Annual Army Exercise To Begin At Burnham Today

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29245, 1 July 1960, Page 10

Annual Army Exercise To Begin At Burnham Today

“The military side of the conduct of the cold war” was the description applied last evening by the Chief of the General Staff, Major-General Sir Stephen Weir, to the annual army exercise which will bSgin this morning at Burnham Military Camp.

General Weir will himself conduct the tactical exercise without troops. The exercise will be held over three days and will be his last before retirement from his present poet in a few weeks’ time. Senior officers of the Regular and Territorial Army have been joined by representatives from the British, Australian and American armies for the exercise.

They will study problems of counter-insurgency operations in South-east Asia.

Each problem will be introduced by a playlet in which commanders and staff officers are seen collecting add collating information for the particular operations. Syndicates of officers will then make their plans for carrying out the operation and present them for discussion.

The opportunity will be taken during the exercise to introduce and examine the pentropic division organisation which has recently been adopted by the Australian Army. The exercise will demonstrate the suitability of this organisation for counter-insurgency operations and the greater capacity given a division by its five-sided organisation and integral aviation. Troops of the Ist Battalion, New Zealand Regiment, will demonstrate outdoors how a company group with light equipment (completely “air transportable”) will appear in pentropic form. A significant feature of this year’s exercise is that nuclear warfare, with aggressive enemy action based on the employment of

atomic artillery, has been dropped. The exercise has a cold war background ©nd the army feels reasonably confident that it would not involve nuclear weapons being used against it in such circumstances. The purpose of the exercise is to define the type of operation which will be the tactical study of the Army in New Zealand during the coming year. All unit training and brigade exercises will be based on the tactical studies. Among those expected as the Army’s guests at the exercise are the deputy-Prime Minister (Mr Skinner), the Minister of Defence (Mr Connolly), the Minister of Customs (Mr Boord) and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Mr Macfarlane). Mr Connolly will address officers attending. Apart from diplomatic and allied, forces’ representatives and other service and civilian visitors—who will include the Chief of the Naval Staff (RearAdmiral P. Phipps)—the exercise will be attended by more 'than 100 New Zealand Regular and Territorial officers, most of whom have the rank of major or above. The Army has given the code name of Waireka to the exercise. The name commemorates an action which took place 100 years ago during the Maori wars.