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The Draft Agency's Five-Year Plan

Cover of the Selective Service System Fiscal Year 2026-2030 Strategic Plan

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. This is the agency's own document. On January 29, 2026, the Selective Service System (SSS), the federal agency that keeps the list of men who can be drafted, published its Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2026 to 2030. It is eight pages long and signed by Acting Director Craig T. Brown. It says, in the government's own words, what the draft agency is building over the next five years while the United States fights a war with Iran.

The plan names two priorities. The first is "strengthening operational readiness to deliver manpower to the Department of War (DOW) in the event of a national emergency" (plan p. 1). The second is saving taxpayer money. Most of the eight pages are about the first.

Read the whole plan the way it was published. Every page is rendered from the original PDF, and you can search and select the text. An outline jumps to each goal and objective.

📄 Open the Full Strategic Plan →   or download the original PDF (1.9 MB)

"The sole source of conscripted manpower"​

The agency's stated vision is "to be a trusted, actively engaged national defense partner and the sole source of conscripted manpower for national security in the event of a national emergency" (plan p. 2). Its mission is "to register men and maintain a system that, when authorized by the President and Congress, rapidly provides manpower."

Conscripted means drafted: taken into the military by law, not by choice. The agency does not describe itself as a records office. It describes itself as the pipeline for drafted soldiers, kept ready. The director's letter says the plan supports the 2026 National Defense Strategy "by ensuring the Nation retains the capability to rapidly expand military manpower in a high-end national emergency" (plan p. 1). A high-end emergency, in Pentagon language, means a war against a large, capable military, not a small operation.

Every young man on the list by December 2026​

The plan's first "transformational initiative" is automatic registration, ordered by Section 535 of the 2026 defense bill (see Automatic Draft Registration: Section 535). The agency writes that the change "transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS through integration with federal data sources," and that it "will implement the change by December 2026" (plan p. 2).

Objective 1.2 spells out how (plan p. 3):

  • "establish automated data feeds from federal sources"
  • "develop matching algorithms and exception handling processes"
  • "sunset manual compliance activities": 50% in FY 2026, 100% in FY 2027
  • FY 2027 target: "Automatic registration capability implemented" and "Federal data source integrations are operational"

In plain words: a young man no longer has to do anything to end up on the draft list. Government computers will find him in federal records and put him there. The agency even notes that the whole plan depends on other agencies' "ability to provide timely, necessary data." How that matching works is on Automatic Registration and Data Matching.

Rehearsing a draft four times a year​

Objective 1.1 is to "Expand Mobilization Training and Readiness Exercises" (plan p. 3). The plan calls for a "progressive exercise program (tabletop → full-scale)," at four exercises a year "of increasing complexity." A tabletop exercise is officials walking through a scenario on paper. A full-scale exercise runs it for real with people and systems. The partners listed are the Department of War, the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command (the stations where draftees would report for induction), and the Department of Homeland Security, with outside grading by the Army War College.

Objective 1.3 adds formal partnerships with other federal agencies "for data sharing, exercise participation, and mobilization support," and joint exercises with them every year through 2030 (plan p. 4). The draft rehearsal reported in 2026 is on Readiness Simulation: the Draft Wargame.

New "conscription" software, with AI​

The plan's second initiative is to "modernize legacy conscription applications to ensure secure, reliable systems are ready in the event of a national emergency" (plan p. 2). The agency says it received $6 million from the federal Technology Modernization Fund at the end of FY 2025 for use in FY 2026 to 2028.

Objective 2.4 commits to "Deploy Artificial Intelligence/automation tools to improve process efficiency," with a target of two AI or automation tools in FY 2026 and four in FY 2027 (plan p. 6). The agency's own word for these systems is conscription. Who builds them and what they cost is on Selective Service Software Contracts and Budget.

Why this matters now​

Put the plan beside the rest of this investigation. Israel's leaders have pursued a Greater Israel and a list of wars ending in Iran. The Jerusalem Post, Israel's leading English-language daily, put a ground war in Iran at "between 750 thousand and 1.5 million American troops" (Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2026). The White House says a draft is "not part of the current plan right now" (PolitiFact).

This plan shows what "not part of the plan" looks like from inside the agency: every young man registered by computer by the end of 2026, draft rehearsals four times a year, and new conscription systems built with AI. The only step left is one vote in Congress to turn induction back on (If the Draft Were Turned Back On). A parent who reads these eight pages can see the machine being built, on a schedule, in the government's own words.

📄 Read the Full Strategic Plan →

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-27

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