More relevantly, in a modern war you want experts. Even grunts need to know a lot to be effective, they have drilled and drilled until they react correctly without thinking about it - and somebody in charge of a handful of them needs to know how to use their skills to achieve larger strategic goals which then trickle up.
Needing to use a draft is a bad sign - the more of your soldiers are volunteers the better quality you'll get out of that.
> Needing to use a draft is a bad sign - the more of your soldiers are volunteers the better quality you'll get out of that.
That's a luxury position, which unfortunately not every country is in.
I agree it's a luxury position, I'm just suggesting that "We should draft trust fund kids" isn't actually some clever fix to ensure alignment from the ultra-wealthy and your military forces will hate it.
It may not ensure alignment, but a draft should not distinguish people drafted based on wealth because then you get the opposite of alignment.
Or the privileged kids are placed in safe deployments.
There is the real thing you do. You ensure your kids are drafted. However, even in war, there are places that are peaceful that have to be protected. Your kids do have to go through basic training, which is grueling, but once they do that, you just make sure that they're the ones selected to man the supply chain back home. Or maybe they stand in front of an embassy of a third party not involved with the war because you still have to have guards in front of that embassy even though it's probably a ceremonial position.
Note that it often isn't the powerful doing anything. Anyone with sense in military chain of command is going to ensure the kids of the powerful people get moved to important but non dangerous positions without being asked. Even if asked to put the kids in a dangerous position it won't happen.