ABSTRACT
The vast majority of the work on armed force systems has been carried out by historians or persons interested in armed force systems per se rather than by general social scientists. Armed force organizations, whenever found, appear almost inevitably as explicitly planned and carefully differentiated from other organizations. Armed force organizations are always predominantly politically oriented organizations, whether regarded from the point of view of internal or external applications of force. Armed force organizations, regardless of the general social setting, are likely to be pronouncedly bureaucratic in character. The problem of control of the general membership of it is usually minimal as such problems go in societies. The new basis of recruitment for the armed forces of all societies undergoing modernization will probably be universal conscription. Armed force organizations in societies undergoing modernization will become major ladders—perhaps the major ladder—of social mobility.
