General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIMO, if DT45 wants to put us in the way of a war, he should face the draft and
its problems. Will women be called, will religious non combat be called, will gays be called, and will handicap be called.
You broke it, you own it.
pansypoo53219
(20,977 posts)Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)Much of my time in the USAR was spend in units who have the primary mission of being in charge of the influx of trainees if a draft happens. Reserve Drill Sergeants and all the support structure and chain of command that goes with it.
We used to have facilities set aside for us in that event at various training bases. Mostly old WWII and 1960's barracks. Those are all gone now.
I spent a lot of time in exercises where we wargamed every aspect of it, from how we would receive draftees to the logistics of equipping and feeding them to training challenges.
The bottom line is that a draft like we had in the 60's and 70's is unworkable today. American young adults are not fit enough to even draft. Too much obesity, too many dependent upon medication, too many who haven't done any physical labor in their life. Even if you drop the criminal record standards and take people with disqualifying records given all the other issues only around 25-30% of draft age Americans are fit for military service.
So that adds all kinds of hurdles. You can run a huge military Biggest Loser unit but that takes manpower and time and money and will result in lots of injuries that then take more time and manpower and money, before you even get them to start Basic.
You can drop the standards, but that just means more deaths when people don't perform on the battlefield.
We wouldn't be making draft policy, but our consensus was that the only way it would be workable anymore would be a selective draft where instead of taking everyone At random and letting people out for various reasons you bring everyone in random groups in and then select the best among them. Wardare today moves at a massive pace and is more complicated than it ever was, in a draft situation you would need to have trained troops turned out as fast as possible and that would be the only way it was feasible.