Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-169- An Operational Analysis of Cadre
Organization but were undermanned in peacetime. A separate cadre unit would consist of
officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) in peacetime that could be either in reserve
status or on active duty. We examine both options in this section.
The major concern with separate cadre units is what the cadre leaders will do during
peacetime. Cadre leaders assigned to an under-strength unit lack junior personnel to train
with during peacetime. Cadre assignments would slow the leader development process and
make cadre leadership positions unattractive. Retired General Hamilton Howze makes this
point in a 1990 article: “there is no more stultifying, uninspiring, depressing, and seemingly
useless activity than that of serving in an under-strength military unit.” 35 Because of this
concern, we explore two alternative duties for the leaders of separate cadre units other than
simply maintaining the unit.
3.1.1—Maintenance Cadre Units
To motivate the development of alternative cadre organizations, we first consider the
most unappealing organization- a cadre unit that has no other peacetime responsibilities
except equipment maintenance and leadership training. We call these units maintenance
cadre units because their main duty in peacetime is to maintain the unit and its capability to
expand in wartime. In the Congressional Budget Office’s 1990 cadre proposal, they
envisioned that “training under this concept would involve individual leadership training,
physical fitness, instructor training, and unit training in the form of command post exercises.
The purpose of the training would be to ensure that the cadre is prepared to train individual
reservists in the event of mobilization for war and knows how to conduct combat
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35 Howze (1990)