlenecks
Beyond the budgetary burden, the planned expansion threatens to overwhelm an institution that is already grappling with deep structural imbalances. The Indonesian military has long struggled with promotion bottlenecks, uneven manpower distribution, and a rank structure that does not align with available positions.
A report by an Indonesian media, Kompas, highlighted this chronic problem: Around 450 colonels and other senior officers currently have no positions to occupy, while at the same time, there is an acute shortage of roughly 50,000 personnel at the lieutenant colonel, major, captain, and first lieutenant levels. This shows that the existing system of promotion, assignment, and career management are already under great strain.
In this sense, expanding the force to more than a million personnel will almost certainly worsen these longstanding bottlenecks – both now and in the decades ahead. A massive influx of new soldiers will create an even larger cohort progressing through the ranks, intensifying competition for limited positions and increasing the number of senior officers with no meaningful roles.
This raises a dilemma: Should the Indonesian Military, especially the army, first fill the shortages in existing units, or divert those desperately needed officers and non-commissioned officers to staff the new battalions? Without a clear answer, the risk is that both suffer; existing units remain undermanned, while new battalions are formed without the experienced leadership needed for effective functioning.
Quantity at the expense of quality?
In effect, the extraordinary surge in demand to fill both new and existing units is already reshaping the Indonesian military's recruitment and training system, with the institution now shortening its training pipeline to meet these targets.
For instance, academy education for future second lieutenants has been cut from four years to three. Jakarta has also shortened the basic training period for enlisted personnel and non-commissioned officers. At the same time, to widen the recruitment pool, the Indonesian Army has lowered height requirements and increased the maximum age for enlisted and non-commissioned officer recruits.
The concern is clear: These adjustments may inevitably come at the expense of standards, discipline, and overall quality. An overstretched recruitment and training system may fail to properly screen, mentor, and evaluate the massive influx of new personnel effectively. In addition, bringing in such a huge number of recruits within a short period will make monitoring, evaluating, and maintaining quality and discipline across the ranks significantly harder.
All in all, Indonesia's plan to create 750 new territorial infantry battalions rests on an unclear threat perception, offers limited strategic value in a modern conflict, and diverts scarce resources from essential modernization in the air, maritime, space, and cyber domains. It also risks overwhelming an organization already facing chronic promotion logjams, uneven force distribution, and an overstretched recruitment pipeline. Compressed training and massive personnel inflows further threaten long-term discipline and force quality.
Beyond its domestic implications, this approach also carries consequences for Indonesia's role as a regional security player. Such a massive, land-heavy expansion of defense posture does not align with the priorities of many regional partners, who are placing more emphasis on air, naval, cyber, and space capabilities. At the same time, maintaining a much larger force would consume a large chunk of the ongoing growth in defense spending, leaving fewer resources for capability development, joint exercises, and procurement programs that underpin security cooperation with other nations. Together, this mismatch in threat perception and resource allocation may limit Jakarta's ability to credibly contribute to regional security initiatives and align its force development with the evolving defense priorities of its external partners.
If implemented as proposed, the plan could leave Indonesia with a military that is significantly larger on paper but far weaker in actual capability, readiness, and strategic relevance.
[Muhammad Fauzan Malufti is an Indonesian defense analyst. His analysis mostly focuses on Indonesia's defense diplomacy, arms modernization, and civil-military relations. He runs @Jatosint on X (formerly Twitter), which tracks national security issues related to Indonesia.]
Source: https://warontherocks.com/2026/01/indonesias-one-million-soldiers-questions