In short:
The federal government says it has identified a “fix” for braking problems in 1,100 Hawkei military vehicles.
The government has also announced a $45 million contract for French arms manufacturer Thales to build 15 missile-equipped Bushmaster military vehicles in Victoria.
What’s next?
Planning is underway to rollout the fixed Hawkei vehicles to the Australian defence force.
The federal government has announced a braking issue found in Hawkei military vehicles has been resolved, after the defence force stopped accepting them in 2020.
Dozens of the light-armoured patrol vehicles had been sitting idle outside the Thales arms manufacturing factory in Central Victoria over recent years.
Federal Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said a fix had finally been found and planning was underway to roll out the vehicles to defence force units across the country.
“These vehicles are critical to the mobility of the Australian Army,” he said.
“[We’ll roll them out] through a remediation program to have the fix installed.
“Defence will [then] advise the government on when we can expect to declare full operational capability.”
Brigadier John-Paul Ouvrier said the Australian Army worked closely with Thales to find a solution to the braking problem.
“We did extensive testing to identify the fault with the modulator, both on the vehicles but also in the workshop,” he said.
New contract provides certainty for defence manufacturer
The Australian government has also announced a $45-million defence contract for Thales Australia to build 15 new missile-equipped Bushmaster vehicles.
The French defence manufacturer is currently building 78 Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles in Bendigo as part of a $160m contract, with production on the new 15 to start mid next year.
Last year, Australia sent 90 Bushmasters to Ukraine to help it in its war against Russia.
Minister Pat Conroy said the Albanese Government had now spent more than $200 million on Thales defence contracts.
“Bushmasters save lives,” he said.
“We’ve seen them save Australians soldiers lives in the Afghanistan deployment [and] we’ve seen them save Ukrainian lives in Ukraine.”
Late last month, the Fijian government approved an order to buy 14 Bushmasters from the Australian government.
Thales Australia’s vice president for strategy and communications, Andrew Downes, said this latest investment was “great for local jobs”.
“We’re very proud to have good jobs here at Thales,” he said.
In September last year, Thales offered staff voluntary redundancies due to a lack of orders for defence mobility vehicles, such as the Bushmaster and Hawkei.
The defence minister said the new vehicles will lead the Army’s long-range fires regiment.
“[These are the] most advanced variant of the Bushmaster,” Mr Conroy said.
“These are critical to standing up our new regiment of long-range fires that will deploy high mobility artillery rocket systems.”
Protests outside Bendigo factory
Rallies have been held outside the Thales Bendigo factory this year in protest against the company’s claimed involvement in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
The defence industry minister said the Australian government did not sell weapons to Israel and had not done so for at least five years.
“We are not supplying weapons to Israel,” Mr Conroy said.
“Anyone who says we are is lying.
“It besmirches the name of the 100,000 who work in the Australian Defence Force, by implying that they’re complicit in the genocide, [which] is a flat out lie.”
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