Page 32 - Australian Defence Magazine July 2019

WEAPONS
SP GUNS
The 2019 Election
If so, it was to no avail, as the Coalition lost Corangamite to Labor in a tight contest. So, what now? The Coalition won an election it did not expect to win, so will
Army get its long-coveted SPH capability?
A little history
Army had hoped to acquire an SPH capa- bility some years ago, under Project Land 17 Phase 2, but the program was eventually cancelled by the Labor Government in May 2012, as a cost-cutting exercise and an ad- ditional number of BAE Systems’ M-777 Towed Howitzers were acquired in lieu.
At the time, the two contenders were the Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000 155mm self-pro- pelled gun developed by Germany’s KMW and Rheinmetall, and an Australian version of the Samsung Techwin K-9 Thunder SPH, to be known as the AS-9 ‘Aussie Thunder’. To offer the AS-9 to Army, Samsung partnered with Raytheon Australia at the time.
Fast-forward to 2019 and the same two vehicles are considered the front-runners in a new competition (if there is to be a com- petition), but this time the AS-9 is being of- fered by Hanwha Defence Australia, which is now the OEM.
The Coalition’s promise
The SPH promise was made by Morrison on May 14, during the closing days of the election campaign and specifically target-
winner is... Army?
THIS announcement took many by sur- prise, as the 2016 Defence White Paper and associated Integrated Investment Program makes no mention of any requirement for an SPH capability and, indeed, apart from a future rocket artillery project, only dis- cusses artillery in general terms.
Whether the Prime Minister’s election promise was a brain explosion, in a similar vein to Kevin Rudd’s decision during the 2013 federal election campaign to move the Navy to Brisbane, or not, remains to be seen (see News for more on this).
The Victorian seat of Corangamite, held by the Liberal Party’s Sarah Henderson by a slim margin before the election, covers a large part of the Geelong region, and politi- cal analysts suggested at the time that the SPH announcement was a desperate at- tempt to sway voters.
Will the K-9 get up this time?
NIGEL PITTAWAY | MELBOURNE
One of the surprises of
the recent federal election campaign was Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s promise to acquire 30 Self-Propelled Howitzers (SPH), and to build them in Geelong, should a coalition government be re-elected.
32 | July 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au