On 30 June 1973 Dwight Elliot Stone, the last man to be conscripted into the US military, reported for basic training. The following day the United States began its experiment with an all-volunteer force.

Most Americans understood this move as a major and unprecedented transformation – even as a radical experiment – even though the longstanding draft was, in fact, the aberration. Until Cold War pressures convinced Americans that a large standing army was justified, the nation had relied on a volunteer force, turning to conscription only in time of war. But memories were short. Even though the draft had been in effect for only thirty-three years, from 1940 through slightly more than three decades of war and tense peace, conscription had come to seem normal, an expected part of young men's lives.

Short memories aside, however, those who saw the all-volunteer force (AVF) as a radical experiment had a point. It was clear in 1973 that the nation would need to recruit 20,000 to 30,000 nonprior service (NPS) accessions a month – vastly more than in the all-volunteer past. And they would have to do so from a population of youth that could generously be characterized as antimilitary, persuading them to join a troubled institution at the end of a difficult and unpopular war. The chair of the House Armed Services Committee was widely quoted as he quipped – repeatedly – that the only way the United States could get a volunteer force was to draft one.

The American move from one military form to another was not messy and gradual, as are many of the transitions discussed in this volume. Instead it was clear and absolute, from one day to the next, and both the end of conscription and the structure of the new system were argued over, legislated, planned, observed, analyzed, and evaluated. Thus it is possible to discuss not only the key social, economic, demographic, and technological variables that produced the United States’ modern volunteer force, but also the struggles to shape that force and to give meaning to the experience of military service in the post-Vietnam War United States. Significantly, many of those at the forefront of the move to an AVF consciously and purposely attempted to redefine military service as labor.