VIDEO: Inside New Zealand SAS’s Battle Training Facility
The New Zealand Defence Force has posted a video looking inside the New Zealand Special Air Service’s Battle Training Facility. The three minute video shows some of the training infrastructure used by the NZ SAS to prepare for a variety of missions.
The video gives us a look inside the $46 million (NZD) purpose built training facility at the New Zealand Defence Force’s Ardmore Military Range. The facility was opened back in April 2016 by New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key.
A press release from the NZ Defence Force said:
It includes facilities for all-weather training, live firing, use of helicopters, and scenario training based on specific environments and structures such as, aircraft fuselages, ship’s bridges, and public transport. In the previous facilities SAS personnel could not fire their primary operational weapons, however the new BTF allows for live firing and up to advanced full-mission rehearsals.
The NZ SAS’s Colonel Rob Gillard is interviewed in the video and he describes the training as “intense, it’s high tempo and we need to be able to do that to achieve mission success when we go on operations.” Gillard also describes the NZ SAS operators typical days as “beginning with some aspect of physical training and then we come down here to the Battle Training Facility. … we can use the main gallery or range for both stationary or moving targets… we can also use that gallery set up for a particular building we might conduct an operation in.”
Check out the video here:
The facility allows for the use of vehicles, helicopters and allows for multi level training, moving up stairs and through rooms. The Battle Training Facility also incorporates a swimming pool for amphibious training and a mocked up airliner for various training scenarios. Gillard says its all about “that pursuit of excellence and that constant view that we must improve as an organisation in every aspect of what we do.”
The facility is primarily used by the NZ SAS but it is also available to other elements of the NZ Defence Forces for training.
H/T: TP