Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-175- An Operational Analysis of Cadre
likely to be required in the future has grown exponentially. While Foreign Internal Defense
(FID) has been traditionally the primary responsibility of special operating forces (SOF),
training foreign forces is now a core competency of regular and reserve units of all
Services.” 51 To perform these duties, some analysts have proposed a permanent Advisor
Corps in the AC. 52 This task is also well suited to cadre leaders during peacetime. 53
Like the domestic training cadre unit, the major advantage of the foreign training
cadre unit is that the cadre unit has a peacetime task that is useful to the army. This can both
lower the peacetime cost of each cadre unit and increase the proficiency of its leaders. The
cost would be lower only if the U.S. Army was planning to invest resources into foreign
army training, such as the permanent advisor corps. This type of unit would also increase the
proficiency of cadre leaders only if they would be teaching skills that they would use in
leading their own units and some of their time was spent directing junior personnel in unit
level exercises.
The disadvantages of foreign training cadre units are similar to those for the
domestic training cadre units. First, foreign army training cadre units would require that the
United States either reduce foreign army training or find new personnel to staff these units
when cadre units are mobilized in wartime. Priorities shift during wartime and the DoD
might be willing to forgo some foreign army training, but this needs to be carefully
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51 Department of the Army (2006), p. 6-3.
52 Nagl (2007); Korb and Bergmann (2007), p. 23. Hoehn and Ochmanek (2008) argued that “the Army should
be directed to designate a substantial number of its brigade combat teams (perhaps one-third or more of the
active duty force) as advisory assistance units.” The Marine Corps and Air Force already have permanent
adviser units. [Drohan and Nagl (2008)] As of early 2008, foreign army training has become a DoD priority. In
April 2008, the Pentagon requested an increase in funding for foreign army training and equipment by 250
percent. [Shanker (2008)]
53 Some cadre-like units have already been used for this purpose: “In 2006, the Army centralized training for
transition teams at Fort Riley, Kansas- initially giving the training mission to two cadre heavy brigade combat
teams.” [Nagl (2007), p. 5]. It is unclear what is meant by “cadre” in referring to these two heavy BCTs.