The Nevada National Guard is the component of the United States National Guard in Nevada. The governor of Nevada may call individuals or units of the Nevada National Guard into state service. The Constitution of the United States charges the national guard of each state to support its dual federal and state missions.

, the guard had a total force of about 4,443 uniformed personnel with around 3,336 soldiers and about 1,106 airmen. About 80 percent of its guardsmen participate in military training one weekend a month and 15 days each year in their respective military occupations and career fields. Full-time employees stationed throughout the state 455 technicians and 563 active-duty guardsmen.

The Nevada National Guard includes armories and facilities in eight of the state's 16 counties and state capital with 16 primary facilities. In addition to soldiers stationed at headquarters, the Nevada Army Guard includes the 17th Sustainment Brigade, the 991st Aviation Troop Command and the Recruiting and Retention Battalion. The Nevada Air Guard is composed of the 152nd Airlift Wing and 152nd Intelligence Squadron in Reno and the 232nd Operations Squadron in Indian Springs.

The governor is the commander-in-chief of the Nevada National Guard and appoints the adjutant general. , the adjutant general has been Brig. Gen. D. Roger Waters, appointed by Governor Joe Lombardo.

History English and American militia tradition provided the blueprint for the origins of Nevada's state militia, eventually called the National Guard. This tradition served the patriot cause in the American Revolution. After the war, the 1792 Militia Act, under the new Constitution, provided for the president to call out state militias during invasion or emergency but failed to establish a national militia system, as many Federalists sought. During the antebellum period, compulsory military training of state militias was not enforced and almost completely ceased. In their place came volunteer and fraternal-like organizations that practiced marksmanship along with drills and ceremonies.Americans feared a regular, or standing, army and centralized power as a result of its experiences with British troops stationed in the colonies during and after the French and Indian War (1757-1763). Advocates for a strong- standing, federal force, such as Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, felt it brought higher professional military standards than the state militias they believed unreliable and poorly trained. Still, the U.S. Constitution in 1789 only authorized Congress to support a standing army for no more than two years at a time. The 1792 Militia Act provided for the president to call out the militia of the states “whenever the United States shall be invaded, or be in imminent danger of invasion from any foreign nation or Indian tribe,” but it left organization and oversight to the state legislatures and governors. The French and Spanish colonies also influenced militia tradition in the New World. These militia had increased state control in comparison to the English colonies. For instance, in New Spain, the crown established a mission, a presidio, and a town in concert.

In Nevada, the same occurred in response to strained Native American relations and fear of secessionists before and during the Civil War. In the winter of 1859–60, the discovery of the Comstock Lode brought a “Rush to Washoe” that increased friction with the Native population in what was then still far-western Utah Territory. A loosely organized militia attacked Pyramid Lake Paiutes in retaliation for perceived crimes against white settlers. Ambushed by the Paiutes on their march to Pyramid Lake, the militia met disaster, with 76 killed. Union regulars and citizen militias from California mining towns quickly responded, defeating and dispersing the Paiutes by June 1860. In July, the War Department began construction of Fort Churchill and other federal posts in Nevada to maintain peace and protect the Overland Trail.Myron Angel, History of Nevada (Oakland, CA: Thompson and West, 1881), 153; Dan C. B. Rathbun, Nevada Military Place Names of the Indian Wars and Civil War (Las Cruces, NM: Yucca Tree Press, 2002), 90; other military posts in Nevada included Fort Ruby (1862-1869), Fort McDermit (1865-1889), and Fort Halleck (1867- 1886).

1880s to World War II

From 1880 to 1900, the Comstock mines dried up and the Silver State's population plummeted. During this time, the Nevada Guard struggled to meet national standards suggested by larger states. Still, in 1892, with fewer than 50,000 people living in the state — the smallest in the nation by population, but fifth largest in area — Nevada guardsmen held their first summer encampment in Carson City. Volunteer soldiers, many of them miners, came from as far away as Tuscarora in Elko County and Yerington in the Mason Valley. The encampment included rifle practice and a 3 a.m. “sham” attack. Nevada's budget constraints only allowed guardsmen to receive $10 per encampment, compared to $33 per encampment for soldiers in New York. In 1896, Carson City Guard, Company F, earned the national marksmanship championship with Springfield rifles, even though “companies in the eastern States have been prone to deny this” and “did not believe the published records of the Carson Company to be correct.” After President William McKinley called on the states during the Spanish-American War, nearly every Nevada Guard unit disbanded as military men left for war.Lieutenant William R. Hamilton, “The National Guard of Nevada,” Outing, 26 (October 1895-March 1896), 493.

In 1906, the final two units of infantry in the Nevada Guard disbanded after a federal inspector questioned their loyalty to the state. According to the federal officer from the Presidio in California: “The replies of both were that not a man could be relied upon to obey the order of the Governor, and I wish to add that in my opinion both captains and all company officers, as well as the enlisted men, would not only refuse to obey orders of the Governor, but would be arrayed on the other side [of labor violence].”State of Nevada, Report, 1903-1904, 3; Adjutant General of the State of Nevada, Report, 1905-1906, 11.

The Nevada Guard's disbandment occurred simultaneously with the rise of labor radicalism, especially in Goldfield, Nevada, the state's population center at the time, which included the Industrial Workers of the World. Even after the fall of Goldfield in the 1910s, labor groups repeatedly blocked the reorganization of the National Guard at the state legislature. Efforts stalled during World War I as most able-bodied men entered conscription instead of the state Guard.

In 1927, Nevada Governor Fred Balzar named Mineral County District Attorney Jay White state adjutant general, with the goal of reorganization. In 1928, the 40th Division established the 40th Military Police Company in Reno with 60 soldiers. White, who enthusiastically embraced his role as adjutant general, remained Nevada's adjutant general even after Balzar's death in 1934. He helped reorganize the Nevada National Guard again after the state force was federalized during World War II. During the war, the Nevada Guard deployed around the world and saw action in the Pacific Theater.“Notes on the Military presence in Nevada, 1843-1988,” Michael Brodhead, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly (Winter 1989): 264: Jay White correspondence papers, Nevada State Archives. The federal military presence also grew during the interwar years. In 1930, the first federal military base in four decades appeared in Nevada with construction of the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada. In 1926, after an explosion killed 50 people and injured hundreds at the naval depot in Lake Denmark, New Jersey, a court inquiry required Navy officials to explore remote locations away from more-populated regions for a new munitions storage. Eventually, the Navy decided on Hawthorne in Mineral County. It soon became the world’s largest ammunitions depot, located about halfway between Reno and Tonopah. This was only the beginning of the federal government’s 20th-century military presence in Nevada. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range, now known as Nellis Air Force Base. Additional military installations included the Naval Air Station in Fallon, originally created as an Army Air Corps field in 1942. Also that year, the Army Air Base in present-day Stead, north of Reno, served as a base for air-transport command. Renamed Stead Air Force Base, it was used in the 1960s as U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command’s Advanced Survival School. Chuck Yeager trained during World War II as a fighter pilot at the Tonopah Army Air Field.

Cold War

As the Iron Curtain fell across Eastern Europe with the beginning of the Cold War, and a hot war occurred in Korea (1950–53), major federal funds poured into the state for the reorganization of the Nevada National Guard. In 1948, the Nevada Army Guard reorganized with the 421st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. With the creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947, Nevada received an Air National Guard unit with the 192nd Fighter Squadron, established in 1948. The 192nd operated out of the old Army Air Base north of Reno in present-day Stead. In 1951, the 192nd entered a 21-month deployment flying P-51 Mustang aircraft in the Korean War. During the war, the Nevada Air Guard suffered its only combat fatality in its history: Lt. Frank Salazar. After the war, the Nevada Air Guard entered a lease agreement with the city of Reno for land south of the airport, at Hubbard Field, present-day Reno-Tahoe International Airport. The 152nd Airlift Wing remains there today. In the 1950s, the Nevada Air Guard received massive sums of federal support, along with the Nevada Army Guard, for base improvements and the construction of armories. This was also true for other western states, especially California, as the federal government with its burgeoning defense establishments during the Cold War emerged as a major economic multiplier in the growth of the American West during the 20th century.Jay H. White, “Brief History Nevada National Guard, 1912-1941,” published in Adjutant General of the State of Nevada, Report, 1945-1946, 29; Adjutant General of the State of Nevada, Report, 1948-1949, 5; The Journal of the Assembly of the Special Session of the Legislature of Nevada, 1949, 14; Gerald Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century: A Short History of an Urban Oasis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 202; David Loomis, Combat Zoning: Military Land-Use Planning in Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1993), 5.