The Australian Army plans to spend around $5 billion on improving battlefield command, control and communications systems during the next 15 years. However, the way forward is far from clear as there have already been several sharp changes in direction with the most recent being the suspension of Elbit’s Battle Management System for reasons that remain opaque. This product had superseded one from Saab Australia a decade earlier that had been performing well but was deemed to have a number of limitations.
A possible glimpse of the future took place near Canberra for three days from December 6 to 8 when the C4 EDGE consortium was able to demonstrate its 100% Australian solution for Army’s needs. The quick background is that in 2019, Defence paused the next phase of LAND 200 and the year before Army called on Australian industry to show what it could do in the C2 domain.
In response, Canberra-based EOS Defence Systems with a number of local industry partners submitted an unsolicited proposal offering to demonstrate a sovereign Battlegroup and Below C2 system – which it has now done.
Asked for a summary of the situation, Defence explained:
“The C4 EDGE program, sponsored by Army, aims to provide an understanding of Australian Industry’s readiness to contribute to future major acquisition programs by seeking to deliver world class, technologically competitive sovereign C4 capabilities. The demonstration will include elements of software, waveforms and cryptography, as well as friendly-force tracking, radio and other hardware manufacture. C4 EDGE involves a group of Australian small-to-medium sized enterprises…
This is an excerpt from APDR. To read the full story, click here.
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