Local militia came to play a very effective role in the war, as the style of small-unit warfare was better suited for guerrilla conflicts with most more familiar with the region and terrain.

[4] The Civil Guard (Dân vệ) was established in April 1955 by a decree of President Ngo Dinh Diem from members of inactivated wartime paramilitary agencies.

Its primary function was to relieve the regular forces of internal security duties, with additional missions of local intelligence collection and countersubversion.

[6] In 1955, with the precipitate withdrawal of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps and renewal of hostilities by North Vietnam both considered likely, a six-week civil guard course was instituted for militiamen.

[7]: 241 A survey in May 1957 had revealed that there were 54,000 men enrolled in the paramilitary Civil Guard; 7,000 in the municipal police; 3,500 in the Vietnamese Bureau of Investigation, or Sûreté; an undetermined number in the Gendarmerie; and about 50,000 in the Self-Defense Corps.

[7]: 320–1  Unlike the static, part-time Self-Defense Corps, the Civil Guard was a more mobile unit organized to patrol the rural districts and was composed of armed, uniformed, full-time personnel responsible for maintaining law and order and collecting intelligence.

Since the entire ARVN would be needed in the event of invasion to defend along the 17th Parallel, he maintained that a strong internal security organization was crucial to control the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta.

Diem wanted the Ministry of Defense to assume responsibility for training, disciplining, and supplying the guard, but in peacetime it would remain under the operational control of the interior minister.

Most members of the guard were former militiamen from the Catholic regions of North Vietnam who had fled south after the Viet Minh victory in 1954 and were among Diem's most loyal supporters.

When the advisers from Michigan State University insisted that a lightly armed but well-trained territorial police force was more appropriate to the needs of South Vietnam, Diem was contemptuous.

Indeed Durbrow and U.S. Operations Mission chief Leland Barrows believed that the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) had always wanted a larger army and that MAAG commander General Samuel Tankersley Williams, with Diem's encouragement, was simply using the Civil Guard issue as a device for covertly expanding the size of the armed forces.

The fantastic proposal confirmed the suspicions of the Operations Mission that Diem simply intended to use the Civil Guard as a private army.

[8]: 43  The Regional Forces, the principal arm of the province and district chiefs, grew to about 130,000 soldiers by the end of 1965, coming so close to their planned strength that Westmoreland thought it safe to approve another increase of 20,000 for 1966-67.

[8]: 151–2  By June 1966, high desertion rates and recruiting shortfalls in the territorial components finally led Westmoreland to freeze the authorized force structure and to make drastic reductions in his projected increases.

[8]: 257 In March 1967, at Westmoreland's suggestion, JGS Chairman General Cao Văn Viên activated 88 new Regional Forces companies.

The remaining territorial units were presumably either in the process of formation, in training, defending bases and installations, outposting roads, or conducting conventional combat operations.

[8]: 216 In late February 1968, in the wake of the Tet Offensive, Westmoreland requested 268,000 M16 rifles and 11,200 M79 grenade launchers for the territorials, who with their Korean War era small arms were outgunned by the PAVN/VC.