Military of Nicaragua

Nicaraguan Armed Forces Fuerzas Armadas de Nicaragua
Seal of the Army of Nicaragua
Motto	"Fatherland and Freedom"
Founded	September 2, 1979
Current form	1995
Service branches	Army Ground Forces Army Air Force Navy Civil Defense Forces
Headquarters	Managua
Leadership
Commander-in-Chief	Daniel Ortega
Minister of Defense	Martha Ruiz Sevilla
Commanding General of the Nicaraguan Army	General of the Army Julio César Avilés Castillo
Manpower
Military age	17-49
Conscription	no
Available for military service	1,309,970 males, age 15–49, 1,315,186 females, age 15–49
Fit for military service	1,051,425 males, age 15–49, 1,129,649 females, age 15–49
Reaching military age annually	65,170 males, 63,133 females
Active personnel	14,000 (Ranked 105th)
Expenditures
Percent of GDP	0.7% (2006 est.) (Ranked 150th) Dollar Figure (per capita) $0.06
Industry
Foreign suppliers	Russia  United Kingdom  United States  Poland  France
Related articles
History	Nicaraguan Revolution National Guard (Nicaragua)
Ranks	Nicaragua military ranks

The Nicaraguan Armed Forces are the military forces of Nicaragua.

The long years of strife between the peasant and land-owning political factions and the existence of private armies led the United States to sponsor the National Guard as an apolitical institution to assume all military and police functions in Nicaragua. The marines provided the training, but their efforts were complicated by a guerrilla movement led by Augusto César Sandino that continued to resist the marines and the fledgling National Guard from a stronghold in the mountainous areas of northern Nicaragua.

Upon the advent of the United States Good Neighbor Policy in 1933, the marines withdrew. Having reached a strength of about 3,000 by the mid-1930s, the guard was organized into company units, although the Presidential Guard component approached battalion size. Expanded to no more than 9,000 during the civil war of 1978-79, the guard consisted of a reinforced battalion as its primary tactical unit, a Presidential Guard battalion, a mechanized company, an engineer battalion, artillery and antiaircraft batteries, and one security company in each of the country's sixteen departments.

The National Guard's main arms were M1 Garands and Israeli Galils, later augmented by antiaircraft guns and mortars. Nicaragua declared war on the Axis powers in 1941, immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although Nicaragua was not actively involved in World War II, it qualified for United States Lend-Lease military aid in exchange for U.S. base facilities at Corinto. Additional shipments of small arms and transportation and communication equipment followed, as well as some training and light transport aircraft.

United States military aid to the National Guard continued under the Rio de Janeiro Treaty of Mutual Defense (1947), but stopped in 1976 after relations with the administration of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1967–72, 1974–79) worsened. Some United States equipment of World War II vintage was also purchased from other countries—Staghound armored cars and M4 Sherman medium tanks from Israel and F-51 Mustang fighter aircraft from Sweden. Except for minor frontier skirmishes with Honduras in 1957 over a border dispute, the National Guard was not involved in any conflict with its neighbors. The guard's domestic power, however, gradually broadened to embrace not only its original internal security and police functions but also control over customs, telecommunications, port facilities, radio broadcasting, the merchant marine, and civil aviation.