[extropy-chat] Re: Fwd: Manditory draft for your child?

[Trend Ologist]

A guy with ties to the Bush administration told me the
military doesn't need a draft. However he said if (and
I mean if) a crisis arose there is a skeletal plan
somewhere to draft "three or four million".
That's all she wrote.


> Is this your prediction or do you have evidence?
> 
> Why would they want one? How do you imagine a draft
> would be useful for 
> today's military professional culture, weaponry,
> skillsets, and missions?
> 
> Current plans are to sharpen the military's edge --
> keep the same manpower 
> levels, but restructure skillset and positioning.
> From _Endgame: The 
> Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror_ by Lt.
> Gen. McInerney and Maj. 
> Gen. Vallely (p.139), which is representative of the
> ideas under discussion --
> 
> >It is true that our military is overstretched, and
> that our National Guard 
> >and Reserve forces are overburdened. But we believe
> that this is not 
> >because our military force structure is too small,
> but because it has been 
> >given tasks beyond the waging of war. Secretary
> Rumsfeld already has 
> >identified approximately 245,000 jobs across the
> Department of Defense 
> >that could be outsourced to contractors. Our
> recommendation: outsource the 
> >jobs, use the savings to improve the lot of the
> "trigger pullers," and 
> >create new frontline fighting units while phasing
> out paper-pushing ones. 
> >In other words, change the "tail to tooth" ratio so
> there is less tail and 
> >more teeth.
> >
> >Personnel are the highest priced item in the
> Department of Defense budget, 
> >so rather than reflexively expand the number of
> billets, the Pentagon 
> >should make better and more efficient use of the
> current personnel levels. 
> >... *Every* member of the armed forces should be
> combat zone deployable. 
> >If they aren't, their function should be
> outsourced, or eliminated.
> 
> BTW, I find that examining the US military at its
> most competent provides 
> useful insights on what we may see in other arenas
> in coming decades. For 
> instance, our tanks (Iraq) and fighter jets (Kosovo)
> are lethal against 
> opposing forces at ranges well beyond enemy
> detection, let alone their 
> weapons' range. (All else apart, this was very
> upsetting for Iraqi tank 
> commanders whose tanks were abruptly killed by an
> unseen foe.)
> 
> Imagine that kind of differential competence
> pervading and accelerating.
> 
> 
> -- David Lubkin.
> 
> 
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