How Myanmar’s Depleted Military Is Targeting Schoolchildren to Ensure Its Future

By expanding military-run schools and summer training courses to include thousands of schoolchildren, Myanmar’s depleted armed forces are targeting teenagers to grow the next generation of soldiers.

After the military’s lethal crackdowns on peaceful anti-coup protests killed hundreds of demonstrators in early 2021, the regime faced a severe and sudden consequence: new cadet enrollment at its academies collapsed.

The latest batch of Defense Services Academy (DSA) entrants, 2025’s Intake 71, comprised only about 70 cadets, according to former army Captain Zin Yaw, who joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) following the 2021 military coup.

To address the crisis and ensure a future supply of recruits, the regime has ramped up the reopening of summer marine and aviation youth training courses at its air and naval bases across the country since 2023, providing basic to advanced training for thousands of high school students, according to the regime’s military.

The summer courses were launched in 2014 but suspended for four years, from 2019 to 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The regime reopened the summer courses in 2023, taking in around 1,500 students each year.

At a meeting with attendees of the latest marine and aviation youth training courses in May this year, Ye Win Oo, the new Myanmar military chief and a trusted confidant of coup leader Min Aung Hlaing, stressed the importance of young people to the military’s future.

He said the summer courses are training youth to support national defense and to develop human resources for the military.

He added that the trainees must understand the vital importance of the country’s land, water and skies, as they would become the next generation tasked with defending the country.

Those accepted into the aviation and marine youth training programs are mostly outstanding students and come from families that are wealthy or have ties to the military, according to military defectors.

By offering practical training and interesting activities including excursions, the military is trying to instill in outstanding schoolchildren a desire to join its air force and navy once they finish their basic high school education, observers said.

Ex-Capt. Zin Yaw said the summer youth training courses are aimed at pre-selecting and recruiting outstanding and qualified students who are passionate about joining the military’s air and naval forces while they are still young.

Traditionally, the military selects the most outstanding and physically fit cadets from the Defense Services Academy for its air and naval forces, which drains manpower from its infantry and other ground combat forces.

“Rather than having to recruit forces for its navy and air force only after they arrive at the military academy, the intention is to pre-select and recruit qualified schoolchildren from the very beginning,” Zin Yaw said.

Due to its relentless daily atrocities against civilians since the 2021 coup, the regime’s military has been widely condemned both domestically and internationally as a terrorist organization, an enemy of the people and a national disgrace.

Swe Taw, a former army major now participating in the CDM, argues that the military’s summer training courses represent a calculated effort to reshape its image among future generations.

By familiarizing young people with basic military structures, the regime aims to gradually entice them into joining the armed forces, he said.

Furthermore, under Ye Win Oo, the military has launched military-run public Youth Education Training Schools starting in the 2026-27 academic year. The first two schools have already opened but accept male students only: one in Naypyitaw and another in the military garrison town of Yemon in Yangon’s Hlegu Township.

These new institutions directly target civilian high school students in Grades 10 through 12, aged 16 to 19. Applicants must undergo strict screening procedures, including medical examinations, and apply under rules similar to those required for officer training at the DSA.

According to enrollment announcements and reports from military propaganda platforms, students will be provided with free accommodation, meals, healthcare and both school and military uniforms. They will also receive basic essentials, including stationery and other teaching aids.

Additionally, students will be paid a monthly stipend ranging from 30 to 50 percent of a new military recruit’s basic salary, depending on their grade level.

The military has announced that students who pass the matriculation exam and meet the prescribed qualifications are allowed to apply to military universities and institutes, such as the DSA, Defense Services Technology Academy and Defense Services Medical Academy.

Those who pass the exam but whose results don’t meet those standards are allowed to apply for the Computer Diploma Sergeant/Clerk Course, or the Level 3 Medical Assistant Course at military training schools.

Speaking to pro-regime propaganda vlogger Chit Thae, the military officer in charge of the military school in Yemon said students who receive the state-funded education are required to join the armed forces.

While enrollment is below the target, the schools have started operating, with most students being children of serving soldiers, according to military defectors.

To meet quotas, local administrators have been ordered to recruit children from poor families, and among squatters and marginalized communities, promising free education funded by the state, according to Yangon-based anti-regime group Scout Yangon.

“Sending a child to these schools is the same as handing them over to the army. They provide free supplies including military uniforms. There is no way this is just about education,” a parent told The Irrawaddy.

A teacher of Grade 12 students said the military is officially recruiting schoolchildren from public schools for its armed forces while snatching young people, some aged just 18, from residential wards under its forced conscription law.

“These schools are definitely intended to recruit children into the military,” he said.

The teacher added, “I want children to have freedom and the right to make their own choices. But these schools are more of a forced system where children are shoved into a mold that has been created for the armed forces.”

Army defector Zin Yaw noted that the ultimate objective of these military-run schools and summer training courses is simply to secure a permanent supply of core soldiers.

All of these programs are designed to pit youth against youth on the battlefield, Zin Yaw said, after the regime realized that the striking power of Generation Z had pushed the entire military apparatus to the brink of collapse shortly after the coup.

“The military found it extremely difficult to fend off the youth,” he said. “So, I see their intention as recruiting young people to their side, allowing them to use their own youth faction to counterattack the revolutionary youth on the other side.”