I’m prior service, but I got my honorable discharge in 2001, and I am not in the shape I was in when I enlisted. I know I couldn’t pass a physical for initial enlistment, and I would probably get rejected when they got around to calling up prior service. I’m almost 50. If they got desperate enough to call up 50-year-olds, I would probably be one of the first to get called in for a physical, but I wouldn’t pass.
Another issue is that my husband is also prior service. He has combat experience, and also an honorable discharge, but he’s in better shape than me, albeit, probably overweight, but again, if they are calling people my age, they may be playing fast and loose with the weight requirements. Of the two of us, he is more fit, and we have a son who is underage. We would not both get called up, leaving our son parentless. So if the country was really in dire straits, DH would be shipped off, and I’d stay home with the boychik.
TL;DR: I’d be in the first group my age to get called up, due to prior service, but I would be rejected at entrance processing.
I think people are fighting the hypothetical here - the shit has hit the fan, so “I’m a veteran and immune to the draft” isn’t going to fly, nor is “I’m old and fat”. Those rules are going to change.
Heck, my FIL told stories about people who got passed over in the initial WWII draft for physical reasons who got pulled in later ('43, '44).
I’m over 50 and out of shape. The military might come for me if the entire GPS constellation has already been taken out and they don’t need me to help maintain it anymore.
I was designate 4-F bank in 1988 (bad knee), and now I’m 46. The knee is better now than it was then (wonders of modern medicine and all) but I’d never make it through basic training without re-injuring it, or injuring the other one (which hasn’t been surgically repaired 3 times, but ain’t great). So, unless they need an IT Guy on the front line, and have dispensed with the boot camp stuff, I think I’m pretty well-insulated from service by age and circumstance.
ETA: I’ll be happy to defend the beaches in my hometown, though, if they care to give me a machine gun.
There are three basic levels of mobilization. Presidential Reserve Call-Ups allow the president to call up a percentage of the reserves under his authority only. Partial Mobilization requires a presidential declaration of national emergency and means up to 1,000,000 reserve and inactive reserves can be called up for up to 24 months. Full Mobilization requires congress to declare war or national emergency and all reserves including retired can be called up for the duration plus 6 months. During Viet Nam there was no declaration of emergency so there wasn’t a large scale call up of reserves. It’s hard to imagine now but then it was less of a political problem to expand the draft than it was to call up the reserves.
They don’t have to draft me. I’m a retiree so they just need to recall me. I’m late 40’s and in good health. I finished my career with significant experience training troops for overseas deployment. If we went to Full Mobilization I’d be a smart choice to recall from retirement . Whether the staff process was good enough to identify that… who knows. I’d be surprised if I wasn’t in boots before draftees started filling the training pipeline.
Loach left off Total Mobilization which goes past mobilizing all the reserve component force structure and involves creating additional units. That’s mostly where the draft fits in our mobilization doctrine (although they can fill those units in other ways like recalling inactive reserve or expanding recruiting of volunteers.)
Army side, one of the side effects of post 9-11 operations was a cleanup of officers in the inactive reserve. Before that officers just sort of hung around unless they actively took steps to resign their commission once their service obligation expired. They started actively asking to minimize the difficulty of contacting people avoid managing resignations that followed being contacted for potential deployment. They also started actively using the one day a year muster system or annual mail questionnaire to check on inactive Soldiers. It went from doing nothing meaning you were still in to having to actively say you still wanted to be in the inactive reserve once your MSO was over.
I don’t know if the Air Force followed suit. If you’d been Army, by this point, doing nothing means you’d almost certainly have been discharged from the IRR. IF youa re at all antsy about legally still being subject to recall you could always check on your status and if necessary submit your resignation.
Not reservist but specialized conscript here. 42yo, reasonable healthy, have some psi - related problems right now, but OTOH, i’am not only good with kalshnikov, but also i’ve been told some basics around bio, chem and radiation defense (specialization). Also have some management and engineering education with a lot of educational practice. I’d guess, if some situation arises, I’d be quite high on the list for some local back-ops. Not necessarily war, but think Chernobyl and Bhopal situations. In similar cases i’d probably volunteer first, before they’d contacted me…
At 60 and with chronic arthritis, I doubt I would be much use in the field. However, I’d be happy to serve in another capacity - clerical, trainer, etc.
My uncle, who had numerous health issues as a young man, still was able to serve in the Korean War. He served as a tech assistant to the field dentist who visited the troops periodically to take care of any dental issues. I could certainly do something like that if required.
I’m such a weird mix, it’s hard to tell. Flat feet, lousy cardio, seriously overweight female over 45. I’m also a Quaker, so I checked Conscientious Objector above.
In an actual draft scenario, if they’re calling me up, there aren’t enough of them left to process the paperwork.
However, I’m also an expert in all the Rules and regulations and treaties and processes you have to know in order to make purchases on behalf of the US Government. So there’d be no problem at all finding me a desperately needed non-combat position appropriate to my health and abilities.
Most likely they would pull me in as a contractor by awarding a"DX" rated Task Order to my employer. As an actual human, I would have the right to quit, but I could also pretty much name my price. So as long as they had me supporting health or intelligence, rather than actual weapon systems, I’d probably do it.
I’m also extremely good at aiming a rifle at things far away. So if it’s, like, alien reptilians over-fishing the sea of humankind? Yeah, I’m your sniper. But you’ll have to give me a ride to the tree.
On one hand, I’m overweight, female, and I will be age 47 by the end of this week. I have some mental health issues, including mild anxiety and ptsd.
On the other hand, I’m a nurse. I mostly work with seniors, or rehabilitation but if things were really bad I could see them needing me, probably not in something like a MASH unit but maybe in long term recuperative hospitals. I’m Canadian.
