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To: hapnHal

NO!

It was bad enough back in my day when people in general (other than the ‘hippies’) were fairly patriotic.

I served at the end of the draft era and the beginning of the all volunteer era.

In my experience, two out of ten draftees made fairly good soldiers. The rest were detrimental to esprit de corps and unit competence. Much more trouble than they were worth.


10 posted on 04/30/2017 9:06:18 PM PDT by LegendHasIt
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To: LegendHasIt
I served at the end of the draft era and the beginning of the all volunteer era.

Thank you for your service. I served from '77 to '84, i.e. at the beginning of the all volunteer force. Those early years were challenging, and made more difficult by inadequate funding during the Carter years. My unit in Germany rarely got above 80% strength. In one of the three platoons I led, three of my four squad leaders were "acting jacks", i.e. E-4s where there should be E-6s.

OTOH, that was one of my best times in the military, training these men to be leaders, and I wasn't much older than them. I was 23, they were 20-21. We shocked every one when we had the only platoon (of four) to pass a battery-level evaluation. I wasn't shocked though, I knew we had a good group of soldiers.

There's not that much money to be saved in personnel costs by going back to the draft. The real savings comes from reforming the weapons acquisition process.

104 posted on 05/01/2017 6:09:45 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Gonzales! Come and Take It!)
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