TOPICS
TOPICS
ADVICE+DISSENT: Viewpoint Forget the Draft
Fix the volunteer force and they will come.
For the first time since ending the draft in 1973, the United States is putting its all-volunteer military to the test. For the most part, the force is meeting the challenge for operations worldwide, but there are signs of strain. The Army is dipping into the store of recruits it had banked for next year, and taking the unusual step of calling up members of the Individual Ready Reserve. Recruitment and retention in the National Guard are below needed levels. Units stationed in Korea and at elite training centers are being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the services are turning more often to contractors to handle jobs that come too close for comfort to military combat or other core functions of government.
Some members of Congress have jumped to the conclusion that the United States should restore conscription. But returning to the draft is the wrong answer. The military faces people problems that are deeper and more serious than the troop shortages, but the problems can and should be solved in the context of the all-volunteer force.
Even if the nation decided to double the number of active-duty troops in deployable Army units (currently about 300,000), it could do so by adding military recruiters and increasing the bonuses paid to individuals when they join or re-enlist. Moreover, bringing back conscription would greatly compound discipline problems and increase turnover, straining the training system and potentially compromising military outcomes.
A draft would do nothing to help the Defense Department solve its more serious military personnel problems. Indeed, the biggest problem the department faces is not that it lacks people, but that it has the wrong people for many of its jobs.
In recent years, the services were overstaffed in about 40 percent of their occupations, even as they suffered shortages in about 30 percent. True, the Army is short of infantry and military police, but it has temporary authority to increase its ranks by 30,000 troops. By contrast, the Air Force is overstaffed by 24,000 members and the Navy wants to thin its ranks by 25,000 sailors. Both the Navy and the Air Force are short-staffed in critical skills such as electronic systems repair and some information specialties, and they have too many people in mundane occupations.
Under the leadership of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark, the Navy is taking steps to reverse its staffing imbalances by training sailors to work in a wider variety of positions, improving educational opportunities, offering cash bonuses and an online auction to attract people into hard-to-fill jobs, turning to civilians for jobs that do not require service members, and shedding unnecessary positions.
Staffing imbalances have roots in the systemic flaws of military pay and retirement structures. These flaws existed well before the all-volunteer force was created and will persist even if the United States returns to a draft. Even Clark's valuable reforms cannot correct them.
The staffing problems stem in part from the pay equality that is a hallmark of U.S. military compensation. With some exceptions, the size of a service member's paycheck is determined not by his or her military occupation, but by rank, time in service, work location and family status. As a result, a married sergeant at Fort Bragg, N.C., with seven years in the Army typically brings in the same monthly pay as anyone else with that rank, time in service and family status. Less than 4 percent of the money the government spends on military pay goes toward bonuses and special pay that can vary by occupation. That stands in stark contrast with the private sector, where pay varies widely according to occupations. An information specialist with several years' experience in the private sector might earn twice as much as a cook; in the military, the two would likely earn the same.
Service members with technology skills often are underpaid in comparison with those in the private sector, while the ones who lack those skills might be paid substantially more than their private sector counterparts. Pay equality sets up a skewed incentive structure. Service members whose skills are highly valued in the private sector have a strong financial incentive to leave the service, while those with more mundane skills have a strong incentive to stay.
The problem is exacerbated by an outdated, rigid retirement system that makes no distinction across occupations. The military provides no pension for members who serve less than 20 years. For those who stay on active duty for at least 20 years, it provides an immediate lifetime annuity. This "cliff vesting" induces people, regardless of their occupations, to serve for 20 years and then, because the pension is immediate and generous, to depart shortly afterwards.
All four services have ambitious plans to transform their forces and the way they conduct military operations. The future forces are meant to be more agile and autonomous and to rely more on information and technology systems. Transformation will exacerbate the problems posed by the military pay and retirement schemes.
Structural ills are best treated by structural remedies. The nation must find a way to bring greater variability to military pay, allowing the services to pay competi-tive wages. The Defense Department and Congress should work together to improve bonuses for people in critical, understaffed occupations. New bonuses could be offset in the budget by minimizing across-the-board raises that fuel the structural imbalances. Over the longer term, they should work toward a more flexible pay structure that accounts for differences among occupations. In addition, work should begin now to develop a less rigid military retirement system with earlier vesting opportunities and greater variation by military occupation.
Bringing back the draft could help populate the lowest ranks with young, inexperienced recruits, but America's military power depends on well-trained professionals serving in the right jobs. Filling the ranks to meet our future needs requires structural reform, not a new draft.
COMMENTS
- I also agree that there is no need to reinstate the draft, now or in the future, barring a national catastrophe. The Democrats who floated this trial balloon, like Rangel, are despicable, and are just trying to undermine the Bush administration by doing so. Our current military leaders, who lived through the Vietnam debacle, don't want or need a draft. Today's volunteer military is comprised of motivated, intelligent young men and women who want to serve their country, and can be trained to utilize the vast array of technology available to our current military forces. Why insert disgruntled, angry, or lower quality youth into the military, for a 2 year hitch, when it takes 2 years or more just to train them properly? The draft brings with it a whole series of problems that the military and this country neither wants, or needs. It's just another phony issue in an exceptionally nasty, dirty campaign against the President. GovExec.com reader Posted October 5, 2004 12:10 PM
- Having served and led in both draft and non draft military I would never advocate the draft. I get sick thinking of the disaster of the later draft days of project 100,000...the insertion of the lowest mental class draftees. I spent 90%of my leadership time on 10% of the troops who didn't have basic social or mental skills to serve properly. Your railing on the post service pension of 20 year retirees is both irresponsible and probably unresearched at the ground level. There is really no relationship between a career at MIT (with which I am familiar) and a career in the Military. To live in the military 7/24/365 world requires a totally different mindset than trying to adjust the very workable system with a 10000 mile screw driver from the banks of the Charles River. Be a good Beaver and visit 100% disabled veterans who for generations had to give up their EARNED retirement funds in order to get health care and disability compensation from a Veterans administration that until the last 10 years was not the quality of any civilian hospital. For your info I am a well educated, double masters degreed officer with manpower analysis, personnel,and education/training administration certification. I am 100% disabled, wear leg braces, had to learn to drive my car with hand controls, and because of the degree of my disability face an unemployable future. Get out from under the golden dome and come on down to SC, stay a week with me and two of my disabled cousins and see how we have lived with just that VA compensation. Get real Cindy. Get those military boots on your feet before you write anything more. VC Mullen Posted January 12, 2005 12:50 PM
- For every political pressure that favors a resumption of the draft, there's a far stronger one that stops it. Congress, the Bush Administration and the Pentagon are all well aware of it. Presently, polls show plenty of public concern as to how the war on Iraq is going awry. But as of yet there's little in the way of an organized anti-war movement, and college and high school campuses are particularly quiet. Decisionmakers are well aware that the absence of a strong anti-war movement is closely tied to the absence of a draft, and that if one were implemented for an already-dubious war, the campuses would explode. Politicians have every reason to avoid that headache; as in Vietnam, a strong, well-organized opposition to the war would make a tremendous difference in what options politicians can consider. For that reason, resumption of the draft is nearly impossible. Both Bush and Kerry are espousing policies that invite the US into a worsening chaos in Iraq for years to come, and the time might come where a draft might be considered as a last resort. But it won't come any time soon because there's simply too much opposition from the Pentagon and Congress, not to mention a majority of the public. GovExec.com reader Posted September 29, 2004 1:11 PM
Cindy Williams is a principal research scientist in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editor of Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System (MIT Press, 2004).
