Proposed tasks and levels of ambition for the future Norwegian Home Guard

In 2017 the Storting decided the future development of the Norwegian land force structure. The Storting also tasked the government to conduct a thorough review of the personnel, training, and equipment needs of the Home Guard. As a response to this task, a research project was established at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) to analyse the future Home Guard. This report is a part of that research project. The final report will be delivered in 2021. This report proposes a set of guiding principles for the future Home Guard, based on the first report from the project. Furthermore the report proposes a set of generic missions that could be given to the Home Guard. Finally, the report proposes the following four levels of ambition that can form the basis for the development of the future Home Guard; • Level of ambition 1: Surveillance and response • Level of ambition 2: Protection and engagement • Level of ambition 3: Simultaneous engagement • Level of ambition 4: Powerful protection and engagement The generic missions proposed in this report shows what the future Home Guard should be structured towards. In addition to command and control, the different missions proposed can be grouped into four different categories: Defeat, Observe, Secure, and Co-operate. The decision on how to structure the future Home Guard will depend on the missions and levels of ambition presented in this report. By combining the missions with the level of ambition it will be possible to quantify the requirements for different force structure alternatives for the future Home Guard. The project will continue the work resulting in a final report in the summer of 2021 where different alternative structures will be presented. This will give the political authorities an important input in order to reach a decision on how to structure the future Home Guard. In order to identify the most cost effective force structure for the entire Norwegian defence, the future Home Guard must be analysed conjunction with the rest of the force structure elements. This is done in the quadrennial defence review process. The results from this project and analysis covering other aspects of the force structure will serve as important inputs to this process.