Defence Business: Land Warfare Conference 2010 wrap-up | ADM Feb 2011
Julian Kerr | Brisbane
With speakers at the Land Warfare Conference (LWC) careful to pay obeisance to the Strategic Reform Program (SRP), both the Chief of Army and Army’s Head of Modernisation and Strategic Planning took the opportunity to highlight a greater emphasis on so-called adaptive acquisition.
In opening the LWC, Lieutenant-General Ken Gillespie said that for too long Army had accepted a narrow, project and platform-based approach to modernisation.
“Army has lifted its game of late to adopt a more effects and systems-based method of identifying and introducing Land Force Capabilities,” he commented.
This had made Army a more discerning and perhaps a more demanding customer. A new focus on capability risk, as opposed to project risk, was illustrated by discussions with the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) on adaptive acquisition – that is, purchasing the best available equipment, more frequently, in lesser quantities, in order to capitalise on and keep pace with rapid advances in technology.
“This system has particular utility for equipment that has an expected life, as a consequence of wear and tear or technological advances, of less than five years,” the CA added.
New ammunition pouches had been developed in this fashion for the latest deployment cycle and better body armour would be provided in the same fashion during the next deployment cycle.
Taking up this theme, Major-General John Caligari said that by buying less, more often, Army could learn from the introduction of a capability into service and utilise that information in acquiring the next tranche (see P32 for his speech).
“Capability is more than the best equipment, it’s what we do with it and how we manage it,” he said.
“I am a strong believer in the learn by doing. Let’s get the capability quicker and into the hands of soldiers to tell us how it is best used, identify the problems and then set ourselves up for success in subsequent acquisitions.”
This was particularly important for technology that refreshed faster than Army’s processes currently allowed it to acquire.
Meanwhile it was disclosed in a closed-door briefing by DMO’s Land Systems Division prior to the conference that the Request for Information (RfI) for Land 400 had drawn responses from 40 companies offering a wide variety of wheeled, tracked and unmanned platforms.
Sources who attended the briefing said that first pass approval was anticipated in 2013 and multiple second-pass approvals along capability lines were expected from 2017. Initial operating capability (IOC) was set for 2020-2021.
The RfL, issued in May 2010, sought details of manned and possibly unmanned capabilities to enable the army to “manoeuvre to detect and defeat threats by stand-off attack and/or by close combat, operating within complex environments, while ensuring survivability of own forces”.
In total, 1,100 vehicles are expected to be acquired to replace M113 armoured personnel carriers (APCs), Australian Light Armoured Vehicles (ASLAVs) and Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicles.
These platforms will remain in service until around 2020.
The briefing was told that acquisitions would not be on the basis of a one-for-one replacement of individual tracked and wheeled platforms.
The 2010 Defence Capability Plan update from December stated that the project was likely to be split into several phases dealing with vehicle classes and capabilities.
Some 13 companies had provided information on 20 wheeled platforms (10 8x8, one 6x6, nine 4x4), 13 tracked including eight infantry fighting vehicles, and seven other platforms of undisclosed type.
Of the 40 manned platforms, 18 were in service and 22 were under development, the briefing’s attendees were told.
Seven companies had also provided details of 11 unmanned vehicles, but no details were given on these.
Data had also been provided in the RfI on more than 100 subsystems such as weapons, self-protection command-and-control, communications, ISR sensors and training systems.
No feedback had been provided to industry from a market survey conducted by the DMO in 2006 and the briefing was intended to rectify this shortcoming, briefers said.