Brazilian Military
Today, the Brazilian Armed Forces of the Forcas Armadas Brasileiras is made up of the Brazilian Army, the Brazilian Air Force, and the Brazilian Navy which includes the Brazilian Marine Corps and the Brazilian Naval Aviation. The State’s Military Police is described as an ancillary force of the army, and all the different military branches are described as part of the Ministry of Defense. The oldest of these Brazilian Armed Forces is the Brazilian Navy. Brazil’s military is the most powerful of all South American militaries, and the same goes for each of its military branches.
In general, South American has been a relatively peaceful continent, and wars there have been fairly rare. Brazil hasn’t had a territory invaded since the War of the Triple Alliance in 1865. Brazil also has no territorial disputes with any of its neighbors, nor does it have bitter rivalries, though they do exist within the country, as in the case of Chile and Bolivia.
What makes protection of Brazilian borders difficult is that it is the only country besides Chine and Russia that shares land borders with ten or more nations. It also has over seven thousand kilometers of coastline that need to be patrolled and defended. This amounts to about eight and a half million square kilometers that the Armed Forces have to patrol and four and a half million square kilometers of territorial waters to defend. Significant amounts of funding and man power are necessary to achieve this goal.
The greatest amount of the Defense budge is absorbed by personnel and payments and pensions, which limits the amount of investments that can be made in new equipment and maintenance. Between 2001 and 2007, only about six billion dollars were invested in the military. For 2008 and alone, Brazil hopes to invest over five and a half billion dollars in new military equipment.
Since the 1990s, Brazil has been relocating forces according to the national security need of patrolling all of its land orders. Despite all of these efforts, the presence of the Armed Forces on the borders of Brazilian Amazon regions is still sparse and disperse, there are only twenty-eight border detachments in that area which totals about sixteen hundred soldiers. Fortunately in May of 2008, the Brazilian Navy announced new plans to begin repositioning its forces through out Brazil.
The ages for voluntary service in Brazil are between the ages of seventeen and forty-five. An increasing percentage of the different ranks are being held by “long-service” volunteer professionals. In a 2005 estimate, Brazil’s military consisted of thirty-three million males between the ages of nineteen and forty-nine and thirty-eight million females between the ages of nineteen and forty-nine, all fit for military service. The males of Brazil are required to enlist for twelve months of military service on their eighteenth birthday, but most that are enlisted are dismissed and do not serve at all. In most cases, the service is performed in a military base that is as close as possible to the person’s home. Those planning to attend college or who hold a permanent job are not required to serve.