Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-344- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
service.” 253 The cadre force proposed in the Soviet Union was, in a sense, similar to the
proposals of Calhoun and Upton, with the majority of the army’s combat power in cadre
units. Although this report is one of the first to discuss cadre before the end of the Cold
War, the author writes nothing about the applicability of the cadre concept to the United
States.
In what appears to be the first public mention of cadre units in the United States
before the end of the Cold War, in late 1989 Assistant Secretary of Defense David Chu
proposed exploring “in more depth” a “move to a higher proportion of cadre units … That
is, we might try to retain primarily our highly skilled, extensively trained, experienced
personnel.” 254 Since reducing the size of the force would require “forcing out” trained
personnel, cadre units could retain experienced personnel as a hedge against the need to
increase the size of the force in the future. In response to arguments that there would be
enough time to create new units from scratch in future wars, Chu argued that the cadre
approach “seems more logical” because “it is doubtful that, in the event of a contingency,
we could simply ‘turn up’ the training dial and run the force at higher rates for a few months
and have a well-trained and competent force.” 255 Chu’s major concern was a lack of
experienced officers: “we cannot get a battalion commander overnight, and a ship captain
cannot become competent and confident in the use of his vessel overnight. That takes years
of training and experience.” 256 Although Chu recommended that cadre units are “a topic
worthy of research,” he provided little further detail. He also commented that the “cadre
solution is not a particularly popular idea in many quarters of the military, and it might be
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253 Crow (1989), p. 1
254 Gotz and Brown (1989), p. 117
255 Gotz and Brown (1989), p. 117
256 Gotz and Brown (1989), p. 117