Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-370- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
dissertation assumes that cadre units could be filled out by increasing the recruitment of
volunteers in the early years of a war. 347 Although previous cadre proposals have hinted at
using volunteers, they generally assumed that a wartime draft would provide the needed
manpower. Previously, raising volunteers was difficult because of the short time (one year or
less) desired for a cadre unit to be ready to deploy. The extra time provided by rotation
(three years) allows us to consider year-by-year increases in end-strength as a way to fill out
cadre units in wartime.
10.2—SIMILARITIES
Previous cadre proposals also have a number of things in common with the cadre
forces analyzed in this dissertation. These similarities provide us with estimates for a number
of the parameters needed to evaluate a cadre augmented force. First, the cadre unit
structures proposed by Calhoun and Upton and those proposed after the Cold War provide
a reasonable bound on the number of officers and NCOs we might consider retaining in a
peacetime cadre BCT. Calhoun proposed retaining all officers and no NCOs, Upton
proposed retaining only a portion of officers. The post-Cold War cadre proposals envisioned
units with only a fraction of officers and NCOs. These proposals provide a context in which
to consider the structure of cadre BCTs in this dissertation. The structures considered in
Paper II of this dissertation range from retaining all officers and NCOs to retaining only a
fraction of officers and NCOs in each grade. All are within the range of previous cadre
proposals.
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347 In this dissertation, we also consider using the IRR to fill some junior positions in cadre units. See Paper II
for a more detailed discussion.