Page 34 - Australian Defence Mag March 2020

34 LAND WARFARE VEHICLES LAND 400
MARCH 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
LAND 400 PHASE 3 RMA KICKS OFF
Risk Mitigation Activity (RMA) for the Mounted Close Combat Capability project (Land 400 Phase 3) is scheduled to begin in November, and both shortlisted companies have confirmed that their tendered vehicles are in an advanced state of manufacture.
JULIAN KERR | SYDNEY
THE PROJECT is scoped to deliver and support up to 450 In- fantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) and 17 manoeuvre support vehicles at a cost of $10-15 billion, with Rheinmetall Defence Australia’s Lynx KF41 IFV and Hanwha Defence Australia’s (HDA’s) AS21 Redback downselected in September 2019 to move to the RMA phase.
Both contenders are providing three vehicles, two for test and evaluation and one which will be tested to destruction to assess survivability; similar to the Phase 2 RMA approach.
According to Defence the vehicles must be delivered “in a con- figuration representative of their tendered configuration, with any exceptions agreed to by Defence and documented in the RMA contracts that Defence has signed with each tendered”.
Rheinmetall’s CEO of Vehicle Systems Asia-Pacific Gary
Stewart says the three RMA Lynx vehicles are now under construction in Germany, with all three to be delivered to Defence simultaneously at the end of October.
These will support a Vehicle Performance Assessment which is undertaken as part of the safety assessment prior to the start of user evaluation testing.
“These vehicles will be an evolution beyond the Lynx KF41 vehicle which was unveiled in 2018. They’ll include further capability enhancements and updates as a result of the industry testing campaign completed to date,” Stewart said to ADM.
“One of the key strengths of our vehicle design is that it’s built on quite a long pedigree of armoured IFVs including components from the Puma IFV.
HANWHA