Its headquarters is at the National Military Museum, Fort Montana, Caracas.

[6][7] It is an autonomous and auxiliary force for the Armed Forces' service branches, with its own chain of command and service arms, reporting directly to the President, the Minister of Defense and the Operational Strategic Command.

Following the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis and its subsequent protests, President Maduro announced the expansion of the militia to include 500,000 personnel, stating that the government would purchase a new rifle for each militiaman, with plans to increase its personnel numbers to about over a million active service personnel plus an undetermined number of reserves.

[9] The National Boliviarian Militia has been described as a "political army" created by Hugo Chávez that has hundreds of thousands of members in service, including military reservists and employees of state and public enterprises at all levels.

It has been alleged by El Mundo that the militia has sometimes used "violence to silence dissent or journalists who do not bow to the discourse of the regime".