He, Vance Renfroe (a senior officer in the ANG), Wayne Gosnell (a senior officer in the ARNG), Max Alston (Army Reserve, retired), and staff, had been planning a new form of assistance, later to be called the SPP. For now, it was simply "the Baltic initiative." In retropect, Air Force Col. Joey Booher, Chief of International Affairs for the NGB, said: “The U.S. was trying to engage with the former communist nations that were in the Warsaw Pact, and using active duty troops might have been a little too offensive to the Russians or the folks that were in there, so the idea was to use the small footprint of National Guard troops." The "small footprint" also included an economic smallness. The Boehm source reports that "In the United States, it had been shown that operating a standing army costs 80 percent more than a reserve element.