Project 100,000

August 23, 1966

In order to meet a growing need for military personnel in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense McNamara announces the start of Project 100,000. It is a social program that allows the military to accept men who do not meet the standards on the Armed Forces Qualification Test or who have physical limitations. By providing these draftees and enlistees with additional educational or medical support, McNamara hopes to offer disadvantaged groups marketable skills for post-military life while also meeting manpower requirements.

Through Project 100,000, the military accepts some 350,000 “New Standards Men” between 1966 and 1972. New Standards Men generally have less education, and they are disproportionately southerners and African Americans. The project is ultimately unsuccessful because New Standards Men often end up in combat specialties with little marketability in civilian life. Some New Standards veterans note, however, that they feel their military experiences positively affect their later lives.¹

Members of the public and press increasingly criticize the fact that there are a disproportionate number of minorities fighting in Vietnam. Between 1961 and 1966, African Americans comprise between 8 and 9.5 percent of the United States armed forces. During those same years, African Americans account for 16 percent of battle deaths. Military officials partially account for this by noting that African Americans volunteer at higher rates for elite combat units for reasons of prestige and faster promotions. Some U.S. officials also observe that, due to the effect of decades of racial segregation, African Americans have been systematically deprived of skills and experiences in civilian life that would qualify them for other military specialties and duties, thus more of them are assigned to combat units.

In response to these and other concerns, President Lyndon B. Johnson declares his intention to address the racial and class biases in draft deferments and selections. He announces the creation of the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, whose members he tasks with studying the issues and submitting a report with recommendations for reform. The commission presents their report to the president in February 1967. Among their recommendations are reducing the number and type of student or occupational deferments (a disproportionate number of which go to white Americans) and expanding opportunities for women to serve in the armed forces. The report does little to quell criticisms from many civil rights leaders and progressive activists.

President Johnson’s directive to reform the selective service later leads to the creation of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s “Project 100,000,” which he announces in August 1966. This project proposes to begin inducting at least 100,000 men per year into the armed forces who do not meet the traditional standards of the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). McNamara argues that by enlisting men who previously did not qualify for service, the United States will extend to many of the nation’s poor and disadvantaged greater opportunities to acquire marketable skills and training in the military. These experiences will theoretically give them the tools to raise their economic status after their service.

August 23, 1966: Project 100,000

In a speech at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announces a new Department of Defense initiative called Project 100,000. The project calls for the military to begin accepting, at the rate of at least 100,000 men per year, those who do not meet the standards for enlistment on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT)* or who have physical limitations. McNamara explains that Project 100,000 is an addition to President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program, and that these “New Standards Men” will be provided with additional training and educational or medical support in order to turn them into effective servicepeople and, after their term of service ends, leave them with marketable skills for future employment opportunities and civilian success.

Through Project 100,000, the military accepts some 350,000 New Standards Men between 1966 and 1972. These men generally have less education than traditional inductees, and while the “typical” Project 100,000 man is a 20-year-old white high school dropout, African Americans make up a disproportionately high number of New Standards Men. During the program’s first three years, 40 percent of its inductees are African American, though African Americans make up only 9 percent of all armed forces inductees during the same period and comprise 11 percent of the United States’ general population. Almost half of the New Standards Men come from the South, with African Americans making up 65 percent of those southerners.

Significantly more New Standards Men are assigned to combat units than the general military population. Over 40 percent of Project 100,000 men are trained for combat, while only 25 percent of servicemen generally are assigned to combat duties. Thus, fewer Project 100,000 men receive training and wartime experiences that are directly transferable to civilian employment. Approximately 50 percent of Project 100,000 men are sent to Vietnam, and these men have a death rate in Vietnam that is twice the rate of American forces as a whole.

The Department of Defense begins to phase out Project 100,000 by March 1971, as part of the wider effort to end the draft. The project’s legacy is contested, but most commenters both at the time and in the decades since the end of the war argue that the evidence suggests that the vast majority of “New Standards Men” do not see their post-military lives improve as a result of their service, and their economic status and employment prospects are not any better than those of their peers who did not serve.

Robert S. McNamara discussing Project 100,000, August 23, 1966:

“The poor of America . . . have not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this nation’s abundance, but they can be given an opportunity to serve in their country’s defense and they can be given an opportunity to return to civilian life with skills and aptitudes which for them and their families will reverse the downward spiral of human decay.”

* Traditionally, a score of at least 31 on the AFQT. Some Project 100,000 men were accepted with scores as low as 10 on the same exam.

Historians Debate:

The motivation, implementation, and historical legacy of Project 100,000 remain contested topics. McNamara’s announcement of the program was controversial among some observers from the beginning. New Standards Men earned the demeaning nickname of the “Moron Corps” among some in the military. Others accused the program of inducting servicemen who were more likely to have discipline and legal problems. Stokely Carmichael, then the leader of the civil rights activist group the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said at the time that Project 100,000 was a way to “get rid of black people in the ghettos.” Government commissions and congressional inquiries in subsequent decades noted the racial disparities within the project. A Department of Defense study in 1970 reported that vastly disproportionate numbers of poor African Americans were trained for combat instead of other military specialties that might have given them useful skills for the civilian economy. A 1990 congressional hearing on the topic asked whether Project 100,000 had legitimately been a Great Society program, or whether it had actually been a cynical way for the Department of Defense and the Johnson administration to access more manpower to continue increasing American troop numbers in Vietnam.

In general, historians have mostly reached critical conclusions about the project’s effects. Some have outright condemned it as a “shameful” legacy of the Johnson administration, pointing out that it sent a disproportionate number of minorities into combat while at the same time, many white middle- and upper-class men increasingly received deferments or enrolled in the National Guard. One historian has observed that those draftees who had an established history with a family doctor and who showed up to their physical with documentation of a health problem were able to receive medical deferments at a very high rate, including for “disabilities” such as chronic skin conditions and “flat feet.” Meanwhile, those men who did not have such documentation, often poor men and especially New Standards Men who may have seldom seen a doctor in their lives, rarely received deferments. This practice ostensibly shifted a larger share of the burden of fighting in Vietnam to the poor and minorities.

Other scholars have argued that Project 100,000 deserves credit for springing from idealistic motivations, but that it nevertheless failed to achieve its stated goals. Research after the war indicated that few New Standards Men were able to appreciably improve their economic or educational circumstances relative to their peers who did not serve in the military. Some did worse than their peers. This imbalance disproportionately affected African Americans. As a Department of Defense historian wrote in 2011, “No matter how well intentioned, McNamara’s Project 100,000 reinforced that disparity by drafting more and more young men from the black community to fight a war that fewer and fewer whites seemed willing to support.”

Some historians and researchers have pushed back against the notion that Project 100,000 was a failure. They note, for example, that much of the military brass expected New Standards Men to wash out of training at unprecedented rates, but instead over 87 percent of these men successfully completed military training (compared with a 95.6 percent completion rate across all service branches). Similarly, these authors say, only 5.9 percent of Project 100,000 enlistees were forced to repeat, or “recycle,” portions of their training (while the military as a whole had a 1.7 percent recycle rate). Thus, while New Standards Men clearly did not do as well as traditional trainees, they nonetheless succeeded at a high rate given that these men would previously never have been allowed into service. Responding to the critique that Project 100,000 men were subject to military discipline at much higher rates than traditional enlistees, one historian argues that several external factors led to this, especially later in the Vietnam War when disciplinary problems became more common, and that the notion that New Standards Men “degraded army performance seems overblown” based on available evidence. In essence, rather than focus on the deficits of New Standards Men, some historians argue for a different perspective that recognizes that the vast majority of these inductees successfully completed military training and performed their duties effectively and honorably, despite their distinct disadvantages compared to their fellow inductees.