Australian ministers this week said they are buying some $15.5 million in long-lead items for Bushmaster vehicles, offering the government the ability to potentially buy more of the armored vehicles.
Minister for Defence Stephen Smith said the long-lead items are purchased “to give the government the flexibility and the capability of purchasing additional Bushmasters on top of the 101 that we announced last year.”
The 101 Bushmasters are for use in Afghanistan (Defense Daily, May 13).
Also, at the end of last year, the government chose Thales and its proposed Hawkei, an armored Land Rover, as the choice for a protected next generation armored vehicle.
To ensure that there is continuity of skills in Thales’ workshops in Bendigo, Australia indicated at the time it would look at buying more Bushmasters to make sure the skills remained at Thales in Bendigo until the Hawkei is fully developed in 2016, if all goes well, Smith said.
Minister for Defence Materiel and Home Affairs Jason Clare said the March 19 announcement is “the next step in that process by purchasing those long-lead items for the next step in purchasing more Bushmasters.”
The ministers also discussed buying a new ship and aircraft.
Last year, Australia bought a fifth Boeing [BA] C-17, and now is spending about $290 million to buy a sixth aircraft through the U.S. foreign military sales program (Defense Daily, Sept. 16).
Smith said, “This effectively doubles our heavy aircraft lift, our C-17 capability as a result of increasing our fleet from March of 2008 from four to six.”
Over the past weekend, the government also contracted about $134 million to buy an offshore support vessel to complement its heavy amphibious lift fleet, HMAS Choules and HMAS Tobruk.
“What this amounts to is equipment that we’re delivering for our troops in Army, in Navy and in Air Force,” Clare said. “It’s worth close to half a billion dollars’ worth of new equipment for our troops and importantly these are all proven capabilities.”
Bushmasters are working in Afghanistan right now, saving Australian lives, he said.
“The C-17 proved its worth last year with the floods, with the cyclone, in Japan and in New Zealand, supporting all the work that we needed to do after that natural disaster,” Clare said. “This time last year we had no amphibious ships available…We’ve now gone from zero to three with the purchase of Choules, the upgrade of Tobruk and now the purchase of this new vessel, which makes sure that we’re set up for the transition from these amphibious ships through to the introduction into service of the landing helicopter dock ships in the middle of the decade.”