Korean spider in antipodes

One of three Hanwha AS21 Redback BMP prototypes delivered to Australia in recent months for testing under the Land 400 Phase 3 program, under which the Australian Army wants to purchase 450 bwp and related vehicles to replace the old M113AS3 / 4.

In January of this year, tests of two infantry fighting vehicles began in Australia - the finalists of the Land 400 Phase 3 competition. One of them is the AS21 Redback, a novelty by the South Korean company Hanwha Defense.

In recent years, the Australian Army has been undergoing an intense modernization process under the Beersheba plan announced in 2011. The changes affected both the regular forces (forming the 1st division) and the active reserve (2nd division). Each of the three brigades that make up the 1st Division currently consists of a cavalry regiment (actually a mixed battalion with tanks, tracked APCs and wheeled APCs), two light infantry battalions, and an artillery, engineer, communications and rear regiment. They implement a 36-month training cycle divided into three 12-month phases: the "reboot" phase, the combat readiness phase, and the fully combat readiness phase.

As part of the Land 400 Phase 3 program, the Australian Army intends to purchase 450 infantry fighting vehicles and related vehicles to replace the old M113AS3 / AS4 tracked transporters.

The Land 2015, which has been a major modernization program since February 400, will see the Australian Army acquiring several hundred state-of-the-art armored fighting vehicles and new generation vehicles to support its operations. At the time of the announcement of the start of the program, the concept of Phase 1 had already been completed. The analyzes carried out within its framework allowed the start of phase 1, that is, the acquisition of new wheeled reconnaissance vehicles to replace the obsolete ASLAV (Australian Light Armored Vehicle), a variation of the General Dynamics Land Systems LAV-2. On March 2, 25, the Australian Army named the Rheinmetall/Northrop Grumman consortium the winner. The consortium proposed a Boxer CRV (Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle) with a Lance turret and a 13mm Rhein-metal Mauser MK2018-30/ABM automatic cannon. During the tests, the consortium competed with the AMV30 from the Patria / BAE Systems consortium, which was also shortlisted. The contract between the winning consortium and the government in Canberra was signed on 2 August 35. For A$17bn, Australia is due to receive 2018 vehicles (the first was delivered just over a year after the contract was signed, on 5,8 September 211). , 24 of which will be built at the Rheinmetall Defense Australia MILVEHCOE plant in Redbank, Queensland. Australia will also receive 2019 mission modules (of which 186 variants of the wheeled combat reconnaissance vehicle), a logistics and training kit, etc. About 225 jobs will be produced in Australia (more in WiT 133/54).

Earth 400 Phase 3

As part of the third phase (Phase 3) of the Land 400 program, the Australian Army intends to replace the obsolete tracked armored personnel carriers of the M113 family. There are still 431 vehicles in service in various modifications, of which 90 of the oldest M113AS3s remain in reserve (of the 840 purchased M113A1s, some have been upgraded to AS3 and AS4 standards). Despite the modernization, the Australian M113 is definitely outdated. Consequently, on 13 November 2015, the Australian Army submitted a Request for Information (RFI) with a deadline for submission of interested parties of 24 November of that year. Several manufacturers and several consortiums responded to them: General Dynamics Land Systems, offering the ASCOD 2 infantry fighting vehicle, BAE Systems Australia with the CV90 Mk III (the Mk IV was considered over time) and PSM (a consortium of Rheinmetall Defense and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann) from SPz Puma. A little later, the South Korean concern Hanwha Defense unexpectedly appeared on the list with the new AS21 Redback. Such a great interest of world defense companies in the Australian tender is not surprising, because Canberra intends to purchase as many as 450 tracked combat vehicles. 312 will represent the infantry fighting vehicle standard, 26 will be built in the command variant, another 16 in the artillery reconnaissance variant, and the Australian Army will also supply: 11 technical reconnaissance vehicles, 14 support vehicles, 18 field repair vehicles. and 39 engineering protection vehicles. In addition, in addition to the Land 400 Phase 3 program, it is planned to implement the MSV (Manouevre Support Vehicle) program, under which it is planned to purchase 17 technical support vehicles, possibly on the chassis of the selected infantry fighting vehicle. It is currently estimated that the purchase of 450 vehicles will cost a total of 18,1 billion Australian dollars (together with their life cycle costs - this amount is likely to increase by at least several tens of percent over several decades of operation; according to some reports , the final cost should be 27 billion Australian dollars ...). This fully explains the wide interest of the leading manufacturers of combat vehicles to participate in the Land 400 Phase 3.

The new infantry fighting vehicles were originally supposed to be armed with the same turret as the CRV purchased at stage 2, the Rheinmetall Lance. This did not stop bidders from offering alternative solutions (even Rheinmetall finally offered a turret in a different configuration than on the Boxer CRV!). Auxiliary vehicles must be armed with a 7,62 mm machine gun or 12,7 mm machine gun or 40 mm automatic grenade launcher in a remotely controlled weapon position. The required ballistic resistance of the vehicle must correspond to level 6 according to STANAG 4569. The transported troops must consist of eight soldiers.

The list of applicants began to grow rapidly - already in mid-2016, Rheinmetall refused to promote the SPz Puma in the Australian market, which in practice nullified its chances in the Land 400 Phase 3 (as well as the requirement to take eight people). Instead, the German concern offered its own BMP from the Lynx family - first the lighter KF31, then the heavier KF41. As mentioned above, Hanwha Defense, the manufacturer of the AS21, also joined the group of applicants, which at that time, unlike its competitors, only had a project for a new car (and experience in producing a much lighter and less complex K21).