Page 10 - Australian Defence Magazine July 2019
P. 10

An Australian Army M1 Abrams tank fires its 120mm cannon.
Land Environment Working Group updates industry
Director General of Logistics Brigadier Todd Ashurst explained Army’s move to- wards more reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) practices.
“We’re focused more on run to failure, pre- ventative maintenance with predictive and condition based (based on HUMS data) work packages,” he said. “We have fleets that don’t do many kilometres in a year and spend a lot of time in depots, or at the point where some elements can and will fail – and that’s ok.”
Head of Armoured Vehicle Division Major General Dave Coghlan and Colonel Tony Duus, Director of Armoured Fight- ing Vehicle Systems, both confirmed that the Land 907 phases alongside Land 8160 will be based on an M1 chassis.
“If you’re a European company trying to sell me a Leopard or Merkava, come back in 30 years,” MAJGEN Coghlan quipped.
COL Duus also confirmed that Land 400 Phase 2 vehicles will be equipped with Iron Fist and the tanks with Trophy, but neither ‘perfectly meet the active protection requirement in the face of diving missiles like Javelin or Spike LR 2’.
Brigadier Tim Bayliss and his team from Special Operations Command were as open as they could be about the forward program of work for Special Forces.
“Both 1508 and 1530 run as enduring pro- grams that are both acquisition and sustain- ment,” he said. “There are known interdepen- dencies with big Army programs. Both are able to inform one another. Sometimes SOC acts as a risk reduction activity for big Army. And SOC can put their requirements in to the big- ger programs like lethality for sniper gun.”
NEWS REVIEW
INDUSTRY UPDATE
KATHERINE ZIESING | CANBERRA
OVER 300 Defence industry representa- tives gathered in Canberra for the Land Environment Working Group (LEWG) meeting to get an update from senior Army capability leaders.
Chaired by Major General Kathryn Toohey, the day provided an overview and update on the range of Army programs cur- rently in the works and those being shaped (except for self-propelled guns, which were avoided as a topic altogether).
MAJGEN Toohey announced a range of policy frameworks that will be coming into effect, with the GVA standards for vehicles and a new ‘land worthiness’ framework on the cards to be ratified formally by Chief of
Army later this year, highlighting the Army robotics strategy released late last year and an active strategy towards working more openly with industry in the requirements phase of Army programs.
Head of Helicopter Systems Division Shane Fairweather also confirmed that work was being done to clarify their documentation into ‘plain English’, noting that from his time in industry it can be hard to decipher what the Commonwealth actually wants even after reading all the tender documentation.
Head of Land Systems Division Major General Andrew Bottrell gave the high lev- el overview of the division, noting that he has 1,000 staff in APS and ADF managing 22 projects with a total budget in 2018/19 of $1.47 billion and in excess of $7 billion worth of contracts signed.
EOS delivers first Boxer remote weapon systems
CASG has received the first two EOS Defence Systems R400S Mk2 D-HD-3X Remote Weapon Systems to be used on the Boxer ve- hicles as part of Project Land 400 Phase 2.
The two R400 Remote Weapon Systems will be used for training purposes, with a further 80 systems to be supplied dur- ing the course of the project. All EOS sys- tems for Land 400 Phase 2 will be built in Queanbeyan, NSW and Hume, ACT using components from approximately 70 Aus- tralian suppliers.
“The handover of these two systems marks a significant milestone for EOS," Dr Warwick Holloway, President of EOS De- fence Systems in Australia, said. “These are the first two of the latest generation remote
weapon systems built for the ADF from EOS' state-of the-art manufac- turing facility in Hume.
"The systems join the over 230 in- service EOS remote weapon systems and will deliver significant improvements in operational effectiveness and cost of ownership for Australia’s combat forces.”
The R400S-Mk2-D-HD is capable
of mounting weapons in single and
dual configurations from 5.56mm
to 12.7mm calibre as well 40mm au- tomatic grenade launchers, 30mm lightweight cannons and anti-tank guided missiles. The system allows the weapons operator to remotely operate the weapon whilst protected inside the vehicle.
Dr Warwick Holloway, President EOS Defence Systems Australia, pictured with the CASG team at the EOS Hume facility.
10 | July 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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