State volunteers eyed for greater security role.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

As officials in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill seek ways to ease the pressure on over-deployed active-duty, National Guard and reserve troops, more and more eyes are falling upon littleknown, state-operated bands of volunteers that for decades have backed up the country's regular military forces in times of emergency.

At most recent count, roughly 170,000 National Guard and reserve personnel were deployed on active duty around the world, including more than 30,000 serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, two additional brigades--from North Carolina and Arkansas--were mobilized in October. They were needed, officials said, to relieve some of the 128,000 active-duty, National Guard and reserve troops currently deployed in Iraq.

With many of these units absent, some states are turning to their own, locally controlled organizations--typically called state guards or state defense forces--to perform many of the homeland-security and disaster-response functions normally performed by the National Guard and reserves.

In 2001, for example, after hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the New York Guard assisted the city in managing the flow of essential goods into the city.

In September of this year, when Hurricane Isabel cut a swath through the mid-Atlantic region, the Virginia Defense Force helped run the state's Emergency Operations Center in Richmond.

Earlier this year, when units of Washington state's National Guard were activated, the State Guard assisted in mobilization operations at Fort Lewis.

An estimated 22 states maintain defense forces, with a total strength of perhaps 12,000 men and women. "It's kind of hard to pin down exact numbers," said Georgia Defense Force Col. Byers W. Coleman, executive director of the State Guard Association of the United States, which is headquartered in Fayetteville, Ga.

The state units--unlike the National Guard--have no official, nationwide organization, he explained. They are established and operated entirely by individual states. They cannot be deployed outside their own borders.

Typically, members attend a one-day drill per month and a three-day training session each year. They receive no pay while training, but are paid standard National Guard rates when activated for a stare or local emergency, officials explained. They even pay for their own uniforms.

"We're authorized by Army regulations to wear the woodland BDU (battle-dress uniform) and Army dress greens," explained Brig. Gen...