NATO has a standing army of ~3.4 million soldiers, and they do not have the ability to equip significantly more on short notice. If you live in a NATO country your chances of being conscripted are minimal even in the event of a conflict breaking out.
Any conflict requiring significantly more than current forces and volunteers could provide would in all likelihood end in nuclear annihilation, in which case there's no need to worry about the draft.
Your estimate doesn't account for marines, airmen, sailors, or officers. NATO has far far more then 3.4 million active soldiers. That is also not counting reserves and national guard or emergency units.
The United States alone has 1.5 million active duty personnel, and can comfortably raise an army of roughly 4.5-5 million reservists, national guards members, and recalled veterans. That’s BEFORE you count any new volunteers.
If that’s just the United States, that means NATO will never need to execute a draft in a million years, and if they do…. It’s already the point of no return and nuclear war is immediately imminent.
Can USA equip them all tho? Just look at last year's limited mobilization in Russia. There's a reason it was "limited", and it wasn't because more people weren't needed - our MoD had simply crunched some numbers and counted how many people it could realistically gear up. Even then there's been plenty of reports (from pro-russian sources!) about relatives of mobiks buying stuff for them with their own money
We're talking night vision, body armour, small drones, etc
It depends. With current production? Not in a million years, though that’s a bit obvious because the current system isn’t designed to mobilize 5 million men. However, if war production shifted (that would probably take 6+ months) the US could easy mobilize and arm all of those soldiers.
Also the current US doctrine doesn’t require massive amounts of infantry that you have to equip. The focus is more on superior firepower through artillery and air power, and shock troops built around armored and mechanized divisions manned by veteran/professional career soldiers. Further, the navy is built around power projection, so you don’t need to man 1 million corvettes and frigates, hence the Navy has no need for conscripts.
The Air Force is extremely difficult to get into as is. The list of requirements is absurd, and they are essentially all professors flying jets, so I doubt that they’d let in hoards of random people WW2 style.
Simple grunt infantry is cannon fodder on the modern battlefield. Which is good, because then you don’t need to equip them all.
The focus is more on superior firepower through artillery and air power, and shock troops built around armored and mechanized divisions manned by veteran/professional career soldiers
You'll notice it's also nearly the same doctrine that Russian armed forces have in Ukraine - artillery dominance, select groups of professional assault troops. Likewise with the airforce - Russian airspace force is very professionally oriented. It's actually an issue, because it takes a lot of time and effort to train a pilot for Ka-52 for example. Heck, I don't know of any modern army that relies on "massive amounts of simple grunt infantry", as you put it. So I'm not sure where you are getting that this was suggestion.
But consider this: an M777 howitzer (used widely by Ukraine right now) has a minimum crew of 5, and a nominal crew of 9 + 1 driver. So that's 5 people at least, who each must receive at least one set of uniform (strictly speaking more, as per military regulations, but we're talking imaginary scenario here). That would be proper fabrics with regulation paint scheme, boots, socks, undershirts, etc. Since we're talking a war in EU, they'd also need a separate set of winter gear. Plus food, which must be manufactured, and logistics to get it to the actual troops. Five people, on some both basic and essential as a howitzer. Do you are where I'm going? And we haven't even looked at ammunition for the gun, spare parts, spare barrels, etc. And for artillery to function you also need recon of some kind - drones or forward observation troops. Radios. More uniforms, food, logistics.
That's what I meant by "equipping many people". There's zero need for any imaginary "human wave" for the task to become difficult, just economy. Takes a village to arm a soldier.
I would seriously doubt it. Our production and supply chains are a mess; when we "went into" (i.e., invaded) Syria, the air force had to cannabalize musuem planes for parts we couldn't make. The US Navy has about half of its planes inoperative, including two thirds of its strike aircraft. Soldiers have been complaining for the past twenty years about being given old guns, repaired with worn-out parts that jam. And if we can't compete with Russian shell and tank production now, in a proxy war, there's no way we'll be able to do it in an actual state-to-state conflict.
That wasn’t a wartime draft. A wartime draft is all men of service ability from the ages of 18-35.
After the end of World War 2, this was reduced to a “peacetime draft” which allowed the military to draft men 18-24 in case there were not enough volunteers. That’s how people got drafted into Vietnam and Korea.
After Vietnam the system was removed and the military shifted their doctrine significantly into a smaller, professional, career based volunteer system; which is currently used.
If the wartime draft is ever reinstated, the world is already over. Any scenario where a 5 million man army + more volunteers isn’t enough…. Something catastrophic has happened.
NATO has a standing army of ~3.4 million soldiers, and they do not have the ability to equip significantly more on short notice. If you live in a NATO country your chances of being conscripted are minimal even in the event of a conflict breaking out.
Any conflict requiring significantly more than current forces and volunteers could provide would in all likelihood end in nuclear annihilation, in which case there's no need to worry about the draft.
Your estimate doesn't account for marines, airmen, sailors, or officers. NATO has far far more then 3.4 million active soldiers. That is also not counting reserves and national guard or emergency units.
The United States alone has 1.5 million active duty personnel, and can comfortably raise an army of roughly 4.5-5 million reservists, national guards members, and recalled veterans. That’s BEFORE you count any new volunteers.
If that’s just the United States, that means NATO will never need to execute a draft in a million years, and if they do…. It’s already the point of no return and nuclear war is immediately imminent.
Can USA equip them all tho? Just look at last year's limited mobilization in Russia. There's a reason it was "limited", and it wasn't because more people weren't needed - our MoD had simply crunched some numbers and counted how many people it could realistically gear up. Even then there's been plenty of reports (from pro-russian sources!) about relatives of mobiks buying stuff for them with their own money We're talking night vision, body armour, small drones, etc
It depends. With current production? Not in a million years, though that’s a bit obvious because the current system isn’t designed to mobilize 5 million men. However, if war production shifted (that would probably take 6+ months) the US could easy mobilize and arm all of those soldiers.
Also the current US doctrine doesn’t require massive amounts of infantry that you have to equip. The focus is more on superior firepower through artillery and air power, and shock troops built around armored and mechanized divisions manned by veteran/professional career soldiers. Further, the navy is built around power projection, so you don’t need to man 1 million corvettes and frigates, hence the Navy has no need for conscripts.
The Air Force is extremely difficult to get into as is. The list of requirements is absurd, and they are essentially all professors flying jets, so I doubt that they’d let in hoards of random people WW2 style.
Simple grunt infantry is cannon fodder on the modern battlefield. Which is good, because then you don’t need to equip them all.
You'll notice it's also nearly the same doctrine that Russian armed forces have in Ukraine - artillery dominance, select groups of professional assault troops. Likewise with the airforce - Russian airspace force is very professionally oriented. It's actually an issue, because it takes a lot of time and effort to train a pilot for Ka-52 for example. Heck, I don't know of any modern army that relies on "massive amounts of simple grunt infantry", as you put it. So I'm not sure where you are getting that this was suggestion.
But consider this: an M777 howitzer (used widely by Ukraine right now) has a minimum crew of 5, and a nominal crew of 9 + 1 driver. So that's 5 people at least, who each must receive at least one set of uniform (strictly speaking more, as per military regulations, but we're talking imaginary scenario here). That would be proper fabrics with regulation paint scheme, boots, socks, undershirts, etc. Since we're talking a war in EU, they'd also need a separate set of winter gear. Plus food, which must be manufactured, and logistics to get it to the actual troops. Five people, on some both basic and essential as a howitzer. Do you are where I'm going? And we haven't even looked at ammunition for the gun, spare parts, spare barrels, etc. And for artillery to function you also need recon of some kind - drones or forward observation troops. Radios. More uniforms, food, logistics.
That's what I meant by "equipping many people". There's zero need for any imaginary "human wave" for the task to become difficult, just economy. Takes a village to arm a soldier.
I would seriously doubt it. Our production and supply chains are a mess; when we "went into" (i.e., invaded) Syria, the air force had to cannabalize musuem planes for parts we couldn't make. The US Navy has about half of its planes inoperative, including two thirds of its strike aircraft. Soldiers have been complaining for the past twenty years about being given old guns, repaired with worn-out parts that jam. And if we can't compete with Russian shell and tank production now, in a proxy war, there's no way we'll be able to do it in an actual state-to-state conflict.
didn't people got drafted to vietnam, including boxing legend mohamed ali?
That wasn’t a wartime draft. A wartime draft is all men of service ability from the ages of 18-35.
After the end of World War 2, this was reduced to a “peacetime draft” which allowed the military to draft men 18-24 in case there were not enough volunteers. That’s how people got drafted into Vietnam and Korea.
After Vietnam the system was removed and the military shifted their doctrine significantly into a smaller, professional, career based volunteer system; which is currently used.
If the wartime draft is ever reinstated, the world is already over. Any scenario where a 5 million man army + more volunteers isn’t enough…. Something catastrophic has happened.