Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-314- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
distribute enough Regular Army officers and NCOs to train new units filled by conscripts. 149
Kreidberg and Henry argue that this experience invalidated the cadre concept: “The inherent
fallacy of the “expansible army” theory was apparent; there were not enough enlisted men,
or officers, in the Regular Army to provide the cadre skeletons for the rapidly and hugely
expanding Army of the United States.” 150
The argument made by Kreidberg and Henry is simplistic because a peacetime cadre
force did not exist before the war. After 1912, the War Department based its planning and
budgeting on the assumption that the National Guard would be the primary expansion force
of the army. There was no money budgeted for maintaining a surplus of officers to expand
the army in wartime. Money that could have been used to build a large peacetime nucleus for
a cadre force instead went to the National Guard. Therefore, it is no surprise that the Army
lacked the officers needed to expand quickly during the war. Although it is unclear if a cadre
force would have been able to provide the number of officers needed for the massive
expansion of World War I, it was unfair to argue that the World War I experience
invalidated the cadre idea.
4.2—CONSCRIPTION
The use of conscription in World War I reduced one of the major uncertainties of
relying on a cadre force. World War I marked the second time in U.S. history that the
148 The average number of army personnel on active duty in the three years preceding U.S. involvement in
World War I was 105,000 or 106 troops per 100,000 residents. [U.S. Census Bureau (1975), p. 1140-1143 and
U.S. Census Bureau (2002), p. A-1]
149 Weigley writes: “The expansible army plan broke down because the Regulars, both officers and enlisted
men, would have been swamped if they had been dispersed among the draftees.” [Weigley (1984), p. 372]
150 Kreidberg and Henry (1955), p. 294