Ecuador Army
Organization and Equipment
Figure 18. Major Military Installations and Deployment, 1989
The army was the dominant service; its personnel strength of
approximately 40,000 in 1989 was nearly four times the combined
strength of the navy and air force, and its commander normally held
the rank of four-star general. The army had four theaters of
operation, commonly known as defense zones, with headquarters in
Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, and Puyo, respectively
(see
fig. 18).
The army's principal operational units consisted of twelve
brigades, all odd-numbered, running in sequence from the first to
the twenty-third. The first ("El Oro"), third ("Portete"), fifth
("Guayas"), seventh ("Loja"), and thirteenth ("Pichincha") brigades
were infantry units with headquarters at Machala, Cuenca,
Guayaquil, Loja, and Quito, respectively. The army deployed two
jungle brigades in the Oriente (eastern region): the seventeenth
("Pastaza"), with headquarters at Mera, and the nineteenth
("Napo"), based at Puerto Napo. The ninth Special Forces brigade
("El Patria")--an outgrowth of a special paratroop detachment
formed in 1960 to combat leftist guerrillas in the Oriente--had its
headquarters at Latacunga. The eleventh armored brigade
("Galápagos") deployed from Riobamba. Three other specialized
brigades, the twenty-first (logistics), the twenty-third (corps of
engineers), and the fifteenth (army aviation), operated out of
Quito. Originally confined to transport, communications, training,
and geographic survey duties, the fifteenth brigade expanded into
battlefield logistic support following the delivery in 1981 of
French Puma, Super Puma, and Gazelle helicopters.
Combat brigades generally consisted of three battalions.
Although not all brigades were at full strength, key units such as
the Loja brigade near the Peruvian border had full complements or
even additional reinforcements. States of readiness varied because
personnel primarily consisted of one-year conscripts, some of whom
received minimal training. Brigade commanding officers generally
held brigadier general rank, although some were led by senior
colonels. The commanders of the Pichincha, Guayas, Portete, and
Pastaza brigades served concurrently as commanders of their
respective theaters of operation.
The army's standard infantry weapons consisted of the Belgian
FN FAL 7.62mm rifle and the Israeli Uzi 9mm submachine gun, the
latter employed for counterinsurgency operations. The FN MAG 7.62mm
was the standard machine gun, although the army still had .30- and
.50-caliber machine guns of United States origin and 81mm mortars
in its inventory. Armored vehicles included French-origin light
tanks and four-wheeled reconnaissance vehicles, as well as Cascavel
armored cars from Brazil (see
table 20, Appendix). Most of the
army's approximately 100 armored personnel carriers were French and
Brazilian wheeled models, although it also had some tracked M-113s
from the United States. A large order for obsolete medium tanks and
armored personnel carriers from Argentina had to be cancelled in
1988 because of the deepening financial crisis.
Data as of 1989
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