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The 2026 Draft Exercise Guide: A Skills Draft in 30 Days, a Million Men in 15 Months

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. The lines below come from the Selective Service System's own 2026 Response Planning Exercise guide, released under the Freedom of Information Act and published by Edward Hasbrouck. The document is marked as an exercise.

What the document is​

A tabletop exercise is a rehearsal. Officials sit around a table and walk through an imagined crisis step by step, to see what their agency can and cannot do. Nobody is called up. But the steps they rehearse are the steps they expect to take, and the gaps they find are the gaps they will fix. This guide is the script and note-taking template for the Selective Service System's (SSS) 2026 exercise, held in January 2026, weeks before the United States went to war with Iran. It is marked "CUI / Exercise" (exercise guide, FOIA).

The script, in its own words​

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

"Presidential Declaration of National Emergency."

"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 Military Selective Service Act, the draft law. DoW is the Department of War, the Pentagon's current name. "Kinetic strikes" means physical attacks.)

The first wave: a list of trades​

The script's skills list reads like a union hall roster:

"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 linguists."

Responsible Statecraft, which reported the documents on July 8, 2026, wrote that the exercise would not resemble the Vietnam draft: "Instead, those with “special skills” would be conscripted first." It called this "the opposite of what the Selective Service says in its promotional materials, that “if a draft is authorized, individuals are selected through a random lottery” from among all young men regardless of their occupation or current skills" (Responsible Statecraft, July 8, 2026).

What the sequence shows​

Read the steps in order. First, the question: can the agency "selectively draft skilled men"? Second, an emergency declaration. Third, the White House names the skills and wants a plan in 30 days. Fourth, Congress rewrites the draft law for "general conscription with priority specialties." Fifth, a war and a request for a million men.

That is not a lottery of birthdays. It is a draft that sorts people by what they know how to do, and then takes everyone else. It requires data on who has which skills, which is exactly what the agency's own former director said in 2019 it had no legal authority to collect (the 2019 commission).

"Country A" and the Iran war​

The exercise names an unnamed "Country A," attacking Alaska and Hawaii. It does not name Iran. That detail matters less than it seems. A draft machine does not care which country it is aimed at. The registration list, the data feeds, the simulator, and the skills plan work the same way whether the war is in the Pacific or the Persian Gulf. The exercise was held weeks before the Iran war began, published in July during it, and followed within two weeks by the agency's request for software to run "weekly simulations of activation of either a general draft or a “special-skills draft”" (Hasbrouck). The war that is actually being fought is the one against Iran.

Hasbrouck's page on the exercise includes the caption "Flowchart used for 2026 SSS mobilization exercise" (same source).

Sources​

Status: Edward Hasbrouck is alive.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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