In the Mongol military tradition, all men were warriors, and therefore military training was not confined to the regular army. In the early days of the Mongolian People's Republic, before universal military conscription, party and youth league members received sporadic special military training in the reserve and in physical culture detachments. Women were admitted to this training on a voluntary basis. In 1929 the League for Assisting the Defense Aims of the Mongolian State was established by the party Central Committee it was based on the Soviet Voluntary Society for Cooperation with the Armed Forces. In 1942 the league was reorganized as the People's Volunteer Self-Defense Detachment and was used in home defense against the Japanese. In 1945, at the end of World War II, it again was reorganized and renamed-- this time the Auxiliary Defense Organization. A 1975 decree of the Political Bureau of the party Central Committee specifically assigned the Auxiliary Defense Organization the task of fostering patriotism and support for the army through sponsorship of annual defense popularization months, Mongolian-Soviet friendship months, and military sports competitions throughout the year. In the late 1980s, the Auxiliary Defense Organization still was responsible for these activities and for providing spare-time schools and courses to train all seventeen-year-old males in basic military skills and specialties of use to the military. "To protect the economy against weapons of mass destruction," all citizens were obliged to participate in civil defense training organized by the Civil Defense Office of the Ministry of Defense. In 1982 there reportedly were 600 civil defense units in Mongolia.

Data as of June 1989