Editing Nicaraguan Armed Forces (section)

===National Guard, 1925–1979===
{{main|National Guard (Nicaragua)}}
The long years of strife between the liberal and conservative 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.<ref name=":42">Tartter, Jean R. "National Guard, 1927-79". In {{Harvnb|Merrill|1994|pp=195–197}}.</ref> The marines provided the training, but their efforts were complicated by a guerrilla movement led by [[Augusto César Sandino]].<ref name=":42" /> Sandino opposed the United States-backed military force, which was composed mostly of his political enemies, and continued to resist the marines and the fledgling National Guard from a stronghold in the mountainous areas of northern Nicaragua.<ref name=":42" />

Upon the advent of the United States Good Neighbor Policy in 1933, the marines withdrew.<ref name=":42" /> 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.<ref name=":42" /> Despite hopes for an apolitical force, however, the National Guard soon became the personal tool of the Somoza dynasty.<ref name=":42" /> Expanded to more than 10,000 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.<ref name=":42" />

The National Guard's main arms were rifles and machine guns, later augmented by antiaircraft guns and mortars.<ref name=":42" /> 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, Nicaragua|Corinto]].<ref name=":42" /> Additional shipments of small arms and transportation and communication equipment followed, as well as some training and light transport aircraft.<ref name=":42" />

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.<ref name=":42" /> 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.<ref name=":42" /> 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.<ref name=":42" /> 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.<ref name=":42" />