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DECEMBER 2019 – JANUARY 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
Requirement that was revived in May in a pre-election pledge by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The original Land 17 Phase 2 artillery replacement pro- gram seeking the acquisition of 30 protected 155mm, 52-cal- ibre SPH was cancelled in 2012 following funding cuts.
Germany’s KMW partnering with BAE Systems had of- fered the KMW Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000, and Raytheon Australia teamed with Hanwha (then Samsung Techwin) had proposed an Australianised version of the K9 to be known as the AS-9 ‘Aussie Thunder’.
At that time the K9 was in service with South Korea and Turkey but since then the howitzer has been upgraded and selected for, or is also in service with Poland, Norway, Fin- land, Estonia and India.
HAWKEI
IOC for the Thales Hawkei Protected Mobility Vehicle - Light was delayed in February by 12 months to December 2020 to complete the Hawkei reliability program, and to deal with production issues caused by engine manufacturer Steyr Motors entering voluntary administration.
The Austrian company was subsequently acquired by Thales in July to ensure the continuity of engine supply and the long-term sustainability of the Hawkei program.
“THE FINAL COMPONENT OF THE HAWKEI RELIABILITY PROGRAM, THE PRODUCTION RELIABILITY ACCEPTANCE TEST (PRAT), BEGAN IN MAY AND SHOULD BE COMPLETED BY THE SECOND QUARTER OF 2020.”
Under the $1.3 billion Land 21 Phase 4 contract signed in October 2015, Thales is to supply 1,100 Hawkeis along with 1,058 companion trailers to replace the majority of the army’s blast-protected Land Rover fleet.
The final component of the Hawkei reliability program, the Production Reliability Acceptance Test (PRAT), began in May and should be completed by the second quarter of 2020. This activity involves eight vehicles; six of them having to complete 32,000 km, with trailers attached for half that dis- tance, and the two other vehicles completing other testing.
Defence says Full-Rate Production has been delayed un- til completion of the reliability program, finalisation of the vehicle’s design baseline, and implementation of the sup-
port system to enable the Hawkei to be sustained when rolled out to the ADF.
As of November, Army as Capability Manager had taken delivery of the first 138 Hawkei vehicles and trailers required for Initial Materiel Release. The delivery of vehicles to the 3rd Brigade in Townsville in preparation for a Battle Group Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) activity leading to IOC was expected to begin in the second quarter of 2020.
Achievement of IOC would mean the ADF had a pro- tected vehicle in-service able to perform as a node in the digital land combat system, a Defence spokesperson noted.
“Army sees the Hawkei as a highly sophisticated com- munications system on the battlefield – it just happens to be highly mobile and protected,” a Defence spokesperson said to ADM.
LAND 121
Under Land 121 Phase 3B, Rheinmetall Defence Australia continued delivery to the ADF of more than 2,500 heavy and medium high mobility logistics vehicles. These deliver- ies will be completed in 2020.
In January 2019 the company also began deliveries under Land 121 Phase 5B, signed in 2018, of a further 1,044 of the same platforms, also manufactured in Europe but in- corporating about 35 per cent Australian Industry Content (AIC). These deliveries will continue until 2024.
COMMS
October also saw Boeing Defence Australia (BDA) com- mission a purpose-built assembly and test facility at Wa- col, southwest of Brisbane, initially to deliver the next phases of Project Currawong, the $950 million Land 2072 Phase 2B Integrated Battlefield Telecommunications Net- work program.
Designed to provide secure wideband voice, data, and video services over wireless and wired infrastructure be- tween Australia’s land-based deployed forces and head- quarters, in its first operational deployment the system supported ADF security operations at the APEC summit in Papua New Guinea in December 2018, and subsequently gained plaudits in 2019 for its performance in Exercises Hamel, Pitch Black and Talisman Sabre.
Export opportunities are now being pursued in both the UK and the US for what BDA Business Development Man- ager Darcy Rawlinson describes as a world-leading system.
The British army under Project Trinity is seeking a wide area network for its headquarters “and Currawong pro- vides a lot of the requirements of that program, so what we’ll be offering, probably sometime over the next two years, is something based on the technology in Curra- wong”, Rawlinson states.
Also, the US Army is looking to upgrade its Warfighting Information Network Tactical (WIN-T), now more com- monly known as the Integrated Tactical Network, and cer- tain elements of Currawong are of interest.
“They’re quite keen to take the next stage of doing some formal testing with the system over in their labs so they can understand exactly how it performs. That will probably happen in the next six months,” Rawlinson disclosed. ■
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