Realities of the draft

The draft has changed since my Father's time. He managed to not go to Vietnam through a happy coincidence of a high lottery number and a PhD candidacy. Were he born one day either side of where he was and his numbers would have been really low, like 19 and 38. I do not believe the academic deferment was actually needed.

Not that it'd work these days. Take at look at the material hosted at the Selective Service website. After Vietnam it was decided to revise the Selective Service System to be more fair. Fair being, of course, a relative term. Women are still not required to register, and there is a Supreme Court case from the mid eighties that supports this disparity.

The old system worked something like this:

• Draft-age was 18-26
• When a draft was announced, a lottery was held for the birthdays in a year to determine the order in which the birthdays would be drafted
• When a date was called, all men in the ages of 18-26 with that birth-date would be called.
• Deferments or outright exemptions were granted for a number of reasons

The new system has some significant changes to it:

• Draft-age remains 18-26. No change.
• When a draft is announced, a lottery will be held to determine the order of call-up, based on birth-date. No change.
• When a lottery number is called up, all men aged 20 with that birth-date will be called up
• When a new number is needed, the next number's 20-year-old men will be called up
• Only after all 20 year old men are drafted will the lottery go around to pick up the 21 year olds, Then it goes 22, 23, 24, 25, and finally, 19, then 18.
• Draftees have the RIGHT to personally go before their draft-board to review their case
• The number of exemptions is dramatically reduced.

As you can see, significant differences. The key point to remember is that the "Age of risk," is no longer effectively 18-26, it is 19. A much smaller time-frame. For the potential draft to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the chances of calling up even 21 year olds is next to nil.

A new draft would need to increase force levels to the point where we're doing the job effectively, and also to accommodate the service terms of the existing volunteer forces. Stop-loss orders only go so far, afterall. We'll see how things turn out, and the events that drive the decision to start a draft will be played out in the second half of this year.