The Oxford Companion to American Military History

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All‐Volunteer Force

All‐Volunteer Force.
In 1973, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announced the formation of the All‐Volunteer Force (AVF) and the end of the conscription that had been the major basis of America's Cold War army. Although volunteerism had been America's peacetime military tradition prior to 1940, the AVF represented the nation's first attempt to maintain a standing force on a completely voluntary basis.

The blueprint for the AVF was prepared by President Richard M. Nixon's Commission on an All‐Volunteer Armed Force, appointed in 1969. Driven by political pressure to end the draft and an ideological commitment to free market forces, the commission headed by Thomas Gates had concluded that a volunteer force, supported by the potential to reintroduce the draft, was preferable to a mixed force of conscripts and volunteers, and that, based...

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