Stretched Too Thin

Part of the support for last week's Democrat fraud - the spurious rumors of an impending draft - was the notion that "we're stretched too thin", and that there's no way to get enough manpower under a volunteer system to fight the War on Terror.

Buncombe. We've been there already.

Currently the US Army has ten active duty divisions and two "integrated" (largely reserve) divisions, along with eight National Guard divisions that would be called up only under the direst circumstances.

In 1988, just past the height of the Cold War and after Reagan's defense buildup, the US Army had 16 active duty ground divisions, plus ten National Guard divisions. The "peace dividend" of the early nineties was paid for, for the Army's part, by disbanding a total of six divisions, totalling over 120,000 combat troops. They also disbanded a Corps headquarters (VII Corps), which was in effect a large division by itself, with tens of thousands of troops, largely support troops (everything from accountants to mailmen to medics) but also including thousands of combat and combat support troops (armored cavalry, aviation, combat engineers, artillery).

The Navy and Air Force underwent similar cutbacks; the Navy has fewer aircraft carriers, many fewer surface ships, and about 50-60% of the submarines it had twenty years ago; the Air Force has about 60% of the Tactical Fighter Wings it had at the height of the Cold War.

Remember - we had a volunteer military all through the '80s.

So - while the US had 20-30 million fewer people at the height of the Cold War in the eighties, we had a volunteer military 40-50% larger than the one we have today.

Would increasing the size of our volunteer military to cold war levels be easy or inexpensive? Generally, no. Would it require a draft? Absolutely not. In fact, given the latest round of re-organizations in the Army (converting each division from three large Brigades designed to fight massed Soviet armored attacks in Central Europe into four smaller, more mobile and flexible Brigades more suited to operating in places like the third world) should give each division (in theory) a lot more actual fighting power for the logistic load than the current organization.

It might require a minor miracle to equip all those new units with the same level of modern equipment that our front-line units have today, though, and that's completely ignoring the fact that draftees are just plain harder to train to the standards of effectiveness that a volunteer military expects.

So the Democrat notion of a draft is not only militarily and socially idiotic - it's just plain not needed. The numbers just aren't there.