It is impossible now for America to have a Draft.

All the military base closures over the last few decades....ain't no military bases left to house a Drafted military.

Ain't no military hardware left FOR a Drafted military to use. IT's alll gone.

Originally posted by MadhatterTheGreat
LOL. Sorry about the thread title, I was reading up on Hagel as I was posting the thread. Link should be fixed.

Damn it I thought we were onto a new conspiracy Charlie Rangel is Hagel?

As for the draft - the military would have to change the fundamentals of its leadership dogma to manage and deploy a draft force.

All of our leadership techniques are geared toward incentivizing good behavior and inspiring compliance in servicemen and women who are volunteers with positive rewards.

For instance in a volunteer military the penalty for poor performance and discipline problems in training is a discharge – this works because the people want to be there...they don't want to be kicked out.

The military can't use the same technique for draftees who in many cases don’t not want to be there anyway. All they’d have to do is perform poorly on purpose or be disrespectful/uncooperative so they can be discharged.

That would be in effect rewarding them for their negative behavior. In a draft Army there has to be a place that is worse than the general soldier population for poor performers and discipline problems - retraining battalions and disciplinary barracks etc.

Poor performance in a draft military used to result in corrective training and or a sort of confinement and relegation to mundane physical (hard labor) duties until what would be their normal discharge date anyway. The conditions would be even more restrictive than the life of normal service members so that people would not want to serve their tours in these conditions but turn toward compliance so they could have more privlegdes.

Modern military leadership is positive reinforcement and reward oriented rather than punitive – the whole tone and style of leadership would need to change to manage a draft quality force.

As a 24 year veteran – I’d rather have a unit of 20 men who wanted to be there than 100 who had to be there. You’d have to be constantly watching over your shoulder and pushing them to do what was right rather than counting on their professionalism. No career Officer I know wants a draft Army.

All that said, I don't think the career politicians really care what the professional military wants. They as in all things - think they know best.

Seems like having a draft is something that the US will find necessary.

I remember reading that budget cuts are forcing the Army (just the Army, since they're the largest) to drop as much dead weight as possible. The article I read was about how they're starting with the people who are out of shape first by being stricter about passing the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test?).

Is the future a leaner experienced Army with a draft in place should the need for more troops arise?