Representatives from 145 companies, including 12 international delegations, gathered in Melbourne yesterday to hear about Army’s latest capability upgrade to the M1A1 AIM SA tank, the M88A2 Hercules and a new breaching/bridging engineering vehicle capability.
As outlined by Chief of Army LTGEN Angus Campbell at the ADM Congress last week, Army is moving from a light to medium weight force. While Land 400 has been the poster child of this move, these two programs will play an important role in that transformation, according to Major General David Coghlan, Head Land Systems Division in CASG.
“As Chief of Army mentioned last week at the ADM Congress, we are looking for value for money at every step,” MAJGEN Coghlan told the crowd.
“It’s clearly not a replacement of the main battle tank with another system such as Leopard 2 or a Challenger,” Lieutenant Colonel Leo Purdy, Staff Officer Grade 1 Armoured, Army Headquarters said to ADM. “We’re modernising it to make sure we’ve got a tank that provides us an advantage in close combat. That’s one of the key objectives from Army’s point of view and that’s really shaping our requirements.
“Effectively we’re putting a modern internet system into our tanks so that we can be connected with both air and maritime assets, as well as our land assets, and share information about the enemy. There is a huge amount of digitisation as part of this program.”
Under 8160, the outcome is centred around breaching battlefield obstacles with less people, more quickly, and under greater protection. The capability enables armoured breaching of explosive obstacles (minefield), armoured bridging (rivers or ditches that the tank can’t handle ie greater than three metres), armoured engineering (to push or pull obstacles out of the way) and armoured recovery of disabled vehicles.
At this stage, the program office is taking a program approach to the two projects in order to maximise value for money through economies of scale, using a common hull where possible for the new engineering vehicles.
Defence is looking at spending between $1.7-$2.5 billion on the two projects, which will include a number of capability upgrades and new vehicles.
“While FMS (Foreign Military Sales) has and will remain a part of our support system, developing local support is critical,” Brigadier Ed Smeaton, Director-General Land Manoeuvre Systems Branch said at the brief. “How does Australian industry fit into that? That’s why we’re here today.”
The industry brief in the morning was then followed by two and a half days of one-on-one meetings between industry players and the program office.
For a full report on these projects, keep an eye out for the upcoming March edition of ADM.