Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-59- A Budgetary Analysis of Cadre
4. PEACETIME COST ESTIMATES
In Chapter Two, we used estimates from previous studies for the peacetime cost of
RC and cadre units. We assumed that during peacetime each RC unit costs 28 percent of an
AC unit and that each cadre units costs 20 percent of an AC unit. 68 However, the peacetime
cost of RC and cadre units is difficult to estimate accurately. 69 In this chapter, we explore the
sensitivity of the results in Chapter Two to assumptions about the peacetime cost of cadre
and RC units.
4.1—CADRE PEACETIME COST
To explore the sensitivity of the results in Chapter Two to the peacetime cost of
cadre, we must first define a plausible range. As discussed in Chapter One, the peacetime
cost of a cadre unit will depend on the design of the cadre unit. The larger the size of the
cadre, the more expensive the cadre unit will be. In Chapter Two, we assumed that a cadre
unit costs 20 percent of an AC unit during peacetime. We derived this estimate from CBO
(1992) for a cadre unit that retains 25 percent of its personnel during peacetime. In the
second paper of this dissertation, we find that a cadre unit retaining all officers and NCOs
would retain 43 percent of its wartime personnel at a cost of 56 percent of an AC unit.
Given the different possible personnel configurations of cadre units, we explore a range of
peacetime cadre costs from five to sixty percent of an AC unit. The second paper in this
dissertation discusses cadre unit designs and their cost differences in more depth.
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68 RC Cost: Jaffe (2006), Cadre Cost: CBO (1992)
69 See Appendix A for a discussion of estimating the peacetime cost of existing RC units. Since cadre units do
not exist, it is even harder to predict their peacetime cost.