Funny, just a week or so ago I heard a radio ad reminding young men that at 18 they must register for the draft. They mentioned some benefits, like eligibility for federal student loans. I can’t recall hearing that type of public service ad for a very long time and it did strike me as very outdated that the requirment is only for men, and not women also.
Also eligibility for federal employment and security clearance. You have to provide your selective service registration number on the SF-86 security investigation form when you get a clearance.
HiMom, a typical aircrew day started when we arrived on base at ‘show time’, about 2 hours prior to our scheduled takeoff time. A normal crew day was only supposed to be 16 hours for a basic crew and 24 hours for an augmented crew. Crew duty was counted from ‘show time’ to landing time. So if show time was 0600, then a normal day could not extend past 2200 hours (10 pm).
During Desert Shield, all aircrews were flying augmented- basically, 3 pilots, 2 engineers and 2 loadmasters. The regulations stated augmented days could only be 24 hours, so if we showed at 0600 on Monday, or day should not last past 0600 Tuesday.
The problem with during the war was the amount of airplanes flying in the same direction, the logistics of refueling and cargo/air plane availability. We would show at the plane, preflight, load and prep for takeoff, then fly the 8-9 hours to dahran, off load, fly to riyahd, off/on load, refuel, fly back to Germany another 8-9 hours. Land in Germany, wait for a refuel spot, refuel, park in another spot and get on crew bus to find out if we had billeting on or off base. All this added up to 30 hours- which was more than allowed so we were given a waiver.
We’d call it a 30 hour day because were only supposed to work 24 hours maximum. It was very tiring, stressful. As a crew, you’d try to coordinate ‘nap’ schedules but sometimes everyone was exhausted. I remember one flight where I was primary engineer and realized I had fallen asleep at my panel - where my job was to monitor all systems, fuel, hydro, environmental, etc…I looked at the pilot and copilot and saw they had also fallen asleep. Good thing for autopilot! We had heard rumors about an aircrew that put the wrong coordinates in their FSAS and ended up flying in the wrong direction…
Sorry for being wordy mcword, 
There are other issues, but I think we have sufficiently overcome them so as to make registration of women feasible. Depending, of course, on the color of the new commander-in-chief.
Both should register, and I’ve thought so since I was draft age myself.
Well, much to my surprise, as a female physician I was eligible to be drafted in the Medical Draft. It was actually a relief to turn 55.
Wait, what does the president’s color have to do with the draft? And what other issues are there?
Absolutely agree. I am surprised that there has not been a law suit about this. Men are required to register to be eligible for Federal Student Aid, but women have not, creating an additional bearer to men attending college (albiet small for the vast majority of men). Sounds like gender discrimination to me.
That being said, people should be allowed to indicate the intent to declare CO on their initial registration. For most of our history this was the case, but since registration was reinstated by Carter, there is no way to indicate this on the registration card.
Gender discrimination regarding who has to register, yes, but how is that a barrier to men attending college - in any amount small or otherwise?
Considering Vietnam is currently one of our regional allies, they may advise differently considering their experiences in fighting them in two wars with them in the '80s.
They weren’t terribly impressed with Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “teach them a lesson”…
You never hear about the medical draft in the USA. It is both men and women equally.
https://www.sss.gov/About/Medical-Draft-in-Standby-Mode
Hey…not useless at all…my son got to use his selective services card as one of his many identification documents to get his new “real ID” drivers license. 
Not sure what S did with any card he may have gotten. I’m pretty sure he registered, as it was something we covered with BScouts, especially all the Eagles, including him. Both he and D have chronic health issues which make poor candidates for being in the service.
Thanks for the 30 hour day explanation. It sounds VERY grueling!
“Depending, of course, on the color of the new commander-in-chief.”
@sylvan8798 - What difference does that make??
@rockymtnhigh - Very interesting. I had not heard of the medical draft. It makes sense but hopefully we will never need it.
Thank you for your service @ChuckleDoodle
Bad choice of metaphors - I was referring to their political bent, but trying to avoid using the word “politics” on CC boards.
I tend to agree that the reality is the draft likely will never be used, the kind of wars the draft was meant to cover were the large scale wars of the past, where there was a need for huge numbers of troops for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons the draft may not be so successful is unless you have a situation, like WWII or WWI, where people see a direct threat out of it, draftees are not exactly going to be enthusiastic, and professional soldiers, even though there can be issues with them, go into it from a very different way. Given the nature of wars we are likely to face, I doubt very much you are going to see global wars of the kind where, for example, the US had 16 million men in arms in WWII and other countries pretty much had large swaths of their male population involved.
As far as the value of draftees, it depends on the motivation as I said up above. In a large scale war like WWII, one of the things to keep in mind is that for every person you had in combat, you had roughly 10 supporting that, units like supply, the trucks that brought the supplies up front, the communications and logistical operations staffs, and in a war like WWII, you don’t really have that choice. In modern warfare, that has changed a bit, they tend to use contractors for some of that, and supply is a lot easier now with the kind of transportation they have that didn’t exist in let’s say WWII (though I would bet that supply still is a mess, soldiers used to kid that the real enemy was supply…). I also would be very, very careful about the history that says how the German and Japanese troops were better, that the US’s big contribution was in wartime production, I think that is both making the Germans and Japanese into these super soldiers, with the US soldiers as foul ups and screw ups stumbling through the war, it is both myth, and to be honest, pretty insulting to those who served.
For example, one of the advantages of draftees, especially in things like among NCO’s and reserve officers, is that they didn’t plan on having a career in the military, and therefore they will be more than willing to duck idiotic orders and to do things that a regular army type would not want to do, for fear of the dreaded black mark on their military jacket. As far as the quality of the soldiers, read accounts of what those draftees did against supposedly invincible troops, things like when Australian, New Zealand and US forces beat back the japanese advance into New Guinea on the Owen Stanley range, or read about the fighting in places like the bulge, or in North Africa, while it wasn’t necessarily heroic, it showed just how well those soldiers could fight, most of them draftees. The Russian Army was heavily conscript, and it wasn’t just weather that beat the Germans back, the Russians took on 100 divisions of Germany’s best, and ended up beating them. Some of the bravest soldiers in WWII were the guys who manned the Red Ball Express, almost entirely black and most were draftees, they drove continuously, took casualties as high as many combat units did, and also did so despite being treated like crap by both officers and men alike.
One of the advantages of the draft is something that I suspect caused problems in Vietnam. My dad served in WWII, in Europe as part of a tank crew under Patton, and in his unit the range of ages was 18-39, and he said having the older guys around helped keep the unit stable, my dad was a young kid in his early 20’s, and appreciated having that. Likewise, with a draft, if it is working right (and it did in WWII), you have a mix of people, in Vietnam the draft hit mostly working class and poor draftees, and those fighting were mostly young, mid 20’s and younger.
Gender discrimination regarding who has to register, yes, but how is that a barrier to men attending college - in any amount small or otherwise?
Men who choose not to register for whatever reason are ineligible for Federal Financial Aid. Many Mennonites and other peace church members find even registering against their faith. At least with the option of noting that they are filing under protest, many such men can clear the hurdle. Currently there is no official way to note a request for CO status on the registration form. For these men it means a loss of financial aid, creating a barrier to college attendance. Mennonite women do not face such a crisis. So in reality,it is both gender and religious discrimination.
My point was that WWII can’t really be used as a way to prove or disprove the effectiveness of the positives or negatives of draftee armies vs professional armies as practically all the armies in the Allied and Axis camps were effectively draftee-based armies and the latter side lost.
There is also some serious misreading of what those historians were saying and completely flipped the point they were making.
Their point was despite the fact the Germans and Japanese had far more extensive military training regimens and draft systems which placed the vast majority of their male populations under military training and refresher courses into their 50’s and '60’s in peacetime, THEY STILL LOST WARS.
The Germans lost both World Wars and the Japanese lost not only WWII, but also the relatively obscure Russo-Japanese Border Wars during the mid-late '30s(Battle of Nomohan and Changkufeng) where the much vaunted IJA got mauled by the Soviets…and this was right in the midst of Stalinist purges of the senior Soviet military leadership.
In contrast, the US despite not having an extensive military draftee system and military training regimen of those societies were able to get themselves rapidly up to speed, get their manufacturing capabilities to full production and beyond, tap into the best military and civilian logistical management practices, and the military instituted much more effective personnel management in terms of troop rotations* to ultimately win the war.
- One example of this was how the US military had a good practice of systematically taking pilots who demonstrated great airmanship in combat back to the states to serve as training instructors as well as giving pilots and troops rotations to give them breaks between battles.
In contrast, the Germans and Japanese didn’t have such systematic practices in place which kept their best pilots and troops fighting till the very end which took a toll in casualties and exhaustion. One effect of this could be seen in the rapid decline in the proficiency of the average German/Japanese pilots in the middle-end of the war as shown in a 1944 battle which became known among US Navy airmen as “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”.
While the Soviet contribution played a major part in the Allied Victory, don’t forget that without US Lend Lease supplies like the trucks* and aircraft early in the war, the Soviets wouldn’t have been able to counterattack and ultimately push the Nazis back as quickly as they did.
- A critical mass of their trucks which ferried supplies and used as platforms for weapons like the "Stalin's Organs" rocket systems were US Lend-Lease from Ford and other US auto manufacturers.
I am not overlooking the value of lend lease or the manufacturing side of things. One of the reasons German and Japnese pilots ended up getting slaughtered was though the US started the war with relatively inferior aircraft, by 1944 the US was flying planes like the P51 Mustang and the P38 in the pacific, and they both ended up decimating the opposing air forces (not to mention that Germany and Japan also suffered from a lack of pilots). Both Germany and Japan also suffered from lack of important supplies, like gasoline, and had trouble replacing equipment. People loved to talk about the superiority of the German tanks, especially the Tiger, but what they leave out is Germany had trouble replacing them, whereas for example with the Sherman, they were producing something like 5000 a month, so if they got blown up, the crew was more valuable than the tank, which could be replaced (not to mention the Tiger and Panzer had severe shortcomings, neither was particularly reliable, and both were tonnage kings, they weighed 10’s of thousands of pounds more than a Sherman, so couldn’t be used as mobile artilery the way the Shermans were.
And no, you cannot necessarily measure the effectiveness of the draft by WWII, or any war, like anything else, there are pluses and minuses, some of which I mentioned. Vietnam was a pretty good example of one of the problems when the draft wasn’t done right, in Vietnam most of the officer corp were regular army, and that was a problem, you had a lot of career officers who went to Vietnam to “punch a ticket” and spent a lot more time from accounts i have read trying to bolster their image, rather than in figuring out how to fight…and as noted, reserve officers don’t give a crap about a black mark in the military, they are going to go back to civilian life after the war and thus have freedom a regular military officer would have.
Like I said in my original post, it depends on the circumstances and what you need. A lot of those draftees in WWII never went near combat, most of them were handling the necessary functions behind the lines, or back home, and it worked pretty well. On the other hand, volunteer military has the advantage that they went into it eyes open and could be a lot more motivated, especially when you get wars where things aren’t so clear cut, where draftees might be less than motivated (vietnam comes to mind, and from what i have been told by guys who served there, Korea).