Military Marks Half-Century of the All-Volunteer Force

"You can't quit, Trainee. You VOLUNTEERED."  

Military training instructors throughout the U.S. armed forces began shouting this (or something very like it) at their charges soon after the American military ditched the draft and returned to its all-volunteer roots in 1973.  

Selective Service – the draft – had been in place near continuously in the United States since 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the first peacetime draft in response to developments in Europe and Asia.  

By most assessments, the draft had been very successful: The United States raised a 10-million-man military in World War II and supplied the manpower needed to later fight the Korean War and Vietnam War.  

But by the late 1960s, most Americans viewed the draft as unfair, and as opposition to the war in Vietnam increased, so did opposition to the draft. The saying at the time was Vietnam "was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight," which echoed the sentiment during the American Civil War when the rich could "buy" their way out of the draft.  

During his run for the presidency in 1968, Richard M. Nixon pledged to get rid of the draft and move to an all-volunteer military.   

This came to fruition when Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird announced on January 27, 1973, that "after receiving a report from the Secretary of the Army that he foresees no need for further inductions, I wish to inform you that the armed forces henceforth will depend exclusively on volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Use of the draft has ended."  

So, Laird issued the announcement and everyone in the Defense Department cheered and moved on to create the best military the world has ever seen. Right?  

Actually, no.   

Many military and civilian leaders in the Defense Department had doubts about the move. 

Even though U.S. troops had left South Vietnam the year before, the Soviet Union still loomed large. Worldwide, the U.S. military had a strength of almost than 3.3 million service members. 2.3 active duty and 970,000 reserves. There were 350,000 U.S. troops in West Germany alone. There were another 8,200 based in Taiwan. In South Korea, there were 41,000 U.S. service members. In Panama, there were 6,800 service members. There were troops based in Japan, Ethiopia, Thailand, Tunisia, Bahrain and thousands of service members afloat.  

Many American civilian and military officials believed it would be impossible to man the force adequately without the draft. Even many in favor of an all-volunteer force believed that in the event of a conflict, political leaders would immediately reinstitute a draft. 

"It's a fair assessment to say that the early years of the all-volunteer force were rocky at best," said Erin Mahan, the chief historian at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "If you look at the 1970s as a whole for the all-volunteer force, there was no indication that it was going to be a success. In fact, there were many indications that it might fail." 

And there were many who probably wanted the all-volunteer force to fail. They spoke of the expense of the force and the inability of the services to recruit the numbers they needed. "There continued to be opposition within the military leadership," Mahan said. "In the early years, the main support for the all-volunteer force came from the Secretary of Defense and the larger Office of the Secretary of Defense."  

Edward C. Keefer is literally the man who wrote the chapters on the all-volunteer force – publishing the official DOD histories for the 1970s and 1980s. He discussed the motivation of young people to enlist in the all-volunteer force. "While patriotism and the desire to serve were always motivations, I would have to say that a primary  motivation [for enlisting] was much better pay," he said. "And then remember that in the early years of the all-volunteer force, there was a recession, high inflation. The four services seemed like a good career opportunity."  

The U.S. Army, especially, learned how to recruit service members without the threat of a draft. Keefer said the service's "Be All That You Can Be" campaign resonated not only with potential recruits, but their mothers. "Maxwell Thurman, who was the head of army recruiting, … had people do some research on why people enlisted," he said.   

That group found that the combination of the "be all you can be" with the college benefit for honorable service attracted mothers "who would encourage their daughters and sons to join the (service), because they wanted them to move up and go to college," Keefer said. "That was an amazingly strong recruiting tool."  

The all-volunteer force was also increasingly family friendly, he said. "With the draft, you had mostly singles in the armed forces," he said. "But with the all-volunteer force, it moved to much more of a family force with children and spouses, sometimes dual-service spouses."  

The last also presaged a shift: the growing importance of women in the ranks. While "Be All That You Can Be" was a great slogan "the other great slogan was 'some of our best men are women,'" Keefer said. "The way that the all-volunteer force solved its recruiting problems in the late '70s and the early '80s was by successfully recruiting women."  

This was a sea change for DOD. Before the AVF, women could make up just 2% of the total force. "In reality, most of the time, they were 1%," Keefer said. In the years following World War II, women were members of separate corps – the Women's Army Corps, the Navy's WAVES and Women in the Air Force.  

"Those separate corps were eliminated after the all-volunteer force started," he said. "One of the advantages of women in the armed forces was one that they were almost all … high school graduates, and they scored higher on the mental aptitude tests." 

Successive defense secretaries – Harold Brown and Caspar Weinberger – encouraged the enlistment of women.

Changing an organization as large as the Defense Department is a daunting task and one that takes time. "The skepticism that was felt within the military leadership about an all-volunteer force was most pervasive in the '70s," Mahan said. "And that's understandable."  

Many people had fears and doubts that had some legitimacy. "Those centered around quantity, quality and cost," she said. "First, would an all-volunteer force be able to supply the necessary numbers? Second, would those new service men and women have the capability to handle what was becoming increasingly sophisticated weaponry. And in third, the cost – which continues to be a question today."  

An all-volunteer force is more expensive than a conscripted force. DOD officials had to convince successive presidents and Congress that the AVF would be worth the expense. "But I think in time, those challenges and fears were overcome," she said.   

In 1979, Gen. Edward "Shy" Meyer, the Army chief of staff, said his service fielded "a hollow force" that lacked the training to accomplish its basic mission of deterrence. New equipment – tanks, aircraft, ships, missiles, radars, computers and more – were coming in, but money was lacking for personnel and training. Then-Army Brig. Gen. Colin Powell later wrote the military was like a "tumbledown shack with a BMW in the driveway."  

But the military was changing. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan ordered DOD to rescue American citizens on the Caribbean island nation of Grenada caught in the midst of several bloody coups. Operation Urgent Fury was the first test of the all-volunteer force, and it was successful, but the effort pointed to disconnects among the services.

It was a joint operation, but there was little cooperation – the services "deconflicted" the battlefield. The various services had radios that couldn't speak to each other. Army helicopters couldn't refuel on Navy ships. Each service planned operations differently, and intelligence sharing was non-existent.   

But the troops adapted and overcame. There was the classic story (possibly apocryphal) of an 82nd Airborne Division soldier who used his civilian telephone calling card on a pay phone to communicate back to the Pentagon, who then relayed a message to a ship off Grenada for fire support. The Pentagon later determined that while this particular call could not be verified, soldiers and Navy SEALs did use personal phones to support operations during Urgent Fury. 

The troops rescued the U.S. citizens, restored democracy in Grenada, and the military looked at the lessons that could be learned from the operation.  

More emphasis went to training and attracting the right personnel for the services. New legislation – most notably the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 – emphasized the joint nature of warfare. The military responded with new doctrine, more realistic training, new standards and more.  

An all-volunteer force was not cheap: It required higher pay, better living conditions, money for training and education, better health care and programs for families.   

But if you want to have well educated recruits, you have to pay for them. During the draft "only 32% of the recruits for the Army had high school diplomas, the rest were dropouts," Keefer said. "As the all-volunteer force moved on, [that percentage] rose to 50. And then it rose to the 60s. It topped out at almost exclusively people with high school degrees or better."  

This was needed for high-tech service members. And many of them stayed in the military. "You've got retention of a much more educated military force to handle the more sophisticated technology that came in the '70s and onward," he said.  

While there were operations in the 1980s – notably against Libya, Panama and Lebanon – it wasn't until Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990 that the American people realized what their money had bought. "The Gulf War really proved the mettle of the all-volunteer force," Mahan said.   

Videos of U.S. aircraft pinpointing targets in Baghdad, choosing which window a missile should fly into, the Army's Battle of 73 Easting, the Highway of Death on the roads leading out of Kuwait, and the "left hook" that demolished the Iraqi army demonstrated the proficiency and professionalism of the U.S. forces. Americans were amazed.  

"The all-volunteer force had two great challenges in the in the Gulf War: Get 500,000 troops to those inhospitable deserts of Saudi Arabia, keep them there for six months, sweltering, and then … liberate Kuwait," Keefer said. "And they did that in a six-week air war and 100-hour ground war. It was a stunning success."  

Service members – both enlisted and officer – displayed skill, enthusiasm and professionalism, he said. The weaponry developed during the 1970s and deployed in the 1980s proved to be excellent and destroyed the Iraqi armed forces, which used Soviet equipment.   

Keefer said the Gulf War also solidified the role of women in the military. "In the all-volunteer force 33,000 women served in the Gulf War area, and five women were killed in action," he said. "I think what the Gulf War did was it shattered myths about women in war; that they wouldn't fight [or] … they couldn't stand up to physical pressure, or inhospitable conditions. And they would somehow lessen combat readiness."  

The all-volunteer force of the 1990s and today is "a far different institution than that of its early years in the '70s, Mahan said. "I think the all-volunteer force has always been somewhat of a microcosm of American society. I think that's even more true today. … The military generally has often been on the forefront of societal change – whether it's gays in the military, suicide prevention, a host of societal issues – the AVF is a microcosm of society. And the military brings all of its force  to tackle those challenges, and I think does so ultimately, quite successfully."  

Certainly, the all-volunteer force proved itself in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, both historians said. Along the way, the military solved many vexing problems – retention, the prevalence of drugs in the ranks, women in combat, gays in the military and more. Of course, more needs to be done as these are works in progress. The military must deal with the scourge of sexual assault and harassment, provide mental health aid, counter the epidemic of suicide and maintain standards.  

By any measure, the all-volunteer force has been a success. As President Joe Biden nominated Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he called the U.S. military "the best in the history of the world."   

Over 50 years, millions of Americans have served in the all-volunteer force. Most served one enlistment, but many served for careers. Their service didn't end when they returned to civilian life. "I think what's less obvious is that the all-volunteer force has had a tremendous impact on American society," Keefer said. "It has allowed people of lesser means … to rise to middle-class status. You join the all-volunteer force, you learn skills, you serve for 20 years or less, you get your benefits, then you go out and get a second job, either in teaching or in industry or back in the civilian government.   

"The all-volunteer force is this group of people that are very skilled, very well-educated and very capable, and they have been able to add, not just to the military, but to society as a whole," he said.