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In his article, “The Founders’ wisdom,” in the January issue of Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling argues that the “U.S. should ... abandon the all-volunteer military and return to our historic reliance on citizen soldiers and conscription to wage protracted war.” He offers several reasons in support of his argument. First, a conscripted force of citizen soldiers would ensure that the burdens of war are felt equally in every community in America. Second, a conscripted force would provide the means to expand the Army to the sufficient size to meet its commitments. Third, such a force would enable the military to be more discriminating than a volunteer military in selecting those with the skills and attributes most required to fight today’s wars. Finally, he believes a conscripted force would be less expensive. I respectfully disagree and will address each point in turn in four sections that follow.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the management and progress of the war on terrorism, and contrary to the view of Yingling, the all-volunteer force has been an amazing success. The U.S. is fighting a protracted war with a volunteer military, and has sustained combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan for more than eight years while continuing to meet ongoing obligations around the globe. Even when unemployment rates were near-record lows in 2007, straining recruiting, the military still had tens of thousands of young men and women on waiting lists to join. In fiscal 2009, all four services, both the active and reserve components, met or exceeded their numerical recruiting goals, as well as their recruit quality standards in terms of education and aptitude. Retention also remained high — in many cases, one’s tour of duty in a combat zone actually increased the likelihood of staying in the military.

SHARING THE BURDEN OF DEFENSE

Many would agree that the military should be representative of the society it protects. Yingling does, but he asserts the military is using a “methodological sleight of hand” in its claim that recruits are representative across all socioeconomic classes of American families. The implication is that the military recruits the disadvantaged, uneducated and unemployed, and sends them off to war while the children of the middle and upper classes remain home in comfort and safety. He believes that those enlisting see the military as a last resort with nowhere else to turn. The reality is far different, however.

The military today is very much connected to society. Whether one looks at the Gallup or Harris polls, Americans have, over the past 20 years, viewed the military as an organization, as well as the all-volunteer force and its leaders, with the greatest confidence, trust and respect. The military consistently rates No. 1 in both polls.

Each year about 170,000 young men and women volunteer for the active-duty force and another 140,000 for the reserve and Guard. An additional 30,000 are commissioned as officers and join the active and reserve components. Those who enlist come from all parts of the country, from households all across the economic spectrum, and from all races and ethnicities. Far from being concentrated among the economically disadvantaged and poorly educated, the data show precisely the opposite. Military recruits are representative of America.

A study by the Center for Naval Analyses study showed that by dividing American households into five equal parts (quintiles) by income, recruits were about evenly represented across all household income classes nationwide; that is, about 20 percent of recruits came from each of the five income groups. The Heritage Foundation, using a slightly different methodology, found that a greater proportion of recruits came from neighborhoods with above-average income. Indeed, that study showed that the percentage of recruits coming from the highest-income ZIP codes in the U.S. had increased steadily since 1999, while the percentage coming from the lowest-income ZIP codes had declined. By 2007, almost three-quarters of new recruits came from neighborhoods that were at or above the median household income.

Yingling is also wrong in accusing the military of reducing enlistment standards. These recruit quality standards, or benchmarks, were established in the early 1990s and have remained unchanged since then. The department measures recruit quality by the percentage of enlistees who have earned a high school diploma, and the percentage that scored in the upper half of the military’s entrance test of math and verbal skills, the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). The military prefers and needs these recruits.

With respect to education, data show that recruits with a high school diploma are much more likely to complete their initial enlistment term (80 percent) than those with a General Educational Development (GED) certificate (60 percent) or no credential at all (50 percent).

In terms of aptitude, results from a long-term defense research project, validated by the National Academy of Sciences, have demonstrated that scores on the AFQT are strong predictors of training success and on-the-job performance. Our force today performs so well primarily because it is a high-aptitude force. And, combined with experience, which is a characteristic of our older force, our military is even more effective. A volunteer military is typically a higher-aptitude and more-educated force. The all-volunteer force today has nearly half of its recruits in the top two AFQT categories and only 1 percent in the lowest AFQT category; 96 percent are high school graduates. During the last two years of the draft, by contrast, only one-third of recruits were in the top categories and nearly 25 percent were in the lowest, while only half were high school graduates.

Further research, also validated by the National Academy of Sciences, confirms that the most efficient investment of defense resources is realized when 60 percent of recruits score at or above the 50th percentile on the AFQT and the proportion of high school graduates is at 90 percent, holding recruiting and training costs to a minimum. The department has met or exceeded these same 90 percent and 60 percent benchmarks for education and aptitude over the past 20 years.

The military also has strict enlistment standards for medical conditions and personal conduct. These have not been reduced either, although medical standards can change in accord with new scientific evidence.

The all-volunteer force is also representative of race and ethnic groups as it mirrors our diverse society. Blacks account for 15 percent of new recruits, the same percentage they are of the youth population. Hispanics account for 17 percent of the youth population, and 15 percent of new recruits. Hispanic representation has been steadily rising from the early 1980s when it was only about 4 percent. The military has always been at the forefront of equal opportunity. It is the only large organization in which large units (composed mostly of whites) are led by blacks and Hispanics, and is a testimony to how well integration and equal opportunity work in the armed forces.

MANAGING THE FORCE AND END STRENGTH

Contrary to the views of Yingling, it is not easier to increase force end strength under a draft than with a volunteer military. The services have been very successful in quickly adjusting end strength to changing requirements and wartime needs. The Marine Corps, for example, increased its active-duty force from 180,000 in 2006 to more than 202,000 in 2009, and did so two years earlier than planned. The active Army increased its end strength from 505,000 to 553,000 within the same time frame. The Army National Guard achieved its end-strength level of 358,000 — three years ahead of schedule. The services can do this by adjusting to market forces and relying on various recruiting and retention tools.

In terms of recruiting, the services use incentives such as bonuses and educational benefits, as well as recruiters and advertising, and they understand the relative impact and cost effectiveness of each of these tools on the behavior of potential enlistees. Important quantitative research has been conducted on the youth population, and there is much the military knows about the responsiveness of youth to incentives and other factors. In terms of retention, the selective re-enlistment bonus is a critical retention tool to ensure that the force profile by grade, years of service and skill is appropriate for each service.

Those choosing to enlist in the military do so for a variety of reasons. Some are interested in economic benefits, such as skill training, a bonus and GI Bill educational benefits. For others, it is travel and adventure. But the primary reason youth join the Army today is service to their country. What we are witnessing in this time of war is a larger proportion of enlistees joining the military primarily for duty, honor and patriotism. Forty percent of new Army recruits say they joined to serve their country. They want to be part of something that is larger than themselves — an organization that is respected. The military is that organization.

Yingling asserts that a conscripted force enables the military to be more discriminating in selecting recruits with the skills and attributes most needed. On the contrary, only a volunteer military can make that assertion. Using the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the services select, classify and assign recruits to jobs in which they will perform best and those jobs in which they are most interested.

Conscription would not select better recruits. It could not, because it would randomly select individuals from the youth population, and the law of averages would force annual accessions toward the “average” of the youth population in terms of education and aptitude — a much lower recruit quality mix than under the all-volunteer force. Yingling realized this and advocates a selective draft in which he would “conscript” only “gifted young people” with special attributes “required to prosecute today’s wars.”

But why would we do this at all when the gifted are already “volunteering” for the military? Five months into fiscal 2010, the services have the highest-quality recruits in nearly 20 years — 99 percent of active-duty recruits have a high school diploma and 74 percent score at or above average on the AFQT. A conscripted force could never achieve those quality marks, which are far above the levels of the youth population today — where only about 75 percent of American youth have a high school diploma and 50 percent score at or above average on the AFQT.

Beyond this, the fundamental issue is that a draft is inherently unfair — the major conclusion of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force in 1970. To the critical question: “Is it equitable for an ever-smaller proportion of the population to bear the burden of military service while an ever-larger proportion could escape that responsibility?” the commission answered “No.” Because of the inability of policymakers to adequately answer the economic question, “How can the nation force some individuals to work at less than the market wage at doing something they do not want to do?” and the political question, “Who shall serve when not all serve?” the commission recommended abolishing the draft in favor of an all-volunteer force. Economics Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, a member of the commission, argued that a draft was inconsistent with the American values of choice, personal liberty and a free society. “A volunteer army would preserve the freedom of individuals.” His argument carried the day. Yingling, by imposing a “selective” draft, would only compound the inequity of conscription.

Finally, Yingling asserts that a conscripted force would be less expensive. Once again, he is incorrect. The cost-effectiveness of an all-volunteer force has been confirmed by studies from government agencies and private research organizations. Every review has concluded that, for a given level of force effectiveness, the volunteer force is less expensive and more efficient than conscription. These conclusions are driven by three factors:

å With a conscripted force comes higher personnel turnover, which results in substantial costs. Because draftees, in general, tended to enlist for short terms and re-enlist at lower rates than volunteers, today’s midgrade and senior noncommissioned officers are more experienced than their draft-era counterparts. Shorter enlistment terms result in high personnel turnover and degradation in unit stability and performance. Also, high turnover means more recruits; more recruits mean more supervision and training; more training means more trainers. As a result, an increasing proportion of military resources are diverted from core readiness missions into support for military training. Thus, training costs would be higher under conscription. Training can also be particularly expensive in a conscripted force because draftees who are assigned jobs requiring complex skills need more time for training, which reduces the time available for performance in operational units.

å Draftees are also less likely to re-enlist, as seen during the Vietnam era, when only 10 percent of draftees elected to do so. Equally, because the typical draftee would serve only one short (two-year) term, a conscripted force needs to be considerably larger than a volunteer force. It would be larger, too, since so many conscripts would be “unusable” because they are still in training. Further, because re-enlistments tend to be low, a draft force would be much younger and less experienced, which has an adverse effect on job performance and personnel readiness. In the draft era, two-thirds of the military was serving in its first two years of service; for today’s volunteers, that number is only one-quarter.

å With a volunteer military comes a more motivated force. Data show that people perform better if they are true volunteers than if they are coerced into military service. The recruitment of volunteers has also resulted in a higher-quality force as measured by aptitude levels. This is noteworthy because a high-aptitude force is more easily trained, performs better and presents fewer disciplinary problems. Empirical evidence shows that a high quality and a highly motivated force is more productive and less expensive in the long run.

Analysts have concluded that, compared to an equally effective volunteer force, a draft would reduce experience levels; increase the percentage of both non-high-school graduates and lower-aptitude youth; increase accession levels, training requirements and force size; and raise budget costs. In 1988, the General Accounting Office concluded that the all-volunteer force would be less expensive than a draft force by more than $2.5 billion annually (more than $5 billion today), given a constant level of force effectiveness.

There are other not-so-obvious costs in procuring military manpower under a draft, one such being the so-called “conscription tax,” defined as the earnings that a draftee forgoes by being conscripted into the military. This tax can be substantial because the military could pay draftees less than the going wage rate in the private sector. With this hidden “tax,” the draft does not reduce the true costs of obtaining recruits; it merely shifts the cost to the draftees. Thus, if the military pays $15,000 to a draftee who could earn $20,000 in a civilian job, the draftee must forgo $5,000 of income. In effect, this draftee is paying a hidden tax of $5,000 for each year of service.

A draft also results in a significant misallocation of resources. When a lower military entry wage is paid to draftees, the services would have an incentive to “hire” too much labor, instead of relying on more productive alternatives such as the use of more career personnel or complementary new capital equipment. When that increase in recruits takes place, the burden of national defense (in terms of the labor supply withdrawn from the economy) is greater under a draft than under a volunteer force.

Economist George H. Hildebrand put it this way: “[B]ecause military labor is ... undervalued, the armed services are given a false signal by the price system; they are encouraged to use labor more intensively relative to capital than is justified by the real state of relative factor endowments in the economy as a whole. In consequence, it pays to hoard labor, to use it wastefully, and to adopt capital-to-labor ratios that are too low. Turnover rates are also made too high, and these add to recruitment costs while also lowering overall efficiency.”

The all-volunteer force has encouraged a more conservative use of labor than would be the case with a conscripted force — lower end strength with greater military effectiveness. The high-aptitude, more experienced volunteer military has encouraged the services to leverage their weapons procurement in the direction of systems that are more effective, while requiring fewer (albeit higher-aptitude and more-experienced) people. In other words, the more-complex systems have been designed and procured with the all-volunteer force in mind, and that design is not compatible with a conscripted force. For example, the Army’s Multiple Launch Rocket System replaced howitzer batteries and generated greater firepower with a crew size less than half that associated with the system it replaced. The demand for supervisors — and a higher experience profile — is essential. This new generation of equipment replaces labor with capital where possible, lowering overall system costs while placing a premium on training and experience of the high-quality crew. These are exactly the attributes of the all-volunteer force; they are not the attributes of a conscripted force.

Yingling wants a “strong legislative and popular oversight of national security” and urges a “return to the principle that America’s citizens and our elected representatives must be engaged in the defense of our society.” I could not agree more, but it will not be accomplished with a return to a draft. Seven out of 10 Americans oppose conscription, and legislators overwhelmingly opposed a return to a draft (402 to two in the House of Representatives) when they last voted in 2004.

The conclusion is unmistakable: The all-volunteer force has served the nation exceedingly well for more than 35 years, and the people, their elected officials and the military leadership understand that. Recruiting during wartime poses particular challenges but, even after more than eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and periodic fluctuations in economic conditions and changing social climate, the spirit of volunteerism continues to populate the force with high-quality men and women who serve because they choose to do so. It is a force that is experienced, high aptitude, highly educated, disciplined, physically fit and representative of America. And in most of these attributes, it is far above average among the civilian youth population. When it comes to national security, the nation needs “above average” — not what a conscripted force would provide. AFJ