source) and that would expand the number of qualified and available candidates are:

a. To decrease the demand for male enlisted personnel:

Reduce military manpower in overhead activities.

Recruit more women.

Replace military men with civilians.

Decrease the first term/career ratio and appropriately adjust reenlistment rates.

Lengthen initial terms of service for enlisted men.

b. To increase the supply of male enlisted volunteers:

Attract men in the older age group (over age 22)-both with and without prior service.

Attract full-time students, notably by offering to pay for their college education.

Relax certain physical standards.

Adjust educational and testing standards that may be unneccessarily high for certain functions.

17. Each of these options needs immediate investigation. The key question is: how does the cost of implementing one or more of these options compare with the social cost of renewing conscription, the financial cost of increasing incentives, or the national security cost of reducing combat forces?

18. To encourage the administration to undertake this analysis, the Armed Services Committees of the House and the Senate should take special measures to review the whole defense manpower program, both military and civilian, on a continuing basis. The committees should take this action now; alternatives need to be debated before the development of serious quantitative or qualitative shortfalls in volunteer manpower leads to precipitate and hence less effective action.

INTRODUCTION

In March 1969, President Nixon appointed a Commission on an All-Volunteer Force, under the chairmanship of former Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates, Jr., with a charter to develop a plan for eliminating the draft and moving toward an all-volunteer force.

The Committee submitted its report in February 1970. Among its important conclusions was the following:

We unanimously believe that the nation's interest will be better served by an all-volunteer force.

We have satisfied ourselves that a volunteer force will not jeopardize national security, and we believe it will have a beneficial effect on the military as well as the rest of our society.1

Accepting the Commission's recommendations in principle, the administration adopted a different timetable. The Commission had suggested an end to induction authority by June 30, 1971, but the administration sought, and the Congress approved, a two-year extension to July 1, 1973.

Developments during the transition phase between 1970 and 1973 encouraged the administration to eliminate the draft earlier than anticipated. Among these events were diminishing involvement in Asia that led to reduced military manpower needs, and an intensified recruitment campaign that attracted greater interest in the services among potential recruits in the general population.

The administration therefore was able to end the draft six months ahead of schedule. Remaining doubts were dissolved by former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird on January 27, 1973:

With the signing of the peace agreement in Paris. . . the armed forces henceforth will depend exclusively on volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. The use of the draft has ended.2

The administration is still concerned, however, about a shortage of volunteers with certain critical skills. Financial incentives, mainly in the form of bonuses, are its recommendation to the Congress; $225 million have been set aside for this purpose in the fiscal 1974 budget.

As the next phase of this important national experiment begins, several important questions still remain:

What has been achieved so far, and what are current recruiting and reenlistment trends?

In the short-term, what have been identified as critical problems and what are alternative solutions?

In the longer term, what are the prospects for sustaining an allvolunteer armed force?

What policies could reduce the magnitude of this long-term task? These are the problems addressed in this paper.

1 The Report of the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (1970), page iii.

2 Reported in the New York Times, January 28, 1973, p. 1.

Also important are questions dealing with the political and social aspects of volunteer military service, some of which were raised prior to the President's pledge in 1970 to move toward an all-volunteer force.3 Will a volunteer service:

Have socially divisive effects?

Undermine patriotism by weakening the sense of moral responsibility?

Foster a military ethos, posing a threat to our democratic institutions?

Stimulate foreign military adventures?

Answers to these questions affect whether moving to the all-volunteer concept is a wise course. However, they are beyond the scope of this paper, which is concerned not with whether the all-volunteer force is a good thing but with whether it is feasible.

Chapter One reviews experience during the transition period, examines trends in recruiting efforts, and the number and quality of voluntary enlistments.

Chapter Two identifies the short-term problems and the proposals offered by the administration to solve them. Other options are also discussed.

Chapter Three considers the prospects of maintaining an allvolunteer armed force and compares the demand for volunteers with estimates of future supply potential. It puts the magnitude of the task ahead in perspective.

Chapter Four discusses a range of options that might alleviate some of the difficulties. Included are alternatives affecting demand (decreasing the annual needs for volunteers) and those affecting supply (increasing the number of potential volunteers).

Chapter Five concludes by briefly identifying areas where further analysis is needed and summarizes specific recommendations.

3 These questions were posed and discussed by the Gates Commission. See The Report of the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (1970), pp. 11-20. More recently, some aspects were discussed by Morris Janowitz in "The U.S. Forces and the Zero Draft," Adelphi Papers Number 94, International Institute for Strategic Studies (January 1973).

CHAPTER ONE

THE TRANSITION YEARS

When the decision was made in 1970 to phase out conscription in favor of an all-volunteer armed force, draft inductions averaged over 16,000 per month. Only about half of those who enlisted were "true" volunteers-men who freely chose military service and who were not influenced by the draft. Military manpower needs were high and future needs uncertain.

By January 1973, draft calls were down to zero. Those enlisting were, with a few exceptions, true volunteers. And their numbers were on a par with male enlistment needs projected for fiscal 1974.

Though authority to draft men into military service does not expire until July 1973, the administration chose to end reliance on conscription the preceding January, thus ending a period of over three decades in which American men had been subject to the draft. With the exception of a brief respite in 1947-48, the draft had been in regular use since 1940.

How were those responsible for planning and directing the program able to bring all this about and not only achieve their objective of zero draft calls but achieve it six months ahead of schedule?

This chapter outlines in brief, mainly in graphic form, how this transition occurred; how the major factors and trends influencing it will affect the options open to decision makers on the future of a volunteer force; and the chief characteristics of that force to date.1

Factors Affecting the Transition

The termination of the draft authority was ahead of schedule due to a combination of counterbalancing factors. Key among those were decreasing U.S. military involvement in Asia and the services' enhanced ability to attract qualified volunteers. These and other influences are reviewed here from the historical perspective of events from 1960 through those projected for 1974, although the focus will be on the actual transition years, 1970-73.

Reductions in Military Manpower

The decline in draft inductions shown in Figure 1 was closely related to reductions in active manpower made over this period. From a peak of 3.55 million men in fiscal 1968 (at the height of the Vietnam war), active force strength by June 1972 was down to about 2.32 million and it is projected to decrease, and presumably stabilize, at 2.23

1 Data are given in calendar years or fiscal years. This is indicated in each instance.

1960

TUTODIDDIIDDIIDDIDDIQUDIODI

TODIODIINWOOD

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Sources:

1960-70, Department of Defense OASD (Comptroller), Directorate for Information Operations, "Selected Manpower Statistics" (April 15, 1972; processed), pp. 50-52. 1971-74, Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Manpower and Reserve Affairs (February 1973).

million, as shown in Figure 2. This is the lowest it has been since 1950-254,000 below the fiscal 1961 level before the Vietnam war.

Figure 2

Active Military Manpower, All Services, Fiscal Years 1960-74

Sources: 1960-71, Department of Defense, "Selected Manpower Statistics," p. 21; 1972-74, The Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1974, p.

21.

Growth in Enlistments

With a lower active force strength, the need for new recruits (or accessions) has also declined to pre-Vietnam levels. In contrast to the earlier period during which draftees and draft-induced enlistees comprised the bulk of accessions, the acid test for the volunteer concept in the transition period was whether, in the absence of conscription, sufficient "true" volunteers with appropriate qualifications would step forward. The true volunteer in this context is the man who freely chooses to enter the military forces and who does so despite, not because of, the draft.3 The growth in true volunteers as a fraction of

2 Department of Defense, "Selected Manpower Statistics," p. 48.

3 Estimates of true volunteers among enlistees are based on the lottery data for the calendar years, 1970, 1971, and 1972. The 366 lottery numbers for each year are divided into three groups; 1-120, 121-240, 241-366. Males who enlist and have lottery numbers in group 241-366 are considered free of draft pressure and are thus termed true volunteers. Since the numbers are randomly distributed (each number having the same probability of being selected), a similar proportion of those likely to freely enlist are deemed to exist in the other two groups (1-120 and 121-240). The total estimate of true volunteers is therefore equal to approximately