The Vietnam War was a shock to the psyche of the United States. Anticipating a quick win, the US Government was caught flat footed as the war dragged on, and worse, as it started to look like it might not be winnable.
In these difficult circumstances nothing was off the table in the pursuit of victory. But the lengths to which the US was prepared to go to win seem shocking today. This certainly motivated one of the most grotesque decisions made during this period, known as Project 100,000.
This aimed to recruit individuals into the US Army who fell below standard mental and physical requirements. Launched in 1966, the program targeted disadvantaged youths, offering them military training, and sending them into combat as front line soldiers.
However, Project 100,000 faced significant criticism for its ethical implications and effectiveness. Today, it stands as a contentious chapter in US military history, reflecting broader societal concerns about exploitation and the treatment of disadvantaged individuals.
How could such a plan come into being?
Sacrificing the Disadvantaged?
On August 23, 1966, Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense, announced the start of Project 100,000. Also commonly referred to less flatteringly as McNamara’s 100,000, McNamara’s Folly, McNamara’s Morons, and McNamara’s Misfits, this was an ambitious social program that allowed the US military to allow men in who would not have normally passed the Armed Forces Qualification Test.
What does that mean? Well, those allowed to serve under the program included those who couldn’t speak English, men with low mental aptitudes and minor physical impairments, and those who would usually have been deemed too fat or too thin to serve safely.
Known officially as the “New Standards Men” these new troops had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, putting them in the 10th-30th percentile range. In other words, well below average.
The New Standards men tended to be poorly educated and were disproportionately from the South, and more controversially, African American. While official numbers vary, it’s estimated that anywhere between 320,000 and 354,000 men joined the military through the program.
54% of these were enlistees and 46% were draftees. This means that despite previously being deemed not up to standard almost half of the inductees had no choice but to serve.
While the program lowered the entrance requirements all troops went through the same training programs. The “New Standards Men” and normal recruits trained together, and performance standards were meant to be the same for everyone. All New Standards men had a large red letter stamped on the first page of their contracts and HR offices prepared monthly reports on the recruits for the Department of the Army to make sure standards weren’t slipping.
So why would the US military start letting in men they had once rejected? Well, that depends on how cynical one is feeling. For a start, the practice wasn’t really anything new.
Throughout its history, in times of need, the United States Armed Forces have recruited those who wouldn’t normally meet their criteria. When the going got tough during WWII, for example, those who scored lower on aptitude tests were allowed to serve.
Of course, running short on troops during the Vietnam War, which the US had entered two years previously, had little to do with Project 100,000. Not according to the politicians at least. Officially, the project was created in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty”.
The Project was introduced as a way to offer otherwise disadvantaged groups marketable skills in their post-military life. Joining the army has always been seen as an effective way to learn new skills and according to McNamara Project 100,000 simply sought to offer this advantage to society’s hard done by.
Project 100,000 was supposed to be a win-win. America’s uneducated and poor would be given training and new opportunities while the military got much-needed reinforcements. What could go wrong?
The Controversy
So why is Project 100,000 so controversial today? The answer lay in the fact that it was pretty much a complete disaster for all involved. Furthermore, morally speaking, gathering up society’s disadvantaged and selling them a lie so they’ll fight in a war nobody wanted is rarely a good look.
Whether or not McNamara genuinely believed he was doing the New Standards Men a favor, research shows most of them received no benefits from military service. Due to their “disadvantages,” most of them ended up in combat specialties where they learned no transferable skills.
Put more harshly, the military didn’t waste valuable resources training those it deemed to have low IQs to be things like mechanics, medics, or engineers. Those roles went to “normal” recruits.
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Later comparisons showed Project 100,000 veterans were worse off than their non-veteran equivalents. Vets were more likely to be unemployed, uneducated, and on average $5,000 to $7,000 worse off salary-wise than their peers. They were also more likely to be single or divorced.
That’s those who survived. According to historian Hamilton Gregory, Project 100,000 inductees died at three times the rate of regular troops. That makes it pretty hard to argue that these poor men were anything other than cannon fodder.
It doesn’t even look like the Project was necessarily of benefit to the military. Historians have argued it was little more than a distraction for the military, which was forced to spend extra resources on men it didn’t necessarily want and who had a higher chance of being killed in action.
The military already knew this, having learned its lesson when it dropped entry requirements back in WWII. This had gone so poorly that the legal for recruitment had been legally raised to an IQ of 80 afterward.
Arguably only one group really benefited from Project 100,000: the politicians who dreamed it up in the first place. The men of the 100,000 were cannon fodder thrown into the Vietnam meat grinder so that politicians could avoid the political death sentence of conscripting middle-class students and dragging the reserves into action.
Project 100,000 is therefore a pretty dark chapter in US military history, marked by the exploitation of vulnerable individuals for the sake of bolstering troop numbers during the Vietnam War. This ill-conceived initiative not only failed to achieve its objectives but also perpetuated systemic injustices by sending underprepared recruits into harm’s way.
The program’s legacy serves as a stark reminder of the ethical pitfalls of prioritizing expediency over the well-being of soldiers and the moral responsibility of military institutions.
Top Image: Project 100,000 saw the US send low-IQ recruits to Vietnam, leading many of them to their deaths. Source: United States Army / Public Domain.
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