Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-39- A Budgetary Analysis of Cadre
stated as of 2007, they provide two additional BCTs deployed continuously. To sustain
rotations in future wars, this same increase could be achieved by adding the same number of
cadre units. 29 We call this force the +6 Cadre force. 30
We calculate two types of cost savings from expanding the force with cadre rather
than AC BCTs: average long-run and peacetime costs. The average long-run and peacetime
costs of adding six new AC BCTs are the same, about $7 billion per year 31 because AC units
have the same cost during peacetime and wartime. 32 If we assume that wars occur 33 percent
of the time, increasing the size of the force by six cadre BCTs rather than six AC BCTs
reduces average long-run annual costs by about $4 billion. 33 Adding six cadre BCTs instead
of six AC BCTs reduces peacetime costs by about $5 billion. Cadre units provide larger cost
savings in peacetime because we assume they are equivalent to, and therefore cost the same
as, AC units when they are mobilized during wartime. This analysis assumes that combat
units and their associated combat support / combat service support units are maintained in
cadre status during peacetime. We explore the sensitivity of this result in the following
chapters.
____________
29 This assumes cadre units are used according to the same rotation guidance as AC units when mobilized.
Since members of cadre units would be full time soldiers, it is likely that they would be utilized like AC units.
30 The +6 Cadre force contains 42 AC BCTs, 28 RC BCTs and 6 cadre BCTs.
31 This assumes the average annual cost of an active duty soldier is $100,000 per year. This is consistent with
the estimates in CBO (2007a). Given this per soldier cost, the 65,000 (six BCT) increase in Army end-strength
would cost an additional $7 billion per year. This is slightly lower than the projected sum of personnel and
operations cost of the force increase estimated by the Army in 2008 ($8.2 billion). [GAO (2008), p.4] Other
public sources have estimated the annual cost of increasing the size of the force at $1.5 billion per 10,000
personnel [New York Times Editorial Board (2006)], and $1.2 billion per 10,000 personnel [Jaffe (2006), and
IISS (2007)]. Using these alternative estimates, the magnitude of the cost savings from a cadre augmented force
calculated in this paper would be larger. See Appendix A for more detail.
32 AC units are always mobilized, unlike RC units, which are only mobilized for deployments.
33 Calculations are described in Appendix A.