Who was behind doing away with serial numbers for military using social security instead?

Question

This was FOOLISH and dangerous for military personnel.
The serial number was harmless, not connected to civilian info/data. The enemy gained little from beating name, rank, serial number out of you.
Only a numbskull liberal, military hater would not see that!

Answer 1

Not sure who was behind it but it happened in the early seventies. Same thing with FAA pilot licenses but for some reason if you already had the old number your license didn't change to your SSN. I even remember my original service number. RO18855704. Not bad for an old guy huh?

Answer 2

It happened in 1970. At that time the Congress had a very high number of veterans in the House and Senate. The President, Richard Milhous Nixon, was a veteran Navy officer. At that time over four million were on active duty or in the Guard or Reserves. We had already used up 12 million number combinations in World War Two and Korea. A reasonable knowledge of mathematics would show that there was a finite number of combinations in the old system. Even separating regular army and draftee numbers with additions of an "RA" prefix for regular army and "US" for draftees added very little in the way of solving the problem during Vietnam. My enlisted number had six digits. My officer number had five. I was switched to a nine-digit number that was my social security number. And it has caused me no problems some fifty years after my initial enlistment date.

Answer 3

The Adjutant General of course! US Army personnel never have to reveal their social security number to anyone not even Army personnel if they choose to keep it confidential! He was a republican of course!

Answer 4

Yeah, this always bothered me, too.

I remember thinking "Wow, if I get captured by the enemy, and I give them my social security number, they could go get a credit card in my name, then I'd really have a problem."