Page 90 - Australian Defence Magazine September 2018

DEFENCE
LAND FORCES
SMALL ARMS
The future of Army weapons
MAX BLENKIN | CANBERRA
The Australian Army fields a diverse range of infantry weaponry, which will be progressively refreshed, enhanced or replaced and new capability acquired under a pair of new projects, Land 159 and Land 4108.
SOME of the systems under consider- ation would be brand new. For example, the ADF has never fielded loitering muni- tions, an emerging capability. It’s not that any of the current systems are in any way deficient. But the technology continues to advance and the ADF wants to retain a capability advantage for all of its weapons.
Projects Land 159 and Land 4108 pres- ent an opportunity to acquire and inte- grate new and improved soldier systems, progressively rolled out from 2023 to 2028. Both projects are seeking to provide optimised systems to ensure lethality and capability advantage for the ADF, rather than simply providing stand-alone weap- on replacements.
Land 159 covers small arms – assault rifles, handguns, shotguns, sniper weap- ons and light medium and heavy machine guns and even fighting knives. Land 4108 takes in direct fire support weapons – short medium and long range weapons, lightweight mortar, grenades, command detonated munitions, unmanned weapon systems and loitering munitions.
The Defence Integrated Investment Program (IIP) cites a nominal cost of $2-3 billion for these projects over the period 2016-29. This represents a lot of capability
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