Questions about Home Guard/Militia units..

[natehale1971]

Hi everyone,

I've got a question for everyone here about Home Guard/Local Militia units. A friend gave me something really good, namely three PDFs of an old West End Games Role-playing game called "The Price of Freedom" where the USSR and its allies occupy the United States of America. And PCs are resistance fighters from a wide vareity of civilian occupations and backgrounds.

Now the question i have is about arming, equipping and organizing home guard/local militia units in a WWIII type scenerio... now I know that the National Guard Armories that are located all across the country are meant for such purposes.

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

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

But I really would like to hear everyone's ideas and suggestions.

[The Rifleman]

In Vermont, most of the "home guard" units are almost exclusively retired or medically seperated national guard veterans. They did get some extremely limited use during Iraq/Afghanistan deployments when almost the entire state was gone.

The guard is different then active duty; we tend to have lots of excess equipment laying around different armories and national guard "bases". Most of it is really old and has little or no relevence, like massive amounts of tents, trailers and so on. Also, we tend to have more gear then we need, plus there are spares at "state" level.

Each state has its own National Guard HQ and related small units that aren't tied to a unit that gets deployed. I would assume that if things really were that bad, then the state HQ and non-deploying units would form a structure and the old retired guys in the state guard for form the cadre for new units.

I couldn't honestly see those old guys doing much, and its hit or miss with equipment. You'd probably see there are some small arms, lots of uniforms, helmets and individual gear, as well as some soft skinned vehicles and even a handful of tanks and APCs. However, the old guys may have the brains, but most aren't really capable of leading in the field, so you'd have some severe leadership issues at squad, platoon and possible company level.

[Legbreaker]

Don't count on any armoured vehicles being with the home guard. We already know there's been a huge attrition of vehicles in Europe with airfields, nuclear power stations, etc stripped of their armoured assets and sent to the front as battle replacements.
At best an occasional group may have a 50 year old vehicle one of their members happened to have laying about and restored.

[The Rifleman]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Don't count on any armoured vehicles being with the home guard. We already know there's been a huge attrition of vehicles in Europe with airfields, nuclear power stations, etc stripped of their armoured assets and sent to the front as battle replacements.
At best an occasional group may have a 50 year old vehicle one of their members happened to have laying about and restored.

Actually, no, this is not accurate becuase you are not taking National Guard / Active army politics into account.

The active army allots each National Guard unit (be battalion, company, brigade) the exact same equipment that its active duty peer gets. When the units are "called to federal service" all of this gear goes with them and becomes the active army's responsibility.

However, this authozirized equiptment is always the active army's hand-me-downs. When the National Guard gets "new" used gear from the army, then then most of its left overs get disposed off... in different ways. For example, most of the tanks are returned to depots and then sold to other countries. Trucks however aren't worth as much and tend to be sold at local auction. Other items that are considered "wore out" like generators, tents, stoves, trailers, camo nets (to name a few) are often abandoned. When I moved my company from our old armory (built in 1903) to a brand new one, we discovered parts to vehicles, tools, radios, tents... all the way back to the 50s.

Where the politics come into play is that this is each STATE's gear. They pretty much do whatever they want. At state level, we still have an old boneyard that has a few M-1s and M60s that are supposed to become memorials; I've seen an M42 duster and some captured Iraqi armor too. I know they are fully functional as the mechanics from the state level shops get in them and move them around from time to time to keep them running. The state determines where all this stuff is going to end up and there is so much of it the active army can't keep up. As a rough guess, I'd say there are about two dozen Vermont National Guard tanks scattered around the state on lawns, everything from M1s, M60s, M48s and even an M4 and M113s. I also know there are spares laying around in warehouses for them.

Politics. Do you think that the big army is going to track down an M60A3 in West Rutland, Vermont in front of the armory when they are in the middle of world war 3? No, actually I know first hand the active army has NO CLUE that these tanks are there. Do you think that with all the disturbances at home, Vermont is going to volunteer its reasources to go to Yugoslavia or Poland when they have a maurader problem in their own back yard? You're darn right they aren't going to give up their assets.

As soon as all the deployable national guard units are gone, the state guard moves into the vacant armories and takes over the local "state" mission. Thats disaster relief, riot control, so on. Its hit or miss what gear is at the armory, so at state level they will send down what's needed. As I say before, most of the state guard is retired national guard, so they typicall have some rank and expereince. Lots of Colonels, Majors, Sergeant Majors and Master Sergeants are quite active. They now the local citizens, government, the unit, the gear, procedures and so on. Where they are hurting is young, able bodied men.

Then you've also got all those non-deployable units and they have some manpower too. Its really all hit or miss depending on the local leadership, how the politics play out, if the state was home to an armor brigade or an infantry brigade.... or even USED to have an armored brigade..... could be anything.

[natehale1971]

Since the State Guard/Home Guard has so many vets how hard would it be to set up training facilities to train younger bodies to fill all of the vacancies? Using Boy Scouts (or equivilent) types to help create a cadre of support personnel that would supliment the police and emergency services? Or others to help provide security and support (anything form community watches to other civilian security groups)...

It's not just the gear, it's the core of vets that would be to train and get bodies to do the acutal grunt work... just how quickly would it take for these vets to set up and train the first groups to fill the gaps in local security/defense like we saw the British did during the Second World War?

[The Rifleman]

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.