benignuman: All combat soldiers are volunteers. The difference between a professional army and the conscript army is that most of the “jobniks” wouldn’t be there, and there work would be done by serious professionals rather than highly inefficient conscripts. Most of the jobniks (especially among the female coscripts) have make-work jobs. Some who volunteers now to be a combat (kravi), will still do so – and that’s what matters. If the army were short of manpower, they would be bending over backwards to create incentives for hareidim to enlist (rather than, as an example, making promotion to officer contingent on willing to listen to women singing).
The United States is not threated by foreign invasion. The last time an enemy threated the US, so many people wanted to volunteer that “selective service” was introduced so they would be enlisted in an orderly way. Even though the US military is primarily tasked with being a “global policeman” rather than national defense, it attracts many volunteers. If you look at countries actually threated with invasion (e.g Britain and Australia in World War II), one discovers that the percentage of volunteers jumps way up. It should be noted that Britain conquered one of the world’s largest empires without conscription for its army.