Chilean Army

The Chilean Army, known in Spanish as Ejercito de Chile, is the land arm of the Chilean armed forces. Wikipedia describes it as an organization of about 80,000 people, roughly 9,200 of them conscripts, arranged into six divisions together with an army aviation brigade and a special operations brigade. The article dates the national army to 2 December 1810, when the First National Government Junta created it, and it took an active part in the second war of independence against royalist troops, at battles such as Chacabuco and Maipu. Its later history includes the War of the Pacific, after which Chilean officers concluded that the army needed rebuilding. The article reports that after several large re-equipment programmes it is regarded as among the most technologically advanced and professional armies in Latin America, supplied from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Israel, France and Spain.