Generally when you see any state’s National Guard in the news after a natural disaster or a manhunt they’re always armed with basic rifles or pistols and driving around in Humvees or other similar vehicles. But in the event of either a domestic terrorist threat or some sort of civil disturbance, what kind of weaponry do they have at their disposal?
In the movie First Blood the National Guard are shown to have anti-tank rockets they use to fire at the cave Rambo is hiding in, and later Rambo steals an M60 machine gun from a passing National Guard truck. But in pretty much every other movie or in real life the National Guard are just shown to carry their basic M16 rifles or just a sidearm. If say a bunch of bad guys are holding up in a fortified building with enough firepower to make the police back-off, would the National Guard show up in tanks? Would they be given light machine guns and rocket launchers? Or would it be more like how it was in Waco, with just standard rifles and the use of APC’s to transport people around?
Based on the movie Home Fries, the Air National Guard is packing some serious attack helicopter heat…looked like a Cobra to my uneducated eye. But as far as I can tell, they actually only fly the Pave Hawk, which still packs serious minigun or machine gun action for a rescue chopper…
The Air National Guard flies most of what the USAF does, and I have a half-memory that the ANG actually does the lion’s share of air refuelling and cargo flying (or maybe that’s the Reserve).
I’m having trouble finding much about the National Guard, but given that they have infantry, artillery, and cavalry battalions, I’d suspect they have similar equipment as the regular Army.
It depends on the unit. There are two basic components to the US military’s reserve force, The Reserves and the National Guard. The Reserves are strictly federal and tend to be support units but we will discard them for now.
The National Guard is comprised of the Air Guard (Air Force) and the Army National Guard Army obviously). Both have a state and federal mission. Let’s put aside the Air Guard for now. The Army National Guard is the combat arms portion of the Reserve force. It has tanks, Infantry, Artillery, Attack Helicopters, Combat Engineers and even Green Berets. Plus the support units needed for the combat units. The type of unit that is in each state is determined at the federal level as an augmentation to the total force.
Each unit will be armed depending on what that unit needs. Each soldier will have an assigned weapon such as an M4 or M16. Tank units will have tanks. Artillery units will have artillery. You get the idea. At the local armory most likely only small arms will be stored. Most of the bigger equipment will be stored at a central training location except for maybe one or two to train on. For instance when I was in a tank unit most of our tanks were at Fort Dix where we could actually use them. It would have been a logistical nightmare to transport the tanks each time we were going to train. Each armory kept one tank on location to train with.
Ammunition is kept at an Ammo Supply Point. Live rocket launchers are not just laying around.
The Wisconsin Air National Guard has a wing of F-16s. There are also a bunch of Blackhawk helicopters flying out of the same airport – not sure if they’re in the same unit or not.
Air National Guard has everything. They even have F-22 Raptors! Though, it’s going to vary from state to state.
Loach covered the OP pretty well. The National Guard has access to everything the Regular Army has. They will likely have immediate access to M9s, M4s, M240s, M249s, M2s, and MK19s, as well as a small operational load of stored ammo for each (minus the MK19, probably). The speed at which they can get ahold of things like grenades, rockets, and missiles is going to depend on their proximity to the Ammo Storage Facility which will likely be near the State’s largest NG training area.
As far as assisting law enforcement with a fight against a very heavily attacker, like Rambo, I would have to say it depends on the situation.
When I was a kid, a nearby NJ National Guard tank battalion used to road march its M48 tanks from its suburban armory to its training area, past our house, leaving depressions in the pavement when it was warm out. It seems in recent decades they’ve gotten more practical about his as you say.
The M48 weighed 45 tons and had a diesel engine. The M1 is about 67 tons and uses a lot of jet fuel. It’s expensive to run and will tear up pavement unless driven very carefully. And for the Guard most of the weekend would be taken up by moving them to the training area with little time let to actually do anything.
The unit closest to my house is a finance unit. They probably have little more than their assigned small arms. It really depends on the unit. (said for the benefit of others, Bear already knows)
My Army National Guard unit had M-16’s, M-60’s and .50 cals. The bolts were stored at the Sheriff Department. I have no idea where the ammo was stored.
The national guard post near my house has about 20 tanks and 50-60 other vehicles of various configurations. They also store some artillery pieces. There does seem to be some sharing or resources between that post and the nearby reserves training facility. It could be the reserves store some of their stuff at the national guard post as it’s a secured facility that’s manned around the clock.
If they needed to address I highly armed terrorist threat I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t have all the tools they needed at their disposal
When “Pearl Harbour”, happened, (Saturday night, midwest time) the artillary from my Dad’s ROTC was shipped out from Michigan to the west coast Sunday morning.
The bolts followed on Monday morning when they got the safe opened.
More than 20 years of my 27 year army career was in the Guard. The weapons might not have had the bolts in them when they were in the rack but we always maintained control of the bolts even if they were in a different safe. My last unit was a combat engineer unit and we had M-4’s, M-249’s, M-240’s, M-2’s, M-203’s, M-26 shotgun and Mk-19’s. I’ve never heard of keeping bolts with a civilian agency.
They stopped doing this many years before they had M1 types tanks. The ones which would pass our house were 90mm M48’s, which might even have been gasoline powered (M48A1/A2’s) back then. In later years they had (105mm, diesel) M48A5’s then M60A1/3’s, at least some could be seen parked at the armory but they had stopped road marching them on the local roads, where they sometimes did cause depressions in the pavement in summer. What counts for that is ground pressure more than absolute weight; the M1’s ground pressure is higher but not by the full ratio of the respective weights.
No ammo on site in almost every case. It is possible for command to get an exception to store very small amounts for specific circumstances (like blanks for ceremonial details.) It was also a pain in the ass to them meet all the storage and safety requirements. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11 my armory had armed guards manning the front door during duty hours for a period. The exception was used to get and store a small amount of ammo for them. ISTR it was much less than a full magazine for each of the two Soldiers that would be on duty at any given time. It was on the order of a single 20 rd box for the M16s in total.
I’ve also had the “joy” of being a Battalion S4. I also spent several months sitting in the G3 shop at Joint Forces HQ (aka State HQ) just over from the state ammo manager while preparing for a deployment. The state ASP didn’t keep massive amounts of ammo on hand all year round. The forecasting and request system was used to make sure enough ammo was on hand prior to scheduled training events. In the Guard long term training management involved a locked plan out for the entire training year; that’s the equivalent of the quarterly training plan for the Active Component. The deliveries of ammo were coordinated to be there before draw by that long term forecast and IIRC not before the shorter term request to draw (IIRC a minimum of 90 days out but it may have been 60 days.)
Another issue with having relatively accessible ammo is the amount of training rounds used for large caliber and explosive firing weapons. I never fired a service tank round. Mostly for Mk19 and M203 rounds we got paint rounds with occasional service/HE rounds. I remember one year getting a handful of live AT-4s for the battalion. It was a big enough deal that it still stands out in memory. IIRC our battalion scout platoon, the primary user, had a competition for individual scouts to earn the right to fire one. Even if an emergency cropped up in the heavy usage cycle around typical summer annual training periods, the ASP would likely be heavily weighted towards training ammo for certain weapon types.
On a different note from the OP, I did have an experience that involved planning for a state mission use of armored vehicles. While I was still a new 2LT my Company showed the Platoon Leaders the OPPLAN for what was feared might be a big civil disturbance in Detroit. The Michigan Guard had a long and deep seated institutional memory after the 60s. My tank battalion was the state reserve in the plan. We were supposed to take all of our limited number of APCs with us along with IIRC the lightly armored HMMWVs in our scout platoon for situations that involved being able to move under fire. I don’t recall any mention of how to move them from the two training sites they were split between. Road march may have been an option at that point.
Actually the ground pressure on an M1 is still lower than that exerted by an SUV let alone an uparmored HMMWV. The track has a lot more surface area to spread the heavier tank weight than the tiny contact area from four tires. It can even be lower than the ground pressure than that exerted by a walking human, especially if they are an infantryman carrying a heavy load.
A lot of the issue with moving heavier equipment on civilian is bridges. For them the concentrated weight is the problem. We ran into the issue when my battalion shifted from M60A3s to M1s (slicks, not even the IP variant). The slight increase in weight was enough to make most of the HET trailers the transportation unit in the state had unable to carry our tanks on the road. There was a longer trailer that spread the weight over a longer distance. Unfortunately the unit mostly didn’t have them. IIRC that was to ensure the spreading the weight over more than a single bridge span but IANA civil engineer. Even with that trailer the route between the two training sites in out state was far less than direct. The route had to be planned to avoid bridges that were not rated to handle the combined weight of the tank plus carrier.
It seems in recent decades they’ve gotten more practical about his as you say.