Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-305- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
within sight.” 117 Nonetheless, Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood took these observations
seriously and set out to bring about change.
Like Upton, Leonard Wood was attracted to the cadre army idea by a fear of having
to fight an army the size of Germany (87 divisions, 1,750,000 “first-line troops”) or France
(62 divisions, 1,500,000 “first line troops”). 118 Like Upton, Wood based his cadre proposal
on the armies of Europe. He thought “the cadre army, relying upon trained reservists to fill
its ranks swiftly to colossal wartime proportions, was the great military invention of
continental Europe.” 119 However, he knew that the foundation of these systems was
conscription, which Millis claims “no American officer in 1910 could have dared even hint
at.” 120 Millis argues that “Wood had to establish his cadre army first; conscription would
follow (as in fact it did) almost inevitably.” 121 Wood began by proposing a federal reserve
and changing the Regular Army enlistment contract from three years to two with the
additional obligation to serve for seven or eight years in the reserve. 122 Millis argues that
“within a few years this would have yielded … a trained and organized reserve army of
____________
117 Millis (1956), p. 199
118 Weigley (1984), p. 336
119 Millis (1956), p. 201.
120 Millis (1956), p. 201. Nonetheless, Wood argued for universal military training (peacetime conscription) in
his 1916 book: Our Military History: Its Facts and Fallacies. In this book, Wood repeatedly mentions the need for
universal military training by arguing that relying on the militia or wartime volunteers was not effective. Wood
wrote: “we must no longer place reliance upon plans based upon the development of volunteers or use of the
militia. The volunteer system is not dependable because of uncertainty as to returns … Dependence on the
militia … spells certain disaster, not because of the quality of the men or officers but because of the system
under which they work.” [Wood (1916), p. 196] However, it appears Wood never made public statements
advocating peacetime conscription.
121 Millis (1956), p. 201
122 Wood’s support for a cadre force is evidenced by his praise for John C. Calhoun’s expansible army.
Speaking of the Calhoun plan Wood says: “Fortunate, indeed, would we have been had this policy been
adopted, provided we had a reserve of trained men to bring the organization to war strength.” [Wood (1916), p.
138] Wood proposed lengthening enlistment contracts to create this reserve of manpower to fill cadre units in
wartime, an issue that Calhoun and Upton both ignored in their proposals. This was similar to the German
army system that so impressed Upton in the late 19 th century.