Women and the draft

[Mr. Harley]

BTW - I do agree that women should have to meet the same standard requirements that men do that are germane to the position being filled. Kudos to KH for admitting that, if women stand G-forces better (and reaction times are the same for obvious reasons) then they should be the ones manning the aircraft.

However, I can think of one combat billet that not only could women, and a smaller subset of men fill. In fact it would improve US hardware in the future! The Soviets used it to keep their tank silohuetes low. Drivers. I cannot remember the precise height, but 5'2" comes to mind as the maximum height for Soviet tank drivers. It let them keep the hulls much lower - the M60 was huge. With women in the draft, you could guarantee a sufficient number of short enlistees and figure that into the design of the next MBT - if there is one.

[JellyBean]

Three possible ways of implementing a draft:

Option 1: the fair way. Conscript a random selection of everyon who's entitled to vote. Allocate them at random to different services. Everyone gets an equal chance of being shot at, and your infantry varies in age from 18 to 80+. (This might lead to a reluctance to institute a draft, if elderly politicians knew that they themselves might be called up.)

Option 2: the semi-fair, semi-utilitarian way. Conscript a random selection of everyone who's entitled to vote. You don't get out of it for being female, elderly, crippled, etc. Once you've done that, allocate people to different services where they meet the minimum requirements, lowering the requirements as necessary to ensure an adequate intake. (It'd be nice if all soldiers were Olympic-class sprinters and weightlifters, but you have to settle for being more realistic.) This will result in biases in the selection of some services - women would be very rare in the infantry (due to lower strength, etc), tall people would be less common among fighter pilots (due to problems with circulation under high G-forces - could this be the reason that females are better-suited to this role?), and the decrepit elderly would be resigned to whatever they could do - light office-work, perhaps, or filling in for people conscripted away from vital civilian jobs.

Option 3: the utilitarian way. The best way to describe it is as above, but you conscript everyone, fill up each service from the people best-suited to it, then release the others back to civilian life. A side-effect of this is that people deliberately get out of shape to avoid ending up in the military.

None of these options discriminates directly between male and female, young and old, etc. Nevertheless, the latter two still end up with a reasonably good association of capability and role in the military (the third option giving a perfect association) - which would involve a very low fraction of females in infantry units, for example. And they all avoid the inequitable situation created by a male-only draft - that a capable female may escape being conscripted into the front lines simply because of her gender.

As a side note: if my country ever implements a draft, I think it's flee-to-the-countryside-and-join-the-guerilla-resistance time.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
BTW - I do agree that women should have to meet the same standard requirements that men do that are germane to the position being filled. Kudos to KH for admitting that, if women stand G-forces better (and reaction times are the same for obvious reasons) then they should be the ones manning the aircraft.

However, I can think of one combat billet that not only could women, and a smaller subset of men fill. In fact it would improve US hardware in the future! The Soviets used it to keep their tank silohuetes low. Drivers. I cannot remember the precise height, but 5'2" comes to mind as the maximum height for Soviet tank drivers. It let them keep the hulls much lower - the M60 was huge. With women in the draft, you could guarantee a sufficient number of short enlistees and figure that into the design of the next MBT - if there is one.

I felt bad for those Soviet tankers. They were always breaking or losing their arms in their MA autoloaders.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
Kudos to KH for admitting that, if women stand G-forces better (and reaction times are the same for obvious reasons) then they should be the ones manning the aircraft

a) Do you have a reading comprehension problem? Your own ****ing link said that women tolerated g-forces as well as men, not better. Likely their height advantage (shorter = better) was offset by a smaller heart and smaller blood vessels.

b) Uh. Why would reaction times necessarily be equal? Men have better reaction times in general.

c) What the **** "admitting"? I'm not a frigging fighter pilot, not will I ever be. My eyesight (moderate myopia) would prevent me from taking on that job, even if I weren't already way too old to start (26). Why the **** would I give a **** about "admitting" anything?

[KrazyHorse]

Studies of G-force tolerance in high-altitude, high-speed flight demonstrated that women were able to tolerate G-forces and be as safe as men

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Take a look at the last time there was a large callup of conscripted men. What position did most of these men fill?

Here's a hint: 03xx and 11x

In which country? In Israel conscripted men and women fill a wide variety of positions.

The last time there was a large callup of conscripted men in the US was in 1970, IIRC. IIRC what some people did then was volunteer, before the draft lottery, in order to get their choice of positions. ISTR a neighbor who did that, got into tactical nuclear weapons, and spent the the next couple of years in Germany, deterring the Red Army, which he undoubtedly preferred to walking point near Pleiku. So it would not surprise me, given those circumstances, that most who were conscripted in 1970 got assigned to general infantry.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


In which country? In Israel conscripted men and women fill a wide variety of positions.

Given that I was responding to your comment about the US Army, take a guess.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Given that I was responding to your comment about the US Army, take a guess.

so you were really talking about the situation 36 years ago?

[KrazyHorse]

Yes. My hypothesis is that in a situation in which the US, Canada or the UK institutes a draft the major focus will be on gaining infantrymen. My evidence is the previous bouts of conscription in those countries. In a place like Israel where the Army, more often than not is serving in endemic low-level warfare conscription of infantrymen is far less of a priority. Instead, conscription maintains a larger peacetime army for cheaper than would otehrwise be possible. In that situation, conscripts are more likely to serve in support capacity, since the army's needs are different.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Yes. My hypothesis is that in a situation in which the US, Canada or the UK institutes a draft the major focus will be on gaining infantrymen. My evidence is the previous bouts of conscription in those countries. In a place like Israel where the Army, more often than not is serving in endemic low-level warfare conscription of infantrymen is far less of a priority. Instead, conscription maintains a larger peacetime army for cheaper than would otehrwise be possible. In that situation, conscripts are more likely to serve in support capacity, since the army's needs are different.

You may not realize this, KH, but the US did NOT institute a draft for the Viet Nam war. Rather the draft that was instituted in summer 1941 (IIUC), was continued after WW2 ended, through Korea, during the cold war/peace that followed, and then during Viet Nam.

Im assuming conscription would be due to a determination to expand the overall force size, long term. Im skeptical that we would face a large scale emergency/war that would last long enough for the new conscripts to be adequately trained. A conventional great power war is hard enough to imagine, one that lasts longer than 12 months is harder still.

Of course a larger force including conscripts would be used in the wars that come up. But such wars are likely to vary in the force composition needed. They wont all be as general infantry intensive as the current unpleasantness in Mesopotamia, nor is THAT as general infantry intensive as Viet Nam was.


Another alternative, more realistic in my opinion, that was bounced around under Clinton, before the WOT, is to institute not military conscription per se, but a national service draft. Everyone would have to submit to some form of national service - could be Peace Corps, Teach for America, some volunteer prog under Americorps, whatever. But if you sign up for an active or National Guard stint, that covers you as well. What you couldnt do would be to proceed straight through to your chosen career. At least in current circumstances, where its not so much people avoiding the military at all costs, but just that recruitment is a modest percentage under whats needed, this could change the decision model of a lot of people ("i wont pick the army over the good job I want, esp with a fair percentage of actually getting killed, but if its the army vs teach for america, I'd still pick the Army, which has better pay and benefits, etc")

[KrazyHorse]

Rather the draft that was instituted in summer 1941 (IIUC), was continued after WW2 ended, through Korea, during the cold war/peace that followed, and then during Viet Nam.

I actually was aware of that. I am also under the impression that the rate of men drafted during peacetime was much lower than in the periods of conflict...

[KrazyHorse]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#The_Cold_War

a far fewer percentage of eligible males were conscripted compared to war periods

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

Rather the draft that was instituted in summer 1941 (IIUC), was continued after WW2 ended, through Korea, during the cold war/peace that followed, and then during Viet Nam.

I actually was aware of that. I am also under the impression that the rate of men drafted during peacetime was much lower than in the periods of conflict...

thats true. IIUC it was lower, but im not sure how much lower. Its also true that in the last years of Viet Nam the number being conscripted was declining. IIRC in '67, '68, virtually everyone eligible was taken in, so people really didnt pay attention to the "lottery", but starting in 1969 they did, and by 1971, IIRC, there was still a draft, but very few were taken.

Im not going by research here, but my faded memory of dinner table conversations. My older brother was 16 in 1970.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
BTW - I do agree that women should have to meet the same standard requirements that men do that are germane to the position being filled. Kudos to KH for admitting that, if women stand G-forces better (and reaction times are the same for obvious reasons) then they should be the ones manning the aircraft.

However, I can think of one combat billet that not only could women, and a smaller subset of men fill. In fact it would improve US hardware in the future! The Soviets used it to keep their tank silohuetes low. Drivers. I cannot remember the precise height, but 5'2" comes to mind as the maximum height for Soviet tank drivers. It let them keep the hulls much lower - the M60 was huge. With women in the draft, you could guarantee a sufficient number of short enlistees and figure that into the design of the next MBT - if there is one.

women drivers? surely you are joking.

You can't get out on the battlefield and ask for directions.

[Apocalypse]

The whole argument of this applying only to infantry is pretty meh. Any unit with vehicles might have to be light infantry at any time, especially with all the IEDs right now. You can't put people in jobs like that who cannot do the minimum for a light infantry unit. There are many woman who could function in a light infantry unit, but there couldn't be many. She couldn't be the demo team or aid and litter, but she could point a rifle at someone during an EPW search. She also probably couldn't be on some of the heavier weapons systems, but I know at least a few who have enough leg and back strength to be RTOs.