What to do about our Selective Service System? Who must serve when not everybody serves?
After a recent article I wrote in these very digital pages on the military’s recruiting challenges, a friend asked what a new draft would look like.
It’s a good question involving challenging questions for our government and nation. Gender, race, health, socio-economic status, scholastic achievement, and more factors are involved.
Project 100,000
We had drafts, or mandatory military service, in every major war, including the Cold War. We moved to an All-Volunteer Service model in 1973, primarily due to growing resistance in the later years of the Vietnam War. Resistance to the draft, or mandatory military service, intensified with Project 100,000, a program implemented in August 1966.
This project sought to partially meet expanding requirements for personnel while avoiding a politically charged reversal of draft exemptions for post-secondary education students. Project 100,000 expanded draft eligibility to those previously unqualified due to low scores on aptitude tests. Resistance to and dissatisfaction with this project inside the military establishment and the nation’s ire at the war’s execution led to the emergence of the All-Volunteer Force.
The advent of the AVF did not end the draft. Our Selective Service System remains in effect. Federal law requires nearly all male US citizens and male immigrants to register at age 18. In a national emergency, the Selective Service System will use the registry to provide personnel to the Department of Defense and alternative service for conscientious objectors if authorized by the President and Congress.
Outdated System of Enlistment
That’s the current system. The age cohort and the male-only requirement look solidly to the outdated past for guidance. Plainly stated, the bias is toward combat infantry based on old warfare models dating back to World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. We have compelling contemporary evidence that this prepares for your grandfather’s war.
The war in Ukraine is this era’s Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. That war in Spain previewed and tested many of the weapons and tactics emerging in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Strategic bombing is one notable example, and Picasso’s Guernica memorializes it. If only we had paid more attention.
The Ukraine War is sending an ever-growing variety and volume of indicators of what is critical for today’s battlefields in these early days of “big change” in warfare. Ukraine is remarkably agile in its response to changing threats.
Their original draft decision was to avoid sending their young men to the front, saving them to help rebuild their society when the conflict ended. Conscription was for men aged 27-60. Shortages are compelling Ukraine to look at lowering the age to 25. Ukraine faces a demographic crisis as it stands against a much larger enemy. More adaptation is likely.
We need to pay close attention to that small nation that laid waste to the Russian Army. Thanks to Ukraine, the Russian Army is not what it used to be or what we thought it was. Ukraine also defeated the Russian Black Sea Fleet without engaging in a symmetric ship vs. ship fight.
Ukraine did not have the vessels. As it turned out, skillfully deployed shore-based weapons proved just as deadly to a fleet as they were at our Fort McHenry in September 1812. In this era of change, at least, this remains true.
Shifting from Conventional Militaries
The war is shifting from the conventional ground war that brought back memories of the searing images of the worst of the Western Front stalemate in World War I to a high-tech war that favors Ukraine. Drones and robots of many varieties are Ukraine’s most pressing needs, and their domestic production of air, land, and sea drones is due to reach 2.5 million to 3.0 million this year. They did this while under fire. Our Defense Department’s “Replicator” project would have been thrilled with half that production.
There are reports of direct, real-time communication links between the soldiers in the forward area and the “techies”—presumably civilian as well as military—managing the capabilities, operational profiles, communications links, and other factors of a never-ending variety of unmanned air, land, and sea weapons to stay ahead of Russian countermeasures.
This level of adaptation means there is no bureaucracy and no echelons of approval between the “grunt” at the front and the production base in the “rear,” such as it is in Ukraine. One might also offer that this shift favors forces drawn from a democracy. As Ukraine has shown, the sharing of information and delegating authority downward through the armed forces enables easy adaptation to changes. In contrast, the armed forces of autocrats and dictators become mired in indecision at the top.
In this time of global collapsing order, we must redesign our selective service system. For one thing, it can no longer remain a “boys only” club. For another, it must extend beyond sustaining the uniformed services at the bleeding edge of conflict. Recruitment must encompass all branches and extend to the Marine Corps, Peace Corps, Head Start, and others as needed.
The upper age should be irrelevant—if the US needs the service of an aging titan of tech business, she must be available. Students in “post-secondary school” education (aka College) must be eligible. Certain physical conditions unsuitable for infantry work must now be a factor in a duty assignment process, not a disqualifying defect.
We must look at the Ukraine conflict and others going on—live fire or “gray zone”—in different parts of the world in a critical way to determine needs if we must call on the nation.
The “Manhattan Project,” begun in 1942 and quickly ramping up to 130,000 people in pursuit of a single goal, can be a model. We need to be just as fast and effective.
About the Author: Lieutenant General Wallace “Chip” Gregson
Lieutenant General Wallace “Chip” Gregson joined The Roosevelt Group as a Senior Advisor after over 30 years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps. Prior to retirement, Chip served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. He also served as Commanding General of Marine Corps Forces Pacific and Marine Corps Forces Central Command, where he led and managed over 70,000 Marines and Sailors in the Middle East, Afghanistan, East Africa, Asia and the United States.
