The threat of invasion from the North had also been tempered somewhat by 1958. The MAAG, now headed by Lieutenant General Samuel T. Williams, U.S. Army, a commander respected as a tough disciplinarian, was beginning to reshape the former Vietnamese national forces.[3-A] Renamed the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the army now consisted of four field divisions (8,500 men each), six light divisions (5,000 men each), 13 territorial regiments (whose strength varied), and a parachute regiment. Although General Williams viewed this as merely an interim organization, it had provided the South Vietnamese army with a unified command structure based on sound organizational principles. The arrival of a 350-man U.S. Temporary Equipment Recovery Mission (TERM) in 1956, moreover, had freed U.S. Army advisors for assignment to each ARVN regiment. American officers were likewise reorganizing and helping train the small Vietnamese Navy (2,160 officers and men) and Air Force (4,000 officers and men). The Vietnamese Marine Corps continued to exist as a two-battalion amphibious force within the nation’s naval establishment. General Williams felt confident that by 1958 South Vietnam’s regular military establishment had been strengthened enough to discourage North Vietnamese leaders from seriously considering an outright invasion.[3-1] [3-A] General Williams would head the MAAG until his retirement in 1960. Backing these developing regular forces, at least on paper, were two generally feeble paramilitary organizations--the Civil Guard (CG) and the Village Self Defense Corps (SDC). The larger of these, the Civil Guard, existed within the Ministry of Interior and was funded and advised by the U.S. Operations Mission (USOM). Its 48,000 men, therefore, were not charged against the 150,000-man force level ceiling that regulated the size of Diem’s regular forces. Nor were the 47,000 members of the Self Defense Corps, even though this organization received limited amounts of U.S. military assistance funds for payroll purposes. In any case, serious shortcomings were evident in both the CG and the SDC. Organized into provincial companies directly responsible to the various province chiefs, the Civil Guard was entirely separate from the ARVN chain of command. Furthermore, American civilians under government contract had armed and trained the CG for police-type as opposed to military missions. The SDC, essentially a scattering of local militia units, was even weaker, having been organized at the village level into squads and an occasional platoon. Although the SDC units were subordinate to the respective village chief, the ARVN bore the responsibility for providing them with arms and training. More often than not the Vietnamese Army units gave their obsolete weapons to the SDC and showed little genuine interest in training the small units.[3-2]