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Special Skills First: The 2026 Draft Exercise and the Health-Care Draft

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that a January 2026 Selective Service exercise gamed a draft that calls people with specific job skills first, followed by a general draft of a million men, and that the agency keeps a standby plan to draft health-care workers from licensing lists. STRONG for this page's reading: the random birthday lottery that parents have been promised is only one of the drafts on the shelf, and the others depend on exactly the kind of data the new machine is built to gather.

Why this matters to your family​

Most Americans picture a draft the way it worked in 1969: a televised lottery of birthdays, and your number either comes up or it does not. The Selective Service System (SSS) still tells young men that is how it works: "if a draft is authorized, individuals are selected through a random lottery." But the agency also plans for a different kind of draft, one that calls people because of what they know how to do: nurses, electricians, welders, network technicians, linguists. That kind of draft does not treat every 20-year-old the same. It depends on data about who has which skills. It is the part of the draft machine that is most real and least known.

A few terms first:

  • Tabletop exercise: officials walk through a made-up crisis step by step to see what would break. Nobody is called up. What gets rehearsed is what they expect to do.
  • Health Care Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS): the agency's standby plan to draft doctors, nurses, and other medical workers from professional licensing lists.
  • NCMNPS: the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, created by Congress in 2016 to study the draft and national service.

The 2026 exercise: skills in 30 days, then a million men​

Edward Hasbrouck, a draft-registration resister who has spent decades filing records requests with the agency, published its planning guide for a January 2026 mobilization exercise. The script reads:

"Director asked to characterize readiness and about Agency capabilities to selectively draft skilled men."

"NSC asks SSS for a plan to begin a specialized skills national service draft in 30 days. NSC identifies required skills."

"Congress amends MSSA for general conscription with priority specialties."

"Country A conducts kinetic strikes against bases in Alaska and Hawaii. Congressional Declaration of War against country A. DoW requests 1 million inductees in 15 mos."

(NSC is the White House National Security Council; MSSA is the draft law; DoW is the Department of War.) Source: exercise guide, FOIA.

Responsible Statecraft reported on July 8, 2026, during the Iran war, that in such a draft "those with “special skills” would be conscripted first," and listed the first wave: "computer network technicians, electronics technicians, aerospace engineers, divers, welders, gas turbine engine mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, longshoremen, steel workers / pipefitters, radar / communications technicians, fiber optic technicians, mariners, aviation structural mechanics, cyber security specialists, robotics operators and technicians, air traffic controllers, logistics specialists, [and] linguists" (Responsible Statecraft, July 8, 2026). The outlet called this "the opposite of what the Selective Service says in its promotional materials."

The imagined enemy is "Country A." The machine being rehearsed has no enemy built into it; it works the same for any war. The war the country is actually in is the one against Iran.

Go deeper: the 2026 exercise guide, line by line

Two weeks after that article, the agency asked companies to build its "Readiness Simulation" software. Hasbrouck describes the purchase: "In July 2026, the SSS solicited bids for a contract to provide software to carry out weekly simulations of activation of either a general draft or a “special-skills draft” such as the HCPDS but potentially also encompassing other occupations" (Hasbrouck). Defense One noted the agency already keeps "a second special-skills database based on professional licensing lists of workers in certain health-care occupations" (Defense One, July 23, 2026). See the draft wargame software.

The health-care draft already exists​

The HCPDS is a working template for a skills draft: a list built from licensing records instead of birth dates. Congress keeps funding it while promising there will be no draft. A federal commission was told in 2019 that it "hasn't been tested in decades" and that the agreements with licensing bodies had expired. It is now in the agency's simulation.

Go deeper: the Health Care Personnel Delivery System

"We are not authorized under current law"​

In 2019, the agency's then-director, Donald Benton, told the national commission: "First, I agree with your premise we do need to be able to identify critical skills. And if current law authorizes us to have a system we would. We are not authorized under current law" (NCMNPS transcript, April 24, 2019). The commission's co-chair wanted registration extended to age 44 "in order to enable conscription of older people with more special skills." The commission stopped short of recommending a skills draft only because it "couldn't figure out a way to reliably identify those with skills" that do not show up on licensing lists (Hasbrouck, commission meetings).

That obstacle was data. Since then, Congress has given the agency power to require any federal agency to hand over what the Director "determines necessary to identify or register a person," and the agency is building a data warehouse and matching algorithms to use it (automatic registration).

Go deeper: the 2019 commission

What it adds up to​

  • The lottery is not the only draft on the shelf. A skills-first draft has been rehearsed, and a health-care draft plan exists on paper.
  • A skills draft needs skills data. In 2019 the agency said it wanted to identify critical skills and lacked only the legal authority. The 2025 law widened its data authority.
  • The new simulation software is meant to model both kinds of draft.
  • The people named in the exercise's first wave are skilled working men and women: the electricians, welders, and mechanics who keep a country running. Their families should know they are on a list that is not random.

What a citizen can check​

  • Read the exercise guide and the agency's records yourself at hasbrouck.org/draft/foia.html.
  • Ask your member of Congress whether any bill would let Selective Service collect occupation or license data, and whether the health-care draft agreements have been renewed.

Sources​

Status: Edward Hasbrouck, Debra Wada, and Ross Wilkers are alive. Donald Benton's current status was not confirmed for this page. Nothing here states or implies that any of them acted unlawfully.

Research captures: twitter/t68__v813.md through t68__v816.md, t69__v817.md, t69__v818.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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