Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, is expected to end a bitter contest to supply thousands of trucks to the Defence Force, announcing today the German company Rheinmetall MAN has won the contract.
The decision has been criticised by Defence insiders, who say soldiers could be left exposed to roadside bomb attacks by the way the tender has been handled.
The government will throw a bone the way of the Bendigo company Thales, ordering about 150 of its Bushmaster utes and forestalling potential job losses at the company.
The $2.9 billion project to supply 2700 light, medium and heavy trucks has been a three-way shoot-out between the Rheinmetall MAN option, Thales and Mercedes-Benz.
And an ever popular quote...
"These vehicles, whilst they meet mostly the tender requirements, are not actually designed to suit the conditions the [Australian Defence Force] will require in deployment. They will require modification to meet ADF specification."
And possible bad results include:
"The major concern is that the government has put pressure on DMO [Defence Materiel Organisation] to select the lowest-cost option with scant regard to the protection levels and total cost over the equipment life,'' the source said. ''… it is highly unlikely that the protection level will be able to be upgraded to meet the evolving threat. Therefore, when ADF deploys into their next threat environment they will either need to buy new vehicles or send soldiers with substandard protection."
5 comments:
What has changed, the Bureaucracy grows exponentially, their benefits grow, and they save money on the things that count.
Hi Eric,
My coworkers tell me stand up meetings are for stupid people. My project manager also makes us end every morning meeting with a company chant. Am I in a cult or do I program computers for a government contractor?
Thank you,
Jason
Silly question, but that works out to over $1,000,00 a vehichle. Must be some spare parts and maintainence contract.
Why is it that Australia cant procure ANY defence related item without it turning into absolute clusterfuck ?
Even when you pick something OTS , in service , combat proven and being used by several other nations....You still have problems with it
Somehow things is just never good enough for OZ.
With regards to the MAN trucks , they are being used by Germany ,UK, Denmark and others.They have seen extensive action in afghanistan, being able to withstand small arms fire ,rpg's and sizable IED's as well without casualties to crew and passengers.
They have also proven to be extremely robust and reliable and pretty easy to maintain as well. On top of that comes offroad ca Why is it that Australia cant procure ANY defence related item without it turning into absolute clusterfuck ?
Even when you pick something OTS , in service , combat proven and being used by several other nations....You still have problems with it
Somehow things is just never good enough for OZ.
With regards to the MAN trucks , they are used by Germany ,UK, Denmark and others.They have seen extensive action in afghanistan, being able to withstand small arms fire ,rpg's and sizable IED's as well without casualties to crew and passengers.
They have also proven to be extremely robust and reliable plus pretty easy to maintain as well. On top of that comes offroad performance on par or better than the stryker/ LAV III type vehicle .
With that in mind , all the above mentioned
"worries" sounds like bollocks to me !
Then how come they cost $1,000,000 each. Budget $2.9 billion for 2,700trucks.Sounds like DMO again.
For that price lets build a new factory and make most of the parts here, and assemble them.
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