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U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel
waytoomuchcoffee writes "The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'. There is already a system in place to draft health care personnel, and this system would be expanded in order to 'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists."
to move to canada =\
...how do they determine who has "computer skills"? And is this really feasible? How will they make someone work for them? How will they even know if a computer programmer is a computer programmer? Do they have some kind of national database of them? This isn't anything like normal conscription, and sounds like a dodgy idea to me.
This has been going on in Israel for decades. As a result, Isreal has produced some of the best computer programmer's in the world. Most of the developers end up in VERY high paying jobs once they are released from military duty.
Of course, if you don't like the draft, you could always migrate to India India.
Nothing to see here
This doesn't make too much sense to me.
In the past 10 years, computer specialists in the military were offered large retention bonuses to stay in the military and reenlist. Now those bonuses aren't to be seen. I know from experience.
So why isn't the military trying harder to retain these already military trained computer specialists but supposedly drawing up a draft? Something doesn't jive here.
This guy is way out there
there are twin bills in the house and senate in order to conscript for active duty, rerserve military, and homeland security civilian jobs. Male and female. 18-26. Manidtory 2 years.
I forgot the bill numbers. My little sister did a paper on it for her highschool government class. I'll stake my life and reputation that it's true, though. The bills have been in the works since early in 2003 and the schedual is to bring them into effect in 2005.
If the military want to get a bunch of computer specialists, they can just hire them. Drafts are usually only used to acquire cannon fodder because the people who get drafted are often the unrepresented class. It hardly seams fair to pay one CS student's way thought college with ROTC, and then hijack another grad's career without proper compensation.
Well, I always suspected it. I am a member of the US Naval Reserve and about two years ago, the NAVRES asked all of it's members to fill out a "skills profile". This profile would be used to solicit qualified members and ask them to volunteer to fill temporary billets as they arose. The program was presented as a way to find the best service member for the task and to offer them the oppurtunity to take orders for that job. A lot of the billets that open up are from 6 weeks to 9 months.
I was always dubious of doing this, becuase if there were ever a "crisis" and they REALLY needed someone with my skills, I foresaw the "volunteer oppurtunity" becoming an "involuntary recall to active duty" in a heartbeat.
I doubt this decision is directly related, but now they have a massive database of skills that they can search through and draft from first.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
The whole reason to have a draft is so you can pay far below market rates.
Conscription is logically equivalent to slavery. Consider yourself lucky if you get minimum wage, most of the plans to draft unskilled troops won't even give them that much.
The fundamentals have not changed between WW2 and now, and a draft was certainly needed to prosecute that "good war".
The biggest lesson of every military conflict since the first Gulf War is that manpower is almost irrelevant in the face of technology. Remember, in 1991, Iraq had one of the largest and most battle-experienced armies in the middle East. Yet they got spanked by a much smaller force of tecnologically superior Americans.
The 1999 war between NATO and Yugoslavia even put an end to the conventional wisdom that invasion by ground forces is required for victory.
In fact the trend in warfare is to involve as few humans as possible. The second Iraq war was the first large-scale use of unmanned drones in combat; some suggest that the current F-22 will be the last manned fighter jet, and that in the future all military aircraft will be robotic.
I can imagine a future hypothetical conflict between large, technologically equal adversaries, fought entirely by unmanned vehicles over land, sea, and air. Whichever side's unmanned vehicles ran out first would likely be forced to surrender, given the alternative of certain and pointless death for any human sent to combat the machines.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
You too can fight and die for .. the DMCA, 70 year copyright extensions, the RIAA, the MPAA, 1$ a gallon gas and the right to pollute the world... 8)
Don't forget that the $27,000 is just your base bay. On top of that you either live on base for free(including electricity and water), or get a housing allowence which changes depending on where you are and your rank, and family. Plus health and dental on top of that.
That's still not very good. If you add $27,000 to what I pay for housing/electricity/water, you get about what I was making as a help desk phone jockey when I started out in IT four years ago, with no degree.
The military can probably get away with lower-than-industry pay for certain jobs that have a cool factor, like flying a fighter jet or driving a tank, but not for an IT position.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
And my unit spent most of its time in the motor pool, or in the field, digging in the dirt. Not once did I train to perform a mission as a linguist with my unit while I was in uniform, because officers can't lead soldiers who aren't in the field. It doesn't get them promoted, so they uniformly oppose it. Every bit of funding for every linguist mission was cut, and the mandatory eight hours of language maintenance required for all linguists was gradually reduced to no maintenance at all.
The only time I was actually useful was while on TDY.
Any assertion that the military needs people in these specialties is not true. They had them, indeed have them, and I can pick up the phone right now, call the RSDNCO of my former unit, and ask what they will be doing on Monday. I am confident that the answer will be: "motor pool".
This is something that has been brewing since before the Kennedy Report, and it still pisses me off, especially in light of all the back-pedalling from the FBI and military that they "don't have the resources". They did have them. Due to mismanagement and fucked-up priorities (primarily the OER system), they couldn't keep them. My re-enlistment counseling with my commanding officer (whom I respected a great deal) was, "well I can offer you the Army nurse program, or physician's assistant, but unless you want to become an officer, you won't be able to transfer out of your MOS because it's short".
During my time in the military, I think about one in three linguists re-enlisted, always for choice of duty station. I cannot count the number of linguists that disappeared, that training wasted, because they spent four (or more) years doing nothing. If they left the military under good terms, they should have been actively pursued by the FBI or NSA so that training wouldn't have been wasted. But it wasn't a priority until 9/11. Then, all those three-letter agencies suddenly realized that they'd better come up with effective damage control fast, so they settled on: "we don't have the resources."
It's a lie.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
Interesting thing.
We were studying supply and demand, and the relationships in a Free Enterprise System. Demand is paid-for transfer of goods from seller to buyer when both agree on price. If you want a product bad enough, and if you are capable and willing to pay enough for it, some seller will generate a supply. Thats just how the system works. Sure, there are workarounds for the system, like simply taking it if you want it, and we call it theft and extortion. Note how the government has passed all sorts of law to protect the owners of intellectual property lately.
So, one way of looking at a draft is imposing a severe tax on some of the population based on whatever criteria they choose because the demander ( government ) of the resource ( someone else's time and labor ) refuses to negotiate for it, and simply uses a gun to achieve his objectives.
If the free enterprise system, which this country is supposedly based on, is supposed to work, the rights of all, not just some, have to be respected. How can Congress say downloading music or copying software is bad, yet think its OK to commit widespread theft of "factors of production" by invoking a draft? If they need soldiers, PAY for them. Up the salary enough, people will join. Need specialized skills? Compete the same way everyone else has to. I wish Congress could tell me just what is the American Way to fill a need.. negotiate for it, or just use a gun.
That damn draft kept me uncomfortable the whole time I went through adolescence. Although I lucked out on the "lottery", it did drive in just how wrong it was to force ones way at gunpoint. I know the current regime likes to have a lot of prayer breakfasts, but actions like this say a lot more than strings of words ending in "amen."
It just seems to me that we are no better than the ones we fight, if we use the same tactics to enforce compliance with the dictator's rulings.
The government has already shown in my mind very poor fiscal policy by lowering the federal funds rate to such riduculous lows and causing our dollar to become cheap. It places rewards on those who live beyond their means by ensuring they pay back less value than they borrowed, and it damn nearly assures all the working wage-slaves out there that they will probably never be able to afford their own home. Did wages track the the resultant spike in housing and fuel prices as the market achieved a new price point equilibrium reflecting the new inflated value of the dollar?
Most likely, all working people received an effective wage cut, as they keep getting paid numerically yesterdays wage. It makes way for an endless spiral of "raises" just to stay where we are, invisibly pushing us up into higher and higher tax rate brackets. No wonder our employers can't afford us anymore.
Any monetary assets people were saving for retirement are effectively diminshed. And they don't even allow us with retirement accounts to write off the effect of the inflation against the interest on the account. And we wonder why the US has such a low saving rate?
I honestly believe I have been cursed by an old Chinese curse... "May you live in interesting times." I believe the door is just opening now for some real lulus.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
So, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Are you willing to wager cold, hard cash that your paranoid liberal view of the world is rooted in fact rather than delusion? I've even given you four months longer than you're "sure" the draft will be reinstated. Or are you all just talk?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'm currently in the Army Reserves and write software on the civilian side. For the past 8 years I've been trying to find a way to help out the Army Reserves with my computer skills - and from my perspective there are lots of others just like me.... problem is, the Army doesn't know what to do with us. Sure, they have set up special 'Information Operations' units filled with talented people... but most of these people waste their time ordering computers, installing microsoft 2000 on them, and upgrading patches.... not to mention filling out paperwork and stacking boxes... its a complete waste of time. And these are smart people who really want to help out with their skills. I would prefer seeing the military make a plan for how to USE the technology specialists they have before drafting up a plan to pluck people out of their civilian life.