Watching the news about various riots and Trump hollering about sending in the National Guard, can you help me understand what the National Guard is and how it operates?
I don’t think we have anything like it in the UK. I used to think it might be like our Territorial Army (part/time soldiers there as back up if the army needs extras), but they would never be deployed to control riots at home so it can’t be that.
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The National Guard is a reserve component of the US military. There is an Army Guard which is obviously Army and Air Guard which is Air Force. The other reserve component is the reserves of each branch.
National guard soldiers are fully qualified soldiers that get the same training as active duty soldiers. The uniform says “U.S. Army” not national guard. The Guard tends to have combat units like infantry and armor and the reserves tend to be more support oriented. In time of war the National Guard can be activated to go to combat on foreign soil. When they are activated they fall under federal control.
The Guard has a duel mission and also falls under the state as a state run militia. They can be activated to fall under the orders of the governor. This can be for natural disasters or civil unrest or any other kind of emergency.
In the US federal system, both the national government and the individual states maintain military forces. The state forces have taken many different forms over the years, from rag-tag militias to professional regiments. In the early 20th century, these were heavily re-organized into the National Guard system. Each state maintains a certain number of National Guard units under the direct command of the state’s Governor as commander-in-chief. Their primary duty is to provide the state with various emergency response capabilities.
The National Guard also serves as part of the federal military reserve system. (But they are organizationally separate and distinct from the actual Army Reserves and other reserve units.) The President has the power to call up (“federalize”) National Guard units as needed to respond to emergencies and to support the regular federal military in wars. When this happens, the unit(s) in question are integrated into the national military command structure and ultimately report to the President until they are de-federalized.
Most National Guard troops are part-timers who train a few times a year and the large majority have former experience in the regular military.
Many governors have activated National Guard units in their home states as a response to the current civil unrest and rioting in many cities. When serving as a state unit (under the governor) they can also implement martial law if needed (and ordered by the governor). When serving as federalized units, they can’t, because federal law strictly prohibits military personnel from engaging in law enforcement.
I am retired from the National Guard. I did 4 years active duty and then came home and joined the National Guard. While in the Guard I was activated and deployed twice for OEF/OIF. I was also activated by the state for state active duty many times. Hurricane Floyd and Hurricane Sandy for disaster relief. After 911 we did infrastructure security to augment the NYNJ Port Authority. We were on alert to go to Baltimore for riot control but then were not needed. I never had to deal with riot control but did train on it.
Thank you, it does sound very different from our territorial army. We don’t have militia involved in law enforcement.
Do they carry weapons during these riots?
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Keep in mind they aren’t involved in law enforcement right now either; no state has actually declared martial law. They are there to (try to) keep the peace and de-escalate. They do carry weapons if needed for self defense. But even the angriest rioters are going to be far more interested in fighting cops than soldiers. The soldiers would be far more professional about it, anyway.
To say that the states maintain the Guard as a military force is overstating more than a bit. All the equipment and all the money for training comes from Big Army. The organization and types of units is not under state control. The type of training each year s dictated from the Pentagon. Much of the training is done on federal military installations. The soldiers paychecks are federal unless on state active duty. Much of what the Guard does throughout the year is dictated by National Guard Bureau in the Pentagon. The states maintain some control and can activate units by order of the governor but they are an integral part of the military as a whole and are controlled by the military.
They can. Each situation is unique and will have its own sets of rules.
All excellent points. Part of the reason for creating the NG system in the first place was to standardize equipment and training across the country, which the states were more than happy to agree to.
The Peterloo Massacre rather put governments off the idea.
Indeed. And various other events in the Victorian era. These day putting soldiers up against civilians isn’t regarded as great optics for politicians.
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Believe me, they know.
:smack:
Firstly, its the Army Reserve not TA anymore.
And, yes you do have “militia involved in law enforcement”. Its know as Military Aid to Civil Authorities and is one of the express duties of the UK Armed Forces. While you doubtless will argue that its a support role, so is the National Guard in the US. Military forces role in law enforcement is always to support and augment the civil authorities and LEA. Its never a primary role.
How young are you that you can forget N Ireland?
More recently In 2012, the British Army drafted in over 18,000 soldiers to support the London Olympic Games when security company G4S admitted they could not provide enough guards. The military was also deployed to provide logistic support to the ‘Nightingale’ temporary COVID19 hospitals.
In neither case were the soldiers visibly armed, but I also recall HMS Ocean being berthed at Greenwich to act as a launchpad for helicopters and a base for Royal Marine snipers (Not to mention her anti-aircraft/missile capabilities).
It comes a few days after the MoD released plans for deploying missile systems across London. This in addition to Rapier missiles deployed to various sites around the Home Counties.
In 2003, more than 400 soldiers and armoured vehicles joined police at Heathrow Airport to boost security amid concern over al-Qaeda attacks.
Of course, these were security operations and in principle, no different to having armed soldiers on guard outside Buckingham Palace. I cannot recall a recent case where the military has been used to supplement the police on the Mainland to quell writers, although I expect that they would have been on standby.
Just as well they cancelled the Hay Festival, then…
SAS was used in the Iran embassy siege and in the prison riots in Scotland in the 1980’s.
In the last decade the British Army was activated for direct patrolling in the mainland on two occasions.
Depends. For example, when Washington’s governor activated 200 National Guard soldiers last night, it was stated again and again they will not be armed. They are to help regular police with traffic and crowd control.
I was in the National Guard. The Guard does basic and advanced training with the reserve and regular army. Officer and other leadership training too. Drill SGTs may even be Guard if they volunteer for it.
However, the guard does get special training in how to assist civil authority (ie, police) if it ever comes up; we even role-play what happens if your unit is called up to control a riot, and you know and possibly even consider friends, people involved in the riot.
We also get trained to assist in disasters. We get trained to assist firefighters, but mainly by doing crowd control, and taking care of victims once the EMTs stabilize them, if there are too many to transport at once. We also had to learn how to give first aid to firefighters who got minor injuries (like sprains in a fall) while in full gear.
I was called up to sandbag during a flood once, but never during civil unrest.
A sergeant in my unit, which was a mechanics unit, was a real hero, as far as I was concerned, even though he’d never served in a war. One, during a sub-zero ice storm, he took a 2KW power generator, solo, up to a city in the North, and powered a hospital for an entire weekend. He had to keep it fueled, and run checks on it, so he ate nothing but MREs, instant coffee, and a few snacks he brought with him, and he didn’t sleep more than 4 hours at a stretch for 4 days. He lived in the back of the van he used to tow the generator, and he had a small gas-powered generator for his own power.
The power was totally down for the entire city. I’m not sure why the hospital didn’t have its own back-up generators; maybe they didn’t have maintenance for them, so they were automated, and good for just a few hours, or maybe they weren’t properly maintained, and didn’t all come on. That actually happens a lot.
In fact, a little hijack, but if you are ever choosing a hospital in advance for a procedure, one question you should ask is about their back-up power plan.
Why/when does the president federalize the National Guard rather than use the regular armed forces?
I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s because the National Guard members are already located relatively close to where they are needed- most of them hold civilian jobs full-time and aren’t based at military installations.