A  questionnaire will be sent to all 17-year-olds in the Netherlands to gauge their willingness and suitability to sign up for a job in the armed forces, starting on Tuesday.

Its aim is to “support the military service model and the availability of the armed forces as a whole,” caretaker defence minister Gijs Tuinman said in a briefing to MPs.

The survey asks the teenagers about how they like to spend their leisure time and what they find important in a job. They are also asked about their fitness level and which army units appeal to them most were they to consider an army job.

“Staffing levels will have to go up in case of a crisis or war, or the run-up to a war,” Tuinman said.

The ministry of defence is aiming to grow from some 800,000 staff to around 100,000, of whom a large number will be reservists. That number may double, Tuinman told MPs earlier. There are currently some 44,000 professional soldiers, 27,000 civilian staff and 8,500 reservists in the Dutch armed forces.

The idea for the survey comes from Sweden but unlike their Swedish peers, Dutch youngsters are not obliged to fill it out. Tuinman is not ruling out that it may in future become a legal requirement.

All Dutch citizens between 17 and 35 are registered for military service in an emergency, but the obligation to report for duty was scrapped in 1997.

According to defence specialist Peter Wijninga, the move is a good first step but he doubts the voluntary nature of the appeal will be enough. “I am afraid the tools available are insufficient to realise the goals in the short term. A return of the draft would be required at least,” he told broadcaster NOS.

Wijninga said that politicians would not be overly keen to promote the idea because it is “an unpopular subject”. “So they are tiptoeing around it,” he said. The voluntary nature of the questionnaire will affect the response and not give a good indication of the willingness of young people to join the army, he said.

Tuinman said the questionnaire will only become compulsory if “the Russian threat accelerates or the “army staffing drive stagnates”. Neither is currently the case, he said.