Page 24 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2019

DEFENCE BUSINESS
AVALON
Special Forces helicopter offering
NIGEL PITTAWAY | AVALON
BELL and Hawker Pacific will offer either its single-engine 407GX or twin-engine 429 helicopters for the Australian Army’s Special Operations Helicopter program (Land 2097 Phase 4), the company said on the opening day of Avalon.
“We are proposing two possible solutions for the Special Operations Helicopter ca- pability, one for the Bell 429 and one for the Bell 407,” said HP’s senior vice presi- dent Government Business, Asia Pacific, Craig Purry.
“Both helicopters are fully compliant with the requirement but offer different strengths.
They are both Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) offerings with some Military Off The Shelf (MOTS) equipment fitted.”
Purry pointed to the experience Hawk- er Pacific has gained by being
the authorised representative
for Bell’s rotary wing prod-
ucts in Australia over the last 15 years.
“With Bell bringing their expertise and their products I think it is a really strong offer- ing,” he said.
The Bell 407 (right) and Bell 429 (above) were both at Avalon this year.
Examples of both the 407 and 429 were on static display outside the exhibition halls, painted in representative camou- flage markings.
The Army is seeking 16 helicopters in the four-tonne class under Land 129/4 and it released a Request For Information (RFI) to industry at the end of last year. The RFI calls for a proven light COTS or MOTS platform optimised for operations in dense urban environments and capable of being fitted with ‘simple’ electro-optic sensors (EOS) and weapons. A Request For Tender (RFT) is expected to follow in the fourth quarter of 2019.
“The ADF is in the requirements deter- mination phase, so they have gone to mar- ket to get as much information as they can,” Purry said.
Other possible contenders include Air- bus Helicopters (H145M), Boeing (AH-6i), Leonardo (AW109 Trekker), MD Helicop- ters (MD530G) and Northstar Aviation (B407MRH Lightning).
Smart SME finds a liquids niche
JULIAN KERR | AVALON
SUKANT Gupta, owner of recent SME startup ASG-Kuber, dreams of playing a role in increasing Australia’s manu- facturing capacity “which is not what it could be”.
Gupta moved from an IT career to estab- lishing ASG-Kuber little more than a year
ago as a one-stop online source for more than 1,100 military-specification lubri- cants, oils and chemicals. Turnover in the first year was about $1 million.
At present he imports in bulk and repack- ages his products, all of which he currently sells overseas.
His intention is to acquire the IP of products certified by the US Defence Department and manufacture them in
Australia. Despite paying the appropriate royalties, he is in no doubt this would re- sult in cost savings for Defence and other potential customers, as well as significant export potential.
“I’ve already spoken to overseas product providers and to several large manufactur- ers in Melbourne; the skills and the facili- ties are available and that’s what I’m pursu- ing,” Gupta said to ADM.
24 | April 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
NIGEL PITTAWAY
NIGEL PITTAWAY