Swedish Home Guard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Swedish Home Guard (Swedish: Hemvärnet) is a part of the Swedish Armed Forces. The Home Guard consists of local defence units under the leadership of the armed forces, as well as 23 national auxiliary defence organizations. The Home Guard could be regarded as a fully government controlled and sponsored State Defense Force under the command of local Army regiments.

1 History
2 Organisation
3 Method of operation
4 Training and equipment
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

Further information: Sweden during World War II

The Home Guard was officially passed into law by the Riksdag on May 29, 1940, after the beginning of World War II, but units had already been formed by the military before it was passed into law. Home Guard Units were groups of usually eight to 15 men that served as defense units in a time of war, located in towns and in both private and public factories, all throughout Sweden. Members of these small units usually consisted of former professional military men who were equipped with rifles, machine guns, ammunition, medicine, special clothing (uniforms), and had the option of buying additional materials such as skis, sweaters and marching boots. An additional group, called the Lotta corps (Women's Voluntary Defense Service), helped with additional tasks that the Home Unit was unable to perform themselves. The Lotta corps helped provide the home unit with additional items such as socks, scarves and gloves as well as performing all administrative work that the unit could not afford to do themselves. In a time of war, in case the Home Guard was unable to utilize any local hospitals for their use, the Swedish Red Cross was prepared to set up first aid stations to help aid the Home Guard.

[edit] Organisation

The Home Guard is organised in Battalions, covering parts of a county (Län). These battalions are then organised into companies, usually one for every municipality. The main task of the battalions is to defend and protect vital military and civilian installations throughout the country. Also attached to every battalion is at least one "Rapid Response Platoon" (Insatspluton). These platoons are usually motorized and may be mobilized more often than other Home Guard units. The Rapid Response Platoons have a much more diversified combat task than the rest of the Home Guard, including Escort, Guarding, and Counter Insurgency.

As of late 2005 Home Guard battalions are organized under Army Regiment and an officer under the regimental commander.

As of 2006, the Home Guard consists of 37,000 soldiers (down from 42,000 in 2001) organized into 66 battalions (down from 69 in 2001) of 300-700. In 2001 there also existed 122 Rapid Response Platoons and 27 Rapid Response Company Commands (Insatskompaniledning). Even though the number of soldiers has fallen, with battalions merging, companies disbanding and so on. The size goal for number of soldiers are said to be 1.5 times the amount of conscripts drafted each year, however, this is at present (2006) sinking bellow 10,000 (~20% of men reaching service age). A rough estimate is also that ~20% of the 30000+ personnel registered are in the other eight voluntary defence organizations (2001).

Section/Group (8-10 soldiers)
Platoon (30-50 soldiers)
Company (75-200 soldiers)
Battalion (300-700 soldiers)

[edit] Method of operation

The Home Guard units are trained to provide local combat units (primarily infantry but also signals troops). This means they should know the area where they will function, hopefully better than any invasion force. The focus of the training (~20h/year) is on improvised warfare (guerrilla warfare). The Rapid Response Platoons, are more focused on a more traditional infantry warfare, and are trained (~60h/year) to be able to work in conjunction with the regular armed forces. The aim is to have all Home Guard battalions ready for combat within two hours of a general alert, with an expected endurance of a minimum of three days^{[citation needed]}. Units are expected to use civilian assets (hospitals, supermarkets etc.) as part of their logistics.

In peacetime the Home Guards main task is to help with search and rescue operations, and to provide assistance to the society in cases of severe trauma i.e natural disasters and alike.

[edit] Training and equipment

Since the Home Guard is a voluntary organisation the required amount of training a member has to perform is only 20 hours a year but this does vary however as some positions are obligated to train more. A prerequisite for members to join the Home Guard is to have received at least 90 days of basic military training. The level of training is widely varied, from basic military training to Ranger school and other non-infantry service training. No consideration is taken as to when the training took place, for instance it doesn't matter whether it took place one or twenty years ago.

Training is centered around ground combat, from classroom instructions on NBC warfare to a day on the firing range or more applied training exercises. Training is usually carried out on evenings or weekends and is not mandatory, thus with varied turnouts (thus training becomes more individualistic as squads and above are usually never trained together as a unit). The equipment issued to Home Guard units are generally that of what is issued to regular army soldiers with some old equipment not being replaced and newer equipment not issued. Only the Rapid Response Platoons are motorized.

The standard armaments are Ak 4 battle rifles with red dot sights and sometimes with x4 optical sights for squad sharpshooters - or more rarely with a M203 grenade launcher - FN MAG (Ksp 58) machine guns, Carl Gustav recoilless rifles (Grg m/48) and AT4 (Pskott m/86) light anti-tank weapons. Psg 90 sniper rifles are also issued to designated snipers and some personnel are issued with Glock 17 (Pistol 88) pistols. Other equipment include anti-tank mines and manually detonated anti-personnel landmines, explosives and signals equipment. Some first and second generation night vision equipment of Russian manufacture have been issued, but illumination flares are otherwise used. Signals equipment at platoon level include AN/PRC-25 (Ra145) and AN/PRC-77 (Ra146) backpack radios.

Dogs are also used as sensor systems, usually two for every platoon. The animals are issued and trained by one of the national auxiliary defence organizations .