Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-343- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
units (also 135,000 troops) and direct-hire civilians.” 249 Although this proposal was not
adopted in its original form, it served as the impetus for a number of analyses concerning the
appropriate way to reduce the size of the U.S. military. Some of these analyses revived the
idea of cadre units as a component of the nation’s force structure.
9.2—PRELIMINARY CADRE DISCUSSIONS
As noted in the previous section, many individuals in the Army and the Department
of Defense had begun planning for force reductions before the fall of the Berlin Wall. As
noted in the previous section, the Army proposed force cuts in a traditional manner. Others
looked for more novel approaches to reducing the size of the force. 250 Some of these
approaches included cadre units. It appears that most of the discussions about cadre units
prior to 1990 were informal. Nonetheless, a few individuals in the defense community had
begun to write and speak about cadre units.
In July of 1989, Suzanne M. Crow of the Center for Naval Analyses wrote a report
reviewing the debate over a cadre system in the Soviet Union. 251 Crow wrote that the
Warsaw Pact negotiations had driven the Soviet Union to consider “a complete
reorganization of the armed forces along the lines of a cadre-militia system.” 252 She goes on
to write that the proposed reorganization would transform “the Soviet Union’s large,
conscripted standing army, into an armed force consisting of a significantly smaller regular
army, manned either by volunteers or conscripts, and a territorial militia based on universal
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249 Schemmer (1990). In 1989, the number of personnel on active duty totaled 765,000 or about 310 troops per
100,000 residents. This was already significantly lower than the Cold War peacetime average of 440 troops per
100,000 residents. This proposal would lower the number of personnel on active duty to 256 troops per
100,000 residents. [U.S. Census Bureau (2003), p. 345 and U.S. Census Bureau (2002), p. A-1]
250 Duncan (1985) proposed the Standby Reserve Training Corps as a force that could bridge the gap between
the reserves and conscription.
251 Crow (1989)
252 Crow (1989), p. 1