the General Staff was Armijski đeneral Milutin Nedić, brother of Milan, who had been the General Officer Commanding the Royal Yugoslav Air Force. The major organisational change during the year was the formation of a tank battalion, consisting of three companies, each of three platoons of five tanks. The only tankettes in service at this time were Renault FTs operated by a training company, but an order for new tanks had been submitted. Large-scale manoeuvres were carried out in Slovenia in September 1937, involving the equivalent of four divisions, and exposing to foreign observers the serious deficiencies in the army, caused by incompetent General Staff and the senior commanders, a lack of technical training of regimental officers in modern warfare, and across-the-board shortages of arms and equipment of almost every type. The British military attaché observed that the army was not capable of undertaking any large-scale operations outside of the country, but if fully mobilised would be able to give a good account of itself in a defensive campaign. The exercise was conducted in Slovenia to test the loyalty and value of Slovene and Croat reservists, and was completely satisfactory in this respect only, with nearly all of the reservists reporting for duty and bearing the hardships of the exercise with "discipline and fortitude". The same year saw the delivery of a substantial amount of equipment from Czechoslovakia, including 36 mountain guns, 32 anti-aircraft guns, 60 reconditioned howitzers, 80 field guns, and eight Škoda S-1d tankettes. Considerable work was being undertaken building fortifications on the Italian frontier. Prelude to war During 1938, Milutin Nedić was appointed as Minister of the Army and Navy, and was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Armijski đeneral Dušan Simović. That year, two geo-strategic changes made the task of the army significantly more difficult, the Anschluss between Germany and Austria, and the Munich Agreement which drastically weakened Czechoslovakia. These changes meant that Yugoslavia now had a common frontier with Germany and its most significant supplier of arms and munitions was under threat. It was the assessment of the British military attaché that the army could stem the tide of an invasion by one of its neighbours acting alone, with the possible exception of Germany, and could also deal with a combined Italian and Hungarian attack. During the year, a Coastal Defence Command was raised using troops already stationed along the Yugoslav coastline, and