New Zealand Army

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The New Zealand Army (Māori: Ngāti Tumatauenga, "Tribe of the God of war"), is the land component of the New Zealand Defence Force and comprises around 16,400 Regular Force personnel, 10,100 Reserve Force personnel and 4,200 civilians. Formerly the New Zealand Military Forces, the current name was adopted around 1946. The New Zealand Army traces its history from settler militia raised in 1845.

New Zealand soldiers served with distinction in the major conflicts in the 20th Century, including South Africa 1899–1902, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, Borneo Confrontation and the Vietnam War. Since the 1970s, deployments have tended to be assistance to multilateral peacekeeping efforts. Considering the small size of the force, operational commitments have remained high since the start of the East Timor deployment in 1999. New Zealand personnel also served in the First Gulf War, Iraq and are currently serving in Afghanistan and several UN and other peacekeeping missions. They have just been withdrawn from East Timor and RAMSI in the Solomons.

Structure of the New Zealand Army[edit | edit source]

Statistics[edit | edit source]

  • Active Duty Personnel: 16,400
  • Reserve Personnel: 10,100
  • Civilians: 4,200

Equipment of the New Zealand Army[edit | edit source]

  • Armoured Vehicles
    • M8 Buford x 50
    • NZ LAV x 165
      • Infantry Mobility Vehicle x 115
      • Light Obstacle Blade Vehicle x 27
      • Recovery Vehicle x 23
  • Light Operational Vehicles
    • Pinzgauer High Mobility All-Terrain Vehicle x 352 (248 non-armoured/60 armoured)
      • Command and control variants x 145 (122 non-armoured/23 armoured)
      • Crew served weapon carrier variants (68 non-armoured/37 armoured)
      • general service variants x 95
      • Shelter carrier variants x 15
      • Ambulance variants x 8
      • Special operations x 13
  • Support Vehicles
    • U1700 Unimog trucks
  • Fire Support/Artillery
    • L16A2 81mm mortar x 50
    • L119 105mm light gun x 24
  • Missile/Rocket Systems
    • M72 Light Anti-Armour Weapon
    • 42 x 84 mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifle M3 Man-portable Light Anti-armour Weapon
    • 24 x Javelin Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) launchers, 120 missiles
    • 12 x Mistral Very Low Level Air Defence Weapon
  • Weapons
    • Rifle 5.56mm IW Steyr
    • SIG P226 9 mm Pistol
    • M203 grenade launcher
    • C9 Minimi 5.56mm Light Machine Gun
    • Minimi 7.62 TR Minimi chambered in 7.62mm to replace the C9 light machine gun
    • FN MAG 58 7.62 mm GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun) to replace the older L7A2 British version
    • Benelli M3 12 gauge Shotgun
    • M2 machine gun .50 Calibre Heavy Machine Gun
    • L96 Sniper Rifle
    • LMT 308 MWS
    • Artic Warfare AW50 12.7mm Anti Materiel/ sniper rifle
    • L1A1 Self-loading rifle (in storage)
    • Heckler & Koch GMG 40mm automatic grenade launcher