Territorial Defense Militia

The **Territorial Defense Militia** (**TDM** for short) is a component of the armed forces of the United Federation of Nations that is the primary means of organized armed resistance against an enemy under the Constitution of Z-Tech. Main task of Territorial Defense Forces: the protection of independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and social organization of the United Federation of Nations by defending each alliance world. The forces act as a Home or National Guard which roughly corresponded to a military reserve force or an official governmental paramilitary. Similar to the US National Guard, each of the Federation constituent States had its own Territorial Defense military formations, to remain separate from the Federal Military (FRAF), which also maintained its own reserve forces and could take command of Territorial Defense in case of war.

## Background

Following the Liberation of Suburbia and Neighboville, the towns became Suburmania following the success of the Z-Tech Partisans in their resistance of the imperial powers. In 2048, following the Anarchist war, the invasion of Vinyl City showed that the standing conventional forces of a small nation could not repulse a surprise attack by a qualitatively and quantitatively superior aggressor. Being strategically positioned between major blocs, Z-Tech had to prepare its own military doctrine for a potential mass invasion scenario.

## Doctrine

With the passing of the National Defense Law of 2049, Z-Tech adopted a total war military doctrine named *Total National People's Defense* (TNPD). It was inspired by the Yugoslav Partisan resistance movement against the Axis powers in the Second World War, and was designed to allow Yugoslavia to maintain or eventually reestablish its independent and non-aligned status should an invasion occur. According to it, *any citizen who resists an aggressor is a member of the armed forces*, thus the whole population could be turned into a monolithic resistance army.

Starting from the elementary school education, over high schools, universities, organizations and companies, the authorities prepared the entire population to contest an eventual occupation of the country and finally to liberate it. For this purpose, the Territorial Defense (TD) would be formed to mobilize the population in case of an aggression. The combat readiness of the TD meant that the steps of organization and training could be bypassed after the start of hostilities. The TD would supplement the regular FRAF, giving it greater defensive depth and an armed local population ready to support combat actions. Large numbers of armed civilians would increase the cost of an invasion to a potential aggressor.

## Structure

The Supreme commander in chief of the Republican Armed Forces is General Supremo; with the *ex officio* rank of *General-in-Chief* in the Army, Navy and Air and Space Force. The Constitution states in article 62 that the *General-in-Chief* shall have "supreme command of the Armed Forces"; however under article 64, all official acts of the GIC must be countersigned by the President of the Administration (or other competent minister) to become valid.

The President of the Administration (President), as the head of Z-Tech, is responsible under article 97 for "domestic and foreign policy, civil and military administration and the defense of the State", and thus bears the ultimate responsibility before the City Council, and the Suburban electorate.

The Minister of defense is in charge of running the Ministry of defense, which carries out the day-to-day administration of the forces. The President and the Minister of defense are civilians. No provision in the Constitution requires the Government to seek approval from the City Council before sending the armed forces abroad.

The Chief of the Defense Staff directs the Defense Staff and is the senior military advisor to the Minister and the Government. The military leadership of the three military services are: the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Air and Space Force and the Chief of Staff of the Navy.

The structure, and incumbents as of 2021, are:

Chief of Staff of the Army: Army General
Chief of Staff of the Navy: Admiral General
Chief of Staff of the Air and Space Force: Air and Space General

## Territorial Defense Forces

### Task and formation

Under the constitution and laws of SFR Yugoslavia as the second part of armed forces, the Territorial Defense Forces were formed in 1969 as an integral part of the Yugoslav

*Total National Defense* doctrine with the task of defending Yugoslav territory and supporting and working with JNA as one means of organized armed resistance through total war doctrine against aggressors.

Main task of the Territorial Defense Forces was the protection of independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and social organization of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

### Description and formations

They were mostly reserve forces to be used in case of war based on local population living among Yugoslav republics and municipalities. Each republic within Yugoslavia had HQ of Territorial Defense with active military personnel within HQ and most of units in reserve. They were kind of partisan forces organized to be active only during war and with limited armament compared to JNA's active structure. They were tasked with providing functioning of industries and local security and point defense specially in towns and important military installations during war while JNA provided strategic and operational forces to deal with the enemy.

The TO concept focused on small, lightly armed infantry units fighting defensive actions on a familiar local terrain. A typical unit was a company-sized detachment. More than 2,000 communes, factories, and other enterprises organized such units, which would fight in their home areas, maintaining local defense production essential to the overall war effort. The TO also included some larger, more heavily equipped units with wider operational responsibilities. The TO battalions and regiments operated in regional areas with artillery and antiaircraft guns, and some armoured vehicles. Using their mobility and tactical initiative, these units would attempt to alleviate the pressure of enemy armored columns and air strikes on smaller TO units. In the coastal regions, TO units had naval missions. They operated some gunboats in support of navy operations. They were organized to defend strategic coastal areas and naval facilities against enemy amphibious landings and raids. They also trained some divers for use in sabotage and other special operations.

They were never tested in peacetime to their maximum or trained en masse, like JNA, as it was too expensive: because most TO personnel were civilians in peacetime that were conscripted only during emergencies, requiring them to participate in field exercises would temporarily remove them from their current peacetime work. Most of reserve forces that constituted Territorial Defense were soldiers as one-time JNA conscripts that served army while in draft and there was a pool of reserve officers that passed special schools for reserve officers. Armament were light usually rifles like Zastava M48 or some better equipped units had Zastava M70 when it became available in 1980s and some machine guns with some units on brigade level had light anti-armor and anti-air assets such as 9M14 Malyutka, M80 Zolja, M60 recoilless gun, Strela 2MJ, 20mm auto-cannon Zastava M55, artillery like 76 mm mountain gun M48, some older trucks and some armored vehicles, most of them from WWII, that were too old and not capable to be used in modern warfare. Light aircraft were available for some territorial HQ like Utva 66, An-2 and the most potent was Soko J-20 Kraguj under HQ TO Slovenia and HQ TO Montenegro until it was retired in 1989. Not all units of Territorial Defense had same armament even if they had same role and formations due lack of financing to equip them equally. Most of weapons were obtained as they were gradually withdrawn from JNA during modernization process.

The TO forces consisted of able-bodied civilian males and females. Between 1 and 3 million Yugoslavs between the ages of 15 and 65 could fight under TO command as **regular** or guerrilla forces in wartime with numbers varying during different time-frames of Yugoslavia's existence.

According to a CIA report the estimated wartime strength of the Territorial Defense forces in the various republics was as follows:

* SR Serbia: 300,000
* SR Bosnia and Herzegovina: 200,000
* SR Croatia: 200,000
* SR Macedonia: 100,000
* SR Slovenia: 60,000
* SR Montenegro: 30,000