[Webstral]

The State Guard has been discussed, though not lately. There's a lot of wiggle room for interpreting what kind of number's we're talking about here, along with efficacy. In short, it seems unlikely that very many states would catch on to the fact that the National Guard is going to be deployed until 1996. Once the first National Guard formations start being called up for training and don't come home in 2 weeks, a few forward-thinking politicians might develop the right idea. There not being very many forward-thinking politicians, I doubt very many states would give the matter careful thought until October 1996, when the first REFORGER units started going to Germany. This does not give much time to build State Guards before the nukes start flying.

An argument could be made that Operations Desert Shield & Storm in the v1 chronology might raise awareness of the National Guard problem. The need to backfill USAEUR formations being deployed to the Persian Gulf with National Guard units earmarked for Germany (or alternatively the need to backfill in CONUS those III Corps units deployed to Europe to take the place of VII Corps) might cause more politicians to wonder what would happen in the event of a general mobilization than might otherwise be the case. In this event, State Guards might be significantly further along than if the states get started in 1996. A year is not very long for a reserve formation to find its footing, but 5-6 years is a fair amount of time.