The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), led by Minister Eom, Donghwan, announced on Thursday, July 27 that Hanwha Aerospace’s Redback IFV was selected as a preferred bidder for Australian Army’s Land 400 Phase 3, Land Combat Vehicle System project.
Hanwha Aerospace’s Redback IFV was chosen over Germany’s Rheinmetall Lynx KF41 and became the preferred candidate for the Land 400 Phase 3, which is Australian Army’s project to acquire caterpillar IFV. “This success is attributed to our weapons system with advanced military technology, private partner’s efforts for negotiation combined with ROK President’s strong commitment to promote defence equipment export and government’s whole support,” Hanwha said.
Redback armoured vehicle is a customised infantry fighting vehicle tailored to the Australian operating environment that Hanwha Aerospace developed to make advancement into the Australian market. It is already well received in the country for its functions well fitted in the operational environment and for its great performance.
The ROK government also took part in the efforts for the selection of Hanwha’s IFV as the preferred bidder. The relevant authorities including DAPA, Office of National Security (NSO), Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ROK Army pulled together to strengthen the relations with the Australian government and emphasised that South Korea can be the best security partner for Australia.
“Australia is one of the countries which fought for us during the Korean War and sent troops to the blood-shed battlefields to safeguard our people’s lives. Since then, the ROK and Australia have strengthened their partnership on various fields including national defence and defence industry at a governmental and industrial level, solidifying the bilateral partnership in the region of Indo-Pacific,” Hanwha said.
If Hanwha Aerospace wins the IFV contract, Redback IFV will become the second ground weapons system in the ROK which is exported to Australia, following K9 howitzer. It is expected that the IFV export will further accelerate a complementary partnership between defence companies of Australia and the ROK and promote defence capabilities of both our nations as well as the defence industry partnership in the region.
DAPA will continue to join government’s efforts—led by the NSO—to promote the export of military defence equipment as well as reinforce partnership with private partners to improve export competitiveness of our weapons systems.
Eom, Donghwan, the Minister of Defense Acquisition, expressed his sincere appreciation to Australia for its help during the Korean War in keeping peace on the Korean Peninsula, in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Armistice agreement. He also added that he will continue best efforts for a seamless follow-up negotiation to seal a contract for the IFV, and promised his full support to expand the Australia-ROK defence industry partnership into various fields including core technologies such as ground, maritime, aviation and aerospace defence technologies and weapons systems.
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What a joy it is to know that Defence is actually capable of doing a full capability analysis of comparable products and choosing constructively . It shows they are actually capable of doing so, lets hope it is applied across the all acquisition scenarios.
Fully agree. A shame the decision wasn’t taken before the DSR had the chance to slash the numbers.
I see Hanwha have already managed to start actually delivering the Chunmoo systems to Poland.
I wonder how long it will be before Australia actually sees any HIMARS delivered and at what final cost
Correct. I think deliveries started about 5 months after contract signature.
I’m still at a loss how 129 vehicles to replace the M113 are meant to replace around 400 in service at the moment. The DoD hasn’t mentioned retaining any M113s for duties that require a less capable vehicle ( I assume the Bushy will take up some of the slack) and I haven’t heard anything about the U.S. moving ahead with their AMPV project. To me it seems that a lot of our Mech Units (mostly Reserves) are earmarked for a much lower role.
You aren’t the only one who is confused. My theory is that the DSR had to come up with some changes – after all, why have a review – and the easiest thing was to focus on Army because of all of the services they have the biggest numbers of hardware and slashing a couple of projects was the easy way out. In practice the DSR is already being ignored – for example the AIR 6500 Phase 1 decision – and in a few years from now I expect IFV and SPH numbers will return to their previous levels.