First, an appology to Legbreaker, I don't mean to sound confrotational. What you said makes GOOD common sense. However, in the military and national guard, common sense isn't always what happens.
As to using the State Guard as a cadre, its another good idea, on paper. In reality, I'm not so sure, as most of them are so old or broke that they are quite limited in how much they can do. Its hard to teach someone how move from fighting position to position when you have instructors that honestly can't run or maybe in trot.
Just to give you an idea, your average State Guard soldier is a retired E-8 or E-9 and is between 60 and 75 years old. Your average officer is the same age but most likely between O-4 and O-6. I'd say that there would be a few E-7s and maybe one or two O-3s. The biggest problem with training is that there are NO E-5s or E-6s that would be your team and squad leaders, and no junior officers to lead your platoons. So essentially you'd have everything you need to run an honest to god world class battalion HQ with a whole staff of NCOs and officers that are doing the job of a captain or major but could easily be the battalion or even brigade commander. But your actual battalion would have nothing more than draftees, which brings me to the next problem.
The state guard is not designed for basic training; I'd bet that the tough old guys know what needs to be done and could get around that, but there is no system in place. So somehow, the state would have to come up with a way to (unconstitutionally) draft people into it. Then, they'd have to run an OCS with "90 day wonder" Lts to run platoons and "shake and bake" sergeants. I hated both of these concepts in Vietnam, but its the only way it would work.
Just for laughs, I'm going to promote myself to the State of Vermont Adjuant General and play out the war, writing what I would do each step of the way so you'd have an idea of how things work out.
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