State Defense Forces: Past, Present and Future

With the implementation of the Total Force Doctrine, the National Guard is now more likely to be quickly federalized and mobilized to integrate with active duty forces in the event of hostilities. In fact, National Guard units have been employed in every major and minor conflict this century, starting with the Mexican border crisis of 1916 and including the invasion of Grenada in 1983. The Total Force Doctrine is based on the assumption that a ready military-trained manpower pool must exist to quickly augment the standing active forces. The current policy is to readily integrate the active duty forces, National Guard, and Reserves into a homogeneous whole. In fact, one can expect at the onset of major hostilities, one out of every three soldiers on the battlefield will be a National Guardsman or Reservist. This study will be a research of available literature on key issues surrounding the need for and employment of state defense forces. It will gather available information to include policies, regulations, laws, arguments and positions from military experts and writers, state defense members, and government officials.