[HorseSoldier]

I have only had very limited experience with the State Defense Forces in the states of Alabama and Alaska.

The Alabama version seemed to be a joke made up of a mix of over the hill retired military guys who might have been pretty squared away 20 years and 50 pounds ago and the sort of wannabes who, in law enforcement circles, tend to think that being a mall cop makes them practically cops. That may be a skewed view -- my only interaction with them was talking to some of them briefly at a Memorial Day PR/recruiting thing they were also at.

I may be wrong, but I don't think the AL SDF had any training or authorization to carry weapons, and their activities mostly involved assisting with hurricane/tornado relief and custodial activities at armories when units deploy.

Up here in Alaska, the AK SDF is apparently a more serious organization that I'm told gets weapons training and its members are sworn constables so that they can provide a more credible support to the National Guard operating under state authority or Alaska law enforcement. Apparently they're pretty serious about their bearing arms -- one member sat in on my current unit's Javelin NETT training. All that said, the only mission I've heard about them doing is the same armory custodial one. Despite the LE credentials I'm pretty certain (coming at the topic from both the Guard and LE side of things) that they don't do any of the Counter Drug stuff that some members of the 'Guard do, at least not in the Anchorage area.

In a T2K context, I would think that any existing State Defense Forces on the books, plus whatever rear detachment deployed National Guard (and local Army/Air Force/USMC/USN Reserve units, eventually) would end up forming the backbone of militia companies and battalions. The quality of those forces is probably dubious at best, given the limited resources and desperation of the times they'd be stood up, and I don't expect that many that were pushed very hard would last, at least not without some operational seasoning. Any that are still on the books by 2000 might be reputable forces (or might not).