An application of a combined framework to set the future direction of the Norwegian Home Guard

Abstract

In 2017, the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and the Norwegian Home Guard commissioned a research project to help set a future identity and direction for the reserve-based Home Guard. Using a combination of frameworks, we consider major threats against Norway and, in light of this analysis, suggest a future identity and direction. Our analysis says that, while conventional warfare still poses the most difficult challenge to the country, irregular warfare can be harder to defend against, in that it is often covert, non-attributional, directed at the civilian sector and in the grey zone between war and peace. Limited situational understanding, limited civilian–military coordination, and a limited ability to deal with situations over time contribute to this. We conclude that the Home Guard has the potential to contribute to increased national resilience, in that it has local anchoring, a distributed structure to provide flexible support and the ability to cooperate with civilian organizations. The combined framework we introduce in this paper can be employed to conduct a variety of defence analyses in a coherent fashion, increasing the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of such analyses.