Army displays fire power

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 11, Issue 511, 9 November 1993, Page 1

Army displays fire power

BY

JENELLE

FREWEN

The New Zealand Army flexed it's muscles last Friday with exercise 'Show Cap', a day-long display of this country's military capability. The display was designed to show military personnel the fully-inte-grated military machine in action, including all the facets which most personnel would otherwise never see in operation. Highlights of the exercise, which commenced at 7.00am and finished at midnight that night, included an illuminated night firing exercise, the dropping of several 500 pound bombs by the air forces skyhawks in a close air support demonTum to page 11

Army fire power

From front page stration, and an all arms company , group attach. That particular armoured and artillery fire-power demonstration also included the use of pyrotechnics for effect and the broadcast of commands from within the armoured vehicles. A field hospital was also set up which took people through from a patient's ambulance arrival, through an operation and out into the recovery ward. A Karcher kitchen was also displayed in full operation, it fed the troops during the days leading up the ; 'Show Cap'. The kitchen can prepare in excess of

500 cooked meals at a time and is completely mobile. It, and many other units, will remain in the field for Exercise i Takrouna which runs this week and next. Takrouna is the Army's biggest exercise of the year with over 2000 people involved. The air force was also on display during 'Show Cap', performing air drops from an Andover and deploying Scorpion tanks from the rear of a Hercules. Hundreds of personnel were needed in the set up of the exercise which took four days of work on the ground to prepare.