Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-158- An Operational Analysis of Cadre
Table 2.2—Percentage of Officers Retained in Cadre Units Planning for Increased
Wartime Promotions
+6 BCTs +9 BCTs +18 BCTs CadreMix
O-3 59 % 73 % 86 % 85 %
O-4 70 % 80 % 90 % 89 %
O-5 59 % 73 % 86 % 85 %
O-6 67 % 78 % 89 % 87 %
Increasing the promotion rates and decreasing promotion intervals for officers as the
army has done in the early 21 st century can reduce the number of officers that cadre units
need to retain in peacetime. For the cadre augmented force with six BCTs, increasing
promotions lowers the number of officers that need to be retained to 60-70 percent of a fullstrength
BCT. For the nine and 18 BCT and CadreMix forces, these numbers increase to 70-
80, 80-90, and 80-90 percent respectively. For all of these cadre augmented forces, increased
officer promotion rates leads to a decrease in the number of lieutenants because they are
promoted more rapidly. To sustain the same number of lieutenants in the force, officer
accessions would have to increase by about 900 per year. This is an unrealistic single year
growth rate given that the largest year-to-year increase in officer accessions was 393 from
1999 to 2000. 18 However, the Army could either activate lieutenants from the IRR or reduce
exit rates to fill the remaining slots. 19
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18 CRS (2006b), p. 4
19 If we assume that 63 percent of IRR lieutenants would show up when called upon (the rate of all IRR
personnel who reported when called in 2004 [Korb (2005)]), then there would be about 2,900 available
lieutenants [DoD (2005)] to fill about 500 slots (900 minus increased accessions of 400, the largest year-to-year
increase in the last decade), more than enough to make this feasible.