Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-198- An Operational Analysis of Cadre
one-third is larger than the 20 percent relative cost assumed in the first paper. However, the
increase is likely to be small when equipment costs area amortized over many years. 99
4.3—RELYING ON THE INDUSTRIAL BASE
“Mobilization in high gear should be held off until genuine evidence indicates that U.S.
military supremacy is starting to slip toward mere superiority. Deferring a surge in military
production and expansion until then would avoid sinking trillions of dollars into weaponry
that may be technologically obsolete before a threat actually materializes (The United States
waited too long – until 1940 – to mobilize against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. But
starting to mobilize in 1930 would have been no wiser; a crash program in aircraft
production back then would have yielded thousands of ultimately useless biplanes.)”
- Richard Betts 100
A third way we might think about equipping cadre units in peacetime is to explicitly
plan to ramp up equipment production during wartime. This would not only reduce the
peacetime costs of cadre units by minimizing the equipment inventory, but it would also
ensure that cadre units are deployed with the most up-to-date equipment. However, there
are additional costs to maintaining an “expansible” industrial base. Care must be taken in
peacetime to preserve the ability to expand production during wartime.
Since the end of the Cold War, the size of the defense industrial base has been
shrinking as fewer new items are being procured. A cadre force that depends on increased
wartime production would require peacetime funding from the DoD to ensure that there is
excess capacity in production lines to produce key items. It is unlikely that a cadre unit
would depend entirely on increased production, but it may be able to reduce its inventory to
a level similar to that of a cadre unit depending on rotational equipment sets.
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99 The cost of an equipment set for a Stryker BCT is about $1.6 billion [CBO (2004), p. 34]. If the cost of
equipment was amortized over ten years (a pessimistic estimate), then the relative peacetime cost of a cadre
BCT would only increase from 20 percent to 22 percent.
100 Betts (2007)