In the UK people can enlist at 16, this is also true in Pakistan and a few other countries too. So what if this was true in the US? What would it take for this to be true and how low could we potentially get it? 14? 12?
Lower enlistment age in the US
- Thread starter Copperhead
- Start date
You can enlist in the US at 17 with parental consent, with shipping to recruit training/basic training contingent upon completion of high school. This requirement when combined with the initial training pipeline means most 17 year old recruits have turned 18 by the time they reach their first units. However, there is a DOD regulation that you cannot deploy until your 18th birthday.
The National Guard allows 17 year olds to attend drill after enlisting, but before basic. They won't drill with their home units but attend a course to prepare them for basic.
It's going to be utterly useless to reduce this age. It's just going to add folks to rosters that cant deploy.
The National Guard allows 17 year olds to attend drill after enlisting, but before basic. They won't drill with their home units but attend a course to prepare them for basic.
It's going to be utterly useless to reduce this age. It's just going to add folks to rosters that cant deploy.
I can only really see this in a situation where the US is truly desperate. Like Volksturm desperate. Otherwise the US would just make up any troop shortage with
1) PMCs/Mercs
2) Allies
3) Stop loss
4) extending somewhat into the overage category.
5) Big fat bonuses for reenlistment.
So basically what they did at the height of the Iraq war.
1) PMCs/Mercs
2) Allies
3) Stop loss
4) extending somewhat into the overage category.
5) Big fat bonuses for reenlistment.
So basically what they did at the height of the Iraq war.
Put it this way - the 26th Amendment EXISTS because of young people in the military. People could be drafted - sent to Vietnam to fight and maybe die - against their will at 18 but couldn’t vote until 21. So they had exactly zero say in their fate and were effectively being sentenced to death without committing a crime or making any decisions on the matter.
Allowing people to enlist at 16 or 14 or whenever almost certainly allows them to be drafted at that age. Drafting 18-year-olds who can’t vote is bad enough (frankly, drafting 18-year-olds who CAN vote is bad enough regardless of how you feel about the effectiveness of voting.) Sending a 16-year-old - who almost certainly won’t be able to vote on the matter - into Vietnam is a brutal rite of passage and a recipe for disaster. Do it to 14-year-olds and it’s the goddamn Hunger Games. Plus it means a shit-ton of boys who don’t go to high school and come back to America at 18 or 19 with no skills other than shooting bad guys. You think the homeless veteran problem is bad now or was after Vietnam, holy shit is it ugly in that scenario.
Furthermore, Vietnam was among the first modern wars to utilize the young as heavily as we think of the front lines of the military today. The American Revolution and the Civil War had teenagers fighting, but you can bet the average age of an American soldier wasn’t exactly in the teens. Even in WWII, the average soldier was over 25. A lot of them had homes of their own and careers to go home to if they survived. Furthermore, they could vote on the matter - if they didn’t want to go to war with the likes of Hitler and Tojo, they could vote the assholes sending them there out.
In Vietnam, the average age of a soldier was goddamn 19. As in, not old enough to drink - or vote. Don’t want to go to war? Tough shit. It’s also well below the age when the brain finishes developing, so a bunch of fresh-faced young adults with crazy young brains were sent off to fight a war they had exactly zero say in.
And nowadays, a lot of the people sent to the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan are sent right out of high school. Look at the number of dead 18-year-olds coming home. Granted, they could likely have voted on the matter, but let’s say a person enlists straight out of high school after having turned 18 - the previous March. And they enlist because they see the military as their only viable option - their grades aren’t good enough for college scholarships and they can’t afford it in their own without a shit-ton of loans. So the choices are the Marines or debt slavery, all without a single solitary election between their 18th birthday and basic training. And then they get sent to Afghanistan and get blown to hell from an IED. It’s not as insidious or blatant as Vietnam was, but that may make it harder to fight.
Compound that with people skipping goddamn high school to enlist. Picture a bunch of 14-year-olds getting yelled at by pissed off DIs. And now picture the kids who just discovered the opposite sex (or same sex or whatever) and haven’t developed anything close to life skills and probably haven’t worked anything close to a job getting sent to Afghanistan to fight insurgents. And picture that they lack the capacity to enter into any other agreement - I mean, we don’t trust people under 18 to get credit cards, sign contracts, or work anything close to dangerous jobs. We don’t trust anyone under 16 to drive a car or work. But we trust someone at 14 to fight and die? And you can bet the poor and desperate will sign up disproportionately - the kid who needs to support his family sends his military check home when he’s 15 while he’s out risking his life. And what kind of support will he get when he gets home? Probably not much - if people are that desperate, expect massive cuts to the GI Bill if it ever exists in the first place. The military-industrial complex will chew up kids and spit them out en masse.
Come to think of it, if you like AH and YA dystopias, this is a pretty good starting point.
I want to see what stopped us in the first place or how dystopian things could have gotten as other countries do this
Post 1900? Not going to happen. There is no need for it; the manpower demands are not anything near being necessary, and long before they'd drop the age (which the military itself wouldn't want), they'd do conscription (which the military itself also wouldn't want).
The Continental Army had 16 year olds under legal statute in some states. The Civil War also saw enlistment of people even younger.
But in WW2, the US Army suffered 400,000 KIA and still suffered from overspecialization of manpower. We never got anywhere near what the Russians or Chinese had to deal with in terms of casualties, and as a result, never had to seriously consider dropping the age or conscripting women.
There is no reason why the enlistment age would need to be dropped.
The Continental Army had 16 year olds under legal statute in some states. The Civil War also saw enlistment of people even younger.
But in WW2, the US Army suffered 400,000 KIA and still suffered from overspecialization of manpower. We never got anywhere near what the Russians or Chinese had to deal with in terms of casualties, and as a result, never had to seriously consider dropping the age or conscripting women.
There is no reason why the enlistment age would need to be dropped.
Ehh more important then any of this is that the US military would have approximately negative 500 percent interest in in any way doing anything of the like.
And in regards to Vietnam for the most part the GI's sent to the conflict were at least nominal volunteers. Sending draftees was generally too politically toxic so draftees got sent to Europe or SK while volunteers got sent to Vietnam.
Around the time of the ACW/ARW utilizing the young in some combat and combat support roles was pretty bog standard everywhere. Powder monkey's on naval vessels were often well below ten. It was also pretty common for midshipmen to at least nominally join the service at age 7 or earlier. Made it so they had an early start on their career and could often make lieutenent well before their fifteenth birthday.
That doesn't mean it would be a good thing today of course.
SsgtC
Banned
+1 to this. I enlisted the day I turned 17 with parental consent. I finished high school at 16 (self paced home school) so I shipped relatively quickly to Paris Island. Even with that, between Boot Camp, SOI and BRC, I still didn't reach my first unit until well after I was 18. Lowering the age to enlist won't change how the military operates. I could see the military allowing enlistment at 16 and basically being a Poolee so that they're better prepared for when they do ship to Boot, but I don't see them allowing kids that young to actually go on active duty
nbcman
Donor
For the US, 22 weeks of One Station Unit Training (OSUT) for an 11B. But if the US is pressed to employ under 18s, that training time surely would be reduced.
EDIT: I'd see conscription resuming before allowing under 18s to be used.
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Yeah. The Pentagon aren't always complete morons. If nothing else sending 16 year olds on combat deployment is as politically toxic as taking a dump on the American flag on national TV.
SsgtC
Banned
Military training isn't that fast. Between Boot Camp/Basic Training and your follow on schools, it's going to be a minimum of 6 months before your deemed combat ready and sent to your first operational unit. And when you get there, it's probably going to be months more before they consider you combat ready.
The only reason the country would want to enlist someone that young is if its very existence was at stake, and there was a dire shortage of manpower - nothing short of nuclear war, or an alien invasion would do that.
SsgtC
Banned
And that's the shortest training time you can have. Even the Corps is 25 weeks between Boot Camp and SOI. And usually longer considering the start of SOI doesn't always line up with Boot Camp graduation. In a WWIII scenario, I could possibly see Boot and SOI compressed down to 16-20 weeks. But that's pushing it
Army does OSUT training, meaning you go through basic and infantry ot MoS school with the same batch of enlistees. The Marine Corp does not. Still the pipeline for both would be ~6 months.
So take myself- I was actually one of the youngest kids in my high school class, being born a couple weeks before the cut off date. Enlisted in the Marine Corps on my 17th birthday a few days before my senior year of high school started. Because of the requirement to graduate HS I was already 17 years and 11 months when I shipped the July after I graduated. I was in week 6 of 13 of recruit training when o graduated boot, then got another week of leave, 3 weeks of combat training, them 8 weeks of MOS training.
So really, if I had graduated high school and turned 17 the next day, then enlisted and shipped almost right away I'd still be 17 when I got to my first unit. I'd also be a gigantic fringe case.