Why Not Abolish the Draft?

If you are male and you were born after 1953, you have never been at risk for being drafted. The last no-shit draft lottery was held in 1972 for men born in 1953. Of those born that year, only 646 were drafted. My recollection is that all of them were offered discharges around mid-1973.

The draft is a relic of a time when wars were fought by masses of soldiers who had received a few months of training (if that) and then were sent into combat. That was a time when wars were fought (or planned to be) between nations that had roughly equal military abilities. Wars of those types were known for chewing up men and materiel on a very large scale.[1]

As a nation, we aren't very damn likely to get into that type of war. The navy sure doesn't think so, or they wouldn't be buying those littoral combat ships and calling them "frigates". There isn't the industrial base to turn out masses of tanks, fighters or bombers that would be lost in combat. Hell, during Vietnam, the usage of bombs was so high that the ones being shipped from the States late n the war were still warm from the pouring of their explosive cores.[2]

Even when we had a functioning industrial base and we could make damn near anything, the first two years after we entered the Second World War were more of "hold and annoy" strategy until sufficient forces were built up to do something.

It would also take a span of time to build training facilities for a large influx of draftees. The Navy and the Air Force each only have one boot camp. The Marines have two. The Army has four. During the last mass-mobilization war, the Army alone had over 110 boot camps, though to be fair, the Air Force was part of the Army then. It's a fair bet that the training done was as minimal as it could be, given the need to increase throughput.

The point is that even having every man (and maybe woman) registered is almost useless. After registration, there is no requirement to keep the Selective Service people updated on one's whereabouts. Further, everyone has a social security number and if they have a job, the IRS knows where they are (or recently have been).

The shell of the draft system could still be there, with a requirement that, upon activation of the draft, that everybody register for it-- just as was done during both world wars.

For now, registering for the draft is a useless paper drill. It should be abolished most ricky tick.
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[1] One brief example: During the Second World War, the U.S. built about 10,000 B-25s. Maybe 2,000 were ever operational at one time. Most were lost from being shot up, shot down or crashes.
[2] This is not a new problem, see "The 1915 Shell Crisis", when the Royal Artillery Corps was so short of heavy shells that they could fire their guns four times a day.