On The Draft: The US Army is Built for Volunteers.

Introducing the draft today would be hard and detrimental to the force. It would not simply be a matter of bringing in several hundred thousand draftees every year like the pre-VOLAR days. Today's soldiers are expected to know a lot more, and be able to do a lot more. The volunteer Army has that luxury because it is able to train soldiers for much longer periods of time, and have a greater mix of experienced soldiers in units.

Returning to a draft would significantly reduce the average years of service soldiers have in any given unit. Instead of having most soldiers with 4 or 5 years of service at the platoon level, who would be able to mentor, train, and supervise new enlistees, we would be back to having NCO's with barely 2 or 3 years taking soldiers fresh from basic to war.

Much of the equipment and training is designed for a force that has the depth of experience available now. Much of it would be nearly useless if given to a platoon with just a few experienced soldiers. Simply maintaining the equipment properly often takes years of experience, years that would on average not be available in a draft army.

Either the draft would have to be for longer than 2 years (possibly 3 years like the normal enlistment, but maybe longer if draftees do not reenlist at the same rate as volunteers...which seems likely), a restructuring of the army to go back to simpler systems, or possibly having a draft service that does support roles rather than warfighting.

Currently, for example, much of the draftee type work is being done by contractors. We could replace the 100,000 kitchen workers, sand bag fillers, and gate guards with drafted soldiers and probably get something useful out of them. I don't think this would really help the manning shortage, since those jobs are already contracted out, and is probably cheaper and with better results than a draft would provide. But it is where 2 year involuntary soldiers would be most useful today.

Alternatively, the military could get away from bonus based enlistment drives, and provide a serious raise to actual wages. A $10,000 across the board raise, for example, would not only be an enducement to enlist, but to reenlist. Keeping experienced soldiers will almost always be cheaper and better than trying to produce new ones, and soldiers do face real world issues of paying bills once they leave the military: having the wages high enough for soldiers to find outside offers less appealing would keep the experience in the service. Bonuses for reenlistment work, but soldiers are smart enough to understand that the bonus system is used to keep them in until they have served long enough that they have little option but to finish. Then the military screws you and there are no bonuses. Real salaries would work better.

2 million active military personnel would cost an additional 20 billion dollars annually with that kind of raise. While that is a lot of money, it is probably not so much more than the cost of instituting and sustaining a draft, particularly when other societal costs are factored in. Bonuses would still be needed in some specialties, but for the most part that would be enough to keep a lot of soldiers chugging away in uniform rather than leaving the security of what they know for greener pastures in the civilian world.

Human Contrasts: A Comparison of Two Soldiers

A platoon makes a long run in uparmored HMMWV's to a facility outside baghdad to a remote training base.  In the 120 degree heat, the vehicles struggle with the 12,000 pound weight.  On the trip home, two vehicles stall, probably due to vapor lock.  The temperatures peg out on the gauges, and the platoon limps home, thankfully without any contact.

The platoon sergeant does not want to be caught like that again, and starts to think about what he could do to prevent it.  There is nothing in the army inventory designed to help.  He makes some metal hood scoops to force air into the engine compartment, and that helps some, but not in stalled traffic.  He visits DRMO (defense reutilization and maintenance organization), which is essentially a junkyard in Baghdad, full of blown up HMMWVs.  He pulls apart the heavy duty air conditioning units and takes the 14 inch 24 volt fans out, cuts holes in the hoods of the HMMWV's to install the fans, and the next time out the gauges never get above 220 degrees, with no difficulties or performance issues.  And he makes the trucks look like it was done by a professional.

The other soldier was initially assigned in that same position, but was fired by his commander for lacking leadership and soldier skills.   He was simply not capable of leadership of soldiers potentially under fire.  They are both Sergeants First Class.  He was assigned to the remote base the other soldier visited. 

There are only about 25 American soldiers assigned to this base, with about 500 Iraqi's, and deep in Indian Country.  The Americans are in a mini compound within the greater Iraqi compound.  The American compound has two radio commands that must be immediately followed by a battle drill:  one is "Mayday" which naturally means someone is in mortal peril, and everyone should drop what they are doing and find the person to help him.  The other is "Alamo" which means they are in danger of being over run, and everyone should go to their assigned battle station and prepare for the oncoming hoards.

The quiet of the work day was suddenly punctuated by "Mayday Mayday, Mayday!"  Everyone dutifully dropped what they were doing to search for soldier number 2, because they recognized his voice.  Very quickly they saw him in a HMMWV in the parking lot, with his face pressed to the window, with both hands near his head, screaming "mayday" in the radio.

They ran over to him, grabbed the door handle and opened it.  The soldier fell out, and said "I locked myself in."  He thought he was going to die from the heat.

If you are unfamiliar with an uparmored HMMWV, there are some things you should know: the doors are very heavy, and the windows are very small.  But there are 4 doors, and a gunners hatch that opens from the inside.  The doors open fairly easily on flat ground, which this was.  The only way to lock a door from the outside is to put a lock or piece of metal through the hasp.  None of the doors were locked, and though the windows are small, this particular soldier could have crawled out one.  Not to mention the gunner's hatch.

The first soldier is a stellar example of American ingenuity and mission first thinking, coupled with great leadership.  Soldier number 2 was just promoted to Master Sergeant.