[HorseSoldier]

I thought there was legislation or a military policy in place that said vehicles on static display had to be de-mil'ed and rendered non-functional after that guy in California stole an M60 tank back in '95. I may be wrong on that, though, and obviously its relevance in the T2K timeline is questionable. (And rendering a vehicle non-functional does not imply it has to be permanently non-functional, though my understanding was that "non-functional" normally translated to the power pack being pulled from AFVs.)

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.

Back in the day, I had some contact with Alabama State Defense Force personnel, and would say that version of a state guard seemed to be about 75% military veterans as described above and 25% younger guys who wanted to serve in the active or reserve military but had some issue disqualifying them from enlistment. Some of those guys appeared to be okay enough guys and some were of the "I'm a cop . . . a mall cop" sorts whose disqualifying issue was probably psychiatric in nature (or they just wanted "military" involvement without the work it requires). Some portion of those younger guys might have been suitable for those missing junior leadership cadre positions, but A) they lack real experience and B) in a Twilight War scenario enlistment standards would become loose enough that all those guys except the truly exceptional duds (and probably even some of them) could have gotten themselves into the real military.

I am wondering about how these units are not just intitally outfited and equipped, but how they would be maintaing their munitions.

Here in Alaska, the State Defense Force has a small fleet of its own military vehicles -- 2.5 and 5 ton trucks are all I've seen. They keep them stored at NG armories, but are easily recognizable despite the standard NATO three color woodland camo paint jobs because unlike active or reserve military vehicles they have to carry state of Alaska license plates because they don't have the exemption from needing plates that applies to active or reserve military vehicles.

Judging by what I've seen, unless they have additional vehicles stored elsewhere, we're probably talking about a fleet of vehicles that would be inadequate to effectively motorize an infantry battalion. On the other hand, I assume those vehicles are surplus purchased by the state of Alaska and would be free from any concerns of being taken back into service to address attrition on the battlefield (well, at least until the Soviet invasion of AK, at which point I imagine the AK state defense force would wind up being a logistics and civil affairs auxiliary part of X Corps).

The presence of Reloading Equipment in gun & hunting stores would be a major part of keeping them in the field.

I'm not sure how much this would help -- the just-in-time inventory pattern in most retail stores is going to mean even seizing everything related to reloading in even a fair sized city isn't going to translate to enough reloading supplies to sustain a military unit of even moderate size that is seeing any significant action and expenditure of ammunition. Obviously, patrolling the mean streets of America post-TDM isn't going to be as ammunition intensive as slugging it out in Central Europe, but the mauling some of the divisions in USAVG suffered from armed groups in CONUS suggests that we're talking about a much worse situation that, say, the LA Riots even before New America goes active and presents a large, organized insurgency.

What's really going to be needed for military operations is smokeless powder, bullet, and primer production on an industrial scale even if brass cases are largely being scrounged and reloaded -- something comparable to the Wojo factory in Krakow is going to be have to exist on a regional basis in the US and elsewhere to keep even the greatly reduced military forces shown in T2K able to operate at even a semblance of modern fire and maneuver tactics.