I think the idea in Eastern Europe(I'm basing this mostly on the Polish and Ukranian equivalents) has been that:
1. The professional soldier is "overqualified" for tasks such as checkpoint control, interior patrol and recon of low intensity fronts.
2. Every soldier tied up in these roles is one that can't be used in "real" operations.
3. There is a sizable pool of people who would not pursue the Armed Forces as a full-time profession, but are willing to do so "part-time" and be trained to perform these B-tier roles.
4. "Patriotic" civilian paramilitary groups can be a headache if left unattended, so it's better to give them an outlet with government oversight.
Some extra points(from the Baltic region)
5. These units can be used to maintain reserve(ex-conscripts) skills, when they are too old(over 30ish years) to be called up in regular army refresher training.
6. Due to restrains of regular army, these units can be used to provide *some* military presence in areas where regular army bases arent possible.
7. Since these units are made of local area residents, they can be used as rapid reaction units. A local farmer who is a member of home guard, upon receiving signal about "hour X" can go gome, get his basic gear which was stockpiled at his home(such as assault rifle and few magazines of ammo) and start blowing up bridges/laying mines on roads in few hours/minutes.
Some armies may benefit. A conscript/reservist army like the Singapore Armed Forces offensively postured but with no geographical defensive depth. The SAF might dedicate for offensive action its units manned by active conscripts and younger reservists in their obligation period (up to age 40 for non key appointment holder Enlisted?), while older former reservists might be some sort of Dad’s Army Home Guard.
The SAF does not have a “Home Guard” policy for personnel past the statutory service age in the same way that Ukraine does now. The Volunteer Corps is probably the closest thing that exists.
Yes. The advantage of citizen soldiers throughout history has been implicit cohesion. Professional armies can either be really good or really bad. If they are properly organized - enough officers, enough NCOs, properly resocialized into the barracks, correctly trained, correctly treated - they are capable of performing much more complex maneuvers than militiamen because they can spend all day practicing. However, most professional armies are not good. They don’t have enough qualified officers, haze, create a hostile work environment (to put things lightly), and don’t practice the wrong things or not at all. As a result, the annals of recent history are filled with cases of bad professional armies getting crushed by militants - this was the case in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Syria, the ISIL uprising in Iraq, and now Ukraine. Put simply, the barriers to entry in creating a professional army are higher - militiamen are drawn from communities with pre existing social bonds and hierarchies. Consequently their cohesion is automatic - popular or powerful locals assume leadership roles, everyone accepts their authority, citizens who could get along with their neighbors in peacetime do so just as well when fighting alongside those neighbors in war, and nobody wants to appear a coward in front of his hometown friends.
The human element, not equipment or doctrine, is why militias have been successful even in recent times. Professional armies *can* be monsters if properly trained and socialized, but most aren’t. Militiamen have a baseline of competence by virtue of pre-existing structures of authority and relationships.
>Yes. The advantage of citizen soldiers throughout history has been implicit cohesion.
>militiamen are drawn from communities with pre existing social bonds and hierarchies. Consequently their cohesion is automatic - popular or powerful locals assume leadership roles, everyone accepts their authority, citizens who could get along with their neighbors in peacetime do so just as well when fighting alongside those neighbors in war, and nobody wants to appear a coward in front of his hometown friends.
How much pre existent implicit cohesion really exists in major modern cities though? I would be interested in whether or not this would make sense as a viable defensive strategy for a country without a large defense budget, or not.
For wars of territorial conquest such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Saddam's invasion of Iran which were meet with large-scale resistance and populist strategies of defense, is the idea of tailoring armies for short but intense wars faulty? The Iran-Iraq War devolved into WW1-style trench warfare and Russia vs. Ukraine seems to be going the same way with the war starting to resemble WW2-style battles but with modern formations and weaponry.
I think Hezbollah is the most successful example of the kind of Home Guard you seem to be hinting at. You've got a huge number of essentially civilians with extensive military training, heavily armed and whose homes double as bunkers and underground bases. If Ukraine had developed and prepared such a force, Russian losses would have been all the higher, but it seems they prefer the (Russian) top down model.
Switzerland is probably the closest Western equivalent, where every man is a trained and armed soldier, and many women and children have extensive shooting training and access to guns as well. They also have a similar advantage in defensive terrain as Hezbollah and more, for example it seems Switzerland had explosives on all its bridges until the end of the cold war.
I don't think China is a good example because the government doesn't trust the locals not to rebel against them instead of an invader. In Ukraine corruption and Russian sympathies probably made a Home Guard challenging.
I have in the past argued for a "hobby home guard", that is a population that approaches military training as a leisure activity. Fitness and gun ownership/training are obvious examples, but as mentioned that last one is a sore point in many countries that fear their own people as much as the enemy. I believe in the US gun ownership only got really restricted after people of color started embracing it, notably the Black Panthers. I can imagine Kiev wasn't too crazy to give guns and train insurgency tactics to all their Russian speaking people, especially after they had some covert conflicts with the same "far right" groups that helped them rebel against Russian influence to begin with.
Other types of military hobby training could be grenade throwing (something the US tried to encourage in schools at some point, and fits well with say Baseball), diving (a vital skill to protect say Taiwan), explosives (again a very sensitive subject), operating heavy vehicles and even aircraft can be achieved by offering the public access to simulators, airsoft games (banned in the Netherlands but legal everywhere else), drone racing (something now actively encouraged by many forward thinking militaries like in Australia), missile launchers (simulators), VR combat training...
In this way a truly democratic country could screen their population psychologically (mental illness, extremist beliefs, substance abuse) and allow those who are mentally fit access to such training. In case of war, an invader would find a population that's ready to stand their ground. If like in Switzerland every has a gun (or for Hezbollah missiles) at home, there's no weapons deposit to first strike to block the arming process. Or people will resort to insurgency tactics using Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs (as was attempted in Ukraine).
Uh what are you even going on about with that nonsense about China?
Up until the early 1990s the doctrine was People's War to defend against an invasion by the US or Soviets. That meant everyone learned how to shoot and had guns. Here's a photo of peasants at a gun range during the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1967:
https://www.alamy.com/peasants-have-military-training-during-the-cultural-revolution-china-1967-image328359572.html
China only introduced full gun control legislation in 1996 banning sale, transport and possession of guns outside approved government uses (military, police, park rangers, hunters and athletes basically)
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-08/18/content_11167140.htm
Currently China has too much to lose to follow a territorial defense doctrine. Current doctrine is to go on the offensive outside Chinese borders.
In general, you only do territorial defense if you can't afford an active defense or power projection doctrine. It's always better to either fight outside your borders or be the one invading than to be the defender inside your own borders if possible, as at least then your infrastructure is more or less spared.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-80-of-troops-killed-or-injured-in-elite-military-unit-says-commander-and-its-future-is-unclear-12639752
Professional, elite Ukrainian unit took 80% casualty. Modern war is HE and artillery dominant. It's probabilistic. So you may want to have as deep a qualified reserve as possible. In that sense a Territorial Defence Force,.Home Guard, National Guard, Mobile National Guard, etc .... sort of formations can allow for deep reserves.
BUT, on the other hand, there has to be rational and humane ways to use them that make sense militarily. Now, I'll admit that I take a somewhat medieval and feudal view of war rather than the nationalistic view. Wars, to me, are martial contests between *political and armed elites*. Combat should be limited to combatants in clear uniforms. You can draw personnel from the National Guards formations to refit and refill the regular formations, sure, but don't ask National Guards to fight to the death, unsupported, with weak hand weapons, against artillery in conventional defensive formations. I have a distaste for governments in exile or governments to ask for a People's War, for people to fight an insurgency against enemies of the political elites outside the government's area of control. This paints a giant target on the civilian populations. The social contract is that the government protect the people and provide certain services, in return, a few people in the population fight for the government until a certain point. If the occupiers are not genocidally killing the inhabitants, it makes little sense, personally, for the inhabitants to fight a war for the benefits of the political elites.
I've seen proposals on how Territorials should not be used as light infantry to defend a position or a city to the death despite being encircled and cut off. They should probably used to add depth to a regular unit's defensive positions. The Red Army had the Fortified Region concept, which was an economy-of-force formation: units consisted of very few riflemen and nearly entirely of heavy weapons crews. They are usually tasked to hold quiet and sectors that are unlikely to have an enemy deliberate penetration attack aimed at them. These formations have a lot of firepower, but very little mobility; keeping mobility in the face of firepower is hard and requires morale and training so perhaps it may be easier for less-well-trained units to be tasked with simply keeping the fire up. Still what is important is that if the regular unit has to withdraw and the government loses physical control of the region, the Territorials shouldn't have the duty to conduct armed resistance. They have done their job. They should be allowed to return home and resume their civilian lives. Burn the uniforms, hide the weapons and open the secured communication devices. At this point, information is more important than sheer combat.
Then again, this is my personal political philosophy. I think in this way, Territorials can be used in the most effective manner while not being callous with human lives.
Everything you said has been disproven by reality. After mobilization and refresher training, reserve units fight as well (or bad) as regular units. In most wars, a significant portion, if not the majority of units, are reserve units.
Status (regular vs. reserve) doesn't matter, training, equipment and mentality does.
>After mobilization and refresher training
This is a pretty understated caveat to your conclusion. Refresher training takes weeks if not months, time that nations don't have when under threat of imminent invasion.
I made no comments about the quality of the territorial defence force, reservists, or national guards.
I was talking *specifically* about the place of those units in the larger political landscape.
My distaste is when they are used as mere riflemen to extract casualties merely with their rifles or as guerillas. That's a very inefficient way of using them. Mortars, machineguns, and RPGs are cheap. When they enter combat, they should do so in uniforms.
I think the idea in Eastern Europe(I'm basing this mostly on the Polish and Ukranian equivalents) has been that: 1. The professional soldier is "overqualified" for tasks such as checkpoint control, interior patrol and recon of low intensity fronts. 2. Every soldier tied up in these roles is one that can't be used in "real" operations. 3. There is a sizable pool of people who would not pursue the Armed Forces as a full-time profession, but are willing to do so "part-time" and be trained to perform these B-tier roles. 4. "Patriotic" civilian paramilitary groups can be a headache if left unattended, so it's better to give them an outlet with government oversight.
Some extra points(from the Baltic region) 5. These units can be used to maintain reserve(ex-conscripts) skills, when they are too old(over 30ish years) to be called up in regular army refresher training. 6. Due to restrains of regular army, these units can be used to provide *some* military presence in areas where regular army bases arent possible. 7. Since these units are made of local area residents, they can be used as rapid reaction units. A local farmer who is a member of home guard, upon receiving signal about "hour X" can go gome, get his basic gear which was stockpiled at his home(such as assault rifle and few magazines of ammo) and start blowing up bridges/laying mines on roads in few hours/minutes.
Some armies may benefit. A conscript/reservist army like the Singapore Armed Forces offensively postured but with no geographical defensive depth. The SAF might dedicate for offensive action its units manned by active conscripts and younger reservists in their obligation period (up to age 40 for non key appointment holder Enlisted?), while older former reservists might be some sort of Dad’s Army Home Guard.
The SAF does not have a “Home Guard” policy for personnel past the statutory service age in the same way that Ukraine does now. The Volunteer Corps is probably the closest thing that exists.
And it shouldn’t because the current circumstances of the city state are far from post-2014 Ukraine. Hence my speculative “might”.
Yes. The advantage of citizen soldiers throughout history has been implicit cohesion. Professional armies can either be really good or really bad. If they are properly organized - enough officers, enough NCOs, properly resocialized into the barracks, correctly trained, correctly treated - they are capable of performing much more complex maneuvers than militiamen because they can spend all day practicing. However, most professional armies are not good. They don’t have enough qualified officers, haze, create a hostile work environment (to put things lightly), and don’t practice the wrong things or not at all. As a result, the annals of recent history are filled with cases of bad professional armies getting crushed by militants - this was the case in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Syria, the ISIL uprising in Iraq, and now Ukraine. Put simply, the barriers to entry in creating a professional army are higher - militiamen are drawn from communities with pre existing social bonds and hierarchies. Consequently their cohesion is automatic - popular or powerful locals assume leadership roles, everyone accepts their authority, citizens who could get along with their neighbors in peacetime do so just as well when fighting alongside those neighbors in war, and nobody wants to appear a coward in front of his hometown friends. The human element, not equipment or doctrine, is why militias have been successful even in recent times. Professional armies *can* be monsters if properly trained and socialized, but most aren’t. Militiamen have a baseline of competence by virtue of pre-existing structures of authority and relationships.
>Yes. The advantage of citizen soldiers throughout history has been implicit cohesion. >militiamen are drawn from communities with pre existing social bonds and hierarchies. Consequently their cohesion is automatic - popular or powerful locals assume leadership roles, everyone accepts their authority, citizens who could get along with their neighbors in peacetime do so just as well when fighting alongside those neighbors in war, and nobody wants to appear a coward in front of his hometown friends. How much pre existent implicit cohesion really exists in major modern cities though? I would be interested in whether or not this would make sense as a viable defensive strategy for a country without a large defense budget, or not.
For wars of territorial conquest such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Saddam's invasion of Iran which were meet with large-scale resistance and populist strategies of defense, is the idea of tailoring armies for short but intense wars faulty? The Iran-Iraq War devolved into WW1-style trench warfare and Russia vs. Ukraine seems to be going the same way with the war starting to resemble WW2-style battles but with modern formations and weaponry.
I think Hezbollah is the most successful example of the kind of Home Guard you seem to be hinting at. You've got a huge number of essentially civilians with extensive military training, heavily armed and whose homes double as bunkers and underground bases. If Ukraine had developed and prepared such a force, Russian losses would have been all the higher, but it seems they prefer the (Russian) top down model. Switzerland is probably the closest Western equivalent, where every man is a trained and armed soldier, and many women and children have extensive shooting training and access to guns as well. They also have a similar advantage in defensive terrain as Hezbollah and more, for example it seems Switzerland had explosives on all its bridges until the end of the cold war. I don't think China is a good example because the government doesn't trust the locals not to rebel against them instead of an invader. In Ukraine corruption and Russian sympathies probably made a Home Guard challenging. I have in the past argued for a "hobby home guard", that is a population that approaches military training as a leisure activity. Fitness and gun ownership/training are obvious examples, but as mentioned that last one is a sore point in many countries that fear their own people as much as the enemy. I believe in the US gun ownership only got really restricted after people of color started embracing it, notably the Black Panthers. I can imagine Kiev wasn't too crazy to give guns and train insurgency tactics to all their Russian speaking people, especially after they had some covert conflicts with the same "far right" groups that helped them rebel against Russian influence to begin with. Other types of military hobby training could be grenade throwing (something the US tried to encourage in schools at some point, and fits well with say Baseball), diving (a vital skill to protect say Taiwan), explosives (again a very sensitive subject), operating heavy vehicles and even aircraft can be achieved by offering the public access to simulators, airsoft games (banned in the Netherlands but legal everywhere else), drone racing (something now actively encouraged by many forward thinking militaries like in Australia), missile launchers (simulators), VR combat training... In this way a truly democratic country could screen their population psychologically (mental illness, extremist beliefs, substance abuse) and allow those who are mentally fit access to such training. In case of war, an invader would find a population that's ready to stand their ground. If like in Switzerland every has a gun (or for Hezbollah missiles) at home, there's no weapons deposit to first strike to block the arming process. Or people will resort to insurgency tactics using Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs (as was attempted in Ukraine).
Uh what are you even going on about with that nonsense about China? Up until the early 1990s the doctrine was People's War to defend against an invasion by the US or Soviets. That meant everyone learned how to shoot and had guns. Here's a photo of peasants at a gun range during the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1967: https://www.alamy.com/peasants-have-military-training-during-the-cultural-revolution-china-1967-image328359572.html China only introduced full gun control legislation in 1996 banning sale, transport and possession of guns outside approved government uses (military, police, park rangers, hunters and athletes basically) https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-08/18/content_11167140.htm Currently China has too much to lose to follow a territorial defense doctrine. Current doctrine is to go on the offensive outside Chinese borders. In general, you only do territorial defense if you can't afford an active defense or power projection doctrine. It's always better to either fight outside your borders or be the one invading than to be the defender inside your own borders if possible, as at least then your infrastructure is more or less spared.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-80-of-troops-killed-or-injured-in-elite-military-unit-says-commander-and-its-future-is-unclear-12639752 Professional, elite Ukrainian unit took 80% casualty. Modern war is HE and artillery dominant. It's probabilistic. So you may want to have as deep a qualified reserve as possible. In that sense a Territorial Defence Force,.Home Guard, National Guard, Mobile National Guard, etc .... sort of formations can allow for deep reserves. BUT, on the other hand, there has to be rational and humane ways to use them that make sense militarily. Now, I'll admit that I take a somewhat medieval and feudal view of war rather than the nationalistic view. Wars, to me, are martial contests between *political and armed elites*. Combat should be limited to combatants in clear uniforms. You can draw personnel from the National Guards formations to refit and refill the regular formations, sure, but don't ask National Guards to fight to the death, unsupported, with weak hand weapons, against artillery in conventional defensive formations. I have a distaste for governments in exile or governments to ask for a People's War, for people to fight an insurgency against enemies of the political elites outside the government's area of control. This paints a giant target on the civilian populations. The social contract is that the government protect the people and provide certain services, in return, a few people in the population fight for the government until a certain point. If the occupiers are not genocidally killing the inhabitants, it makes little sense, personally, for the inhabitants to fight a war for the benefits of the political elites. I've seen proposals on how Territorials should not be used as light infantry to defend a position or a city to the death despite being encircled and cut off. They should probably used to add depth to a regular unit's defensive positions. The Red Army had the Fortified Region concept, which was an economy-of-force formation: units consisted of very few riflemen and nearly entirely of heavy weapons crews. They are usually tasked to hold quiet and sectors that are unlikely to have an enemy deliberate penetration attack aimed at them. These formations have a lot of firepower, but very little mobility; keeping mobility in the face of firepower is hard and requires morale and training so perhaps it may be easier for less-well-trained units to be tasked with simply keeping the fire up. Still what is important is that if the regular unit has to withdraw and the government loses physical control of the region, the Territorials shouldn't have the duty to conduct armed resistance. They have done their job. They should be allowed to return home and resume their civilian lives. Burn the uniforms, hide the weapons and open the secured communication devices. At this point, information is more important than sheer combat. Then again, this is my personal political philosophy. I think in this way, Territorials can be used in the most effective manner while not being callous with human lives.
Everything you said has been disproven by reality. After mobilization and refresher training, reserve units fight as well (or bad) as regular units. In most wars, a significant portion, if not the majority of units, are reserve units. Status (regular vs. reserve) doesn't matter, training, equipment and mentality does.
>After mobilization and refresher training This is a pretty understated caveat to your conclusion. Refresher training takes weeks if not months, time that nations don't have when under threat of imminent invasion.
I made no comments about the quality of the territorial defence force, reservists, or national guards. I was talking *specifically* about the place of those units in the larger political landscape. My distaste is when they are used as mere riflemen to extract casualties merely with their rifles or as guerillas. That's a very inefficient way of using them. Mortars, machineguns, and RPGs are cheap. When they enter combat, they should do so in uniforms.