Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-69- A Budgetary Analysis of Cadre
months at home. For the force that allows AC units to be deployed with 12 or more months
at home, the percentage of units deployed with 20, 16, and 12 or fewer months at home are
17, ten, and six percent respectively. Overall, the stress on the AC for all of these forces is
small compared to the percentage of units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan with less than
two years at home. However, the DoD would have to decide whether this level of stress is
acceptable in order to achieve the cost savings from cadre. For the cadre augmented forces
examined here, the majority of AC units get a full two years at home, and all units get at least
one year at home before being redeployed.
We have seen that accepting shorter dwell times for AC units while cadre units
mobilize increases the attractiveness of a cadre augmented force. Restricting all units to
rotation guidance required maintaining an RC force more than three times as large as that
required if we allow AC units to deploy with as little as one year at home. As we
incrementally relaxed this assumption, we saw that the cost savings from a cadre augmented
force increase substantially when AC units are allowed to deploy with as little as 12 months
at home. We also saw that even when we allow AC units to deploy with less than two years
at home, the percentage of units actually deployed with less than two years at home is small.