Australian Army Discussions and Updates

[ngatimozart]

Airbus Tiger.
There's lots of supposition here and some people saying go 22 Tiger + 7 lower capability. Well that's not what the RFP requires, so forget about that - it ain't gonna fly because the army and the CoA won't be interested. Why should they waste time and money on something that doesn't meet base requirements.

The next point is 22 Tiger MLU + 7 new build. Airbus finished the last of Germanys 68 new build Tigers at Donauworth, Germany, last year and has started the retrofit of the French tigers from HAP to HAD configuration. In 2023, it will upgrade 33 of Germanys Tigers and it has kept its final assembly line in Marignane, France, open for upgrade, plus it is still able to produce new builds, if they are required. However, I would suggest that if the Army are looking at replacing the Tiger in the 2040s then new builds may not be the preferred option.

Finally, if @vonnoobie can provide a source for his assertion that the German Heer wish to divest themselves of 14 Tigers then some maybe available. In 2014 / 15 Germany reduced its requirement from 80 to 68 with the 68th and final one delivered last year. If not, and no used ones are available, then new builds may be the only option.

 

[Bob53]

Only 1 in 3 Boxer CRVs to ATGM. https://defencetechnologyreview.par...echnology-review/dtr-dec-jan-2020/flipbook/6/

@Bob53 We have an expectation that posts have a commentary that is longer than one line of text.

Ngatimozart

 

[MARKMILES77]

And only 82 EOS R400 Remote Weapon Stations, which will be fitted to most versions, have been ordered.
This is despite around 211 Boxers being ordered.
Hopefully this is only an initial order.

 

[Volkodav]

And only 82 EOS R400 Remote Weapon Stations, which will be fitted to most versions, have been ordered.
This is despite around 211 Boxers being ordered.
Hopefully this is only an initial order.

We are getting very close to the long promised but yet to be delivered surplus, do not expect the government to spend a single cent they can avoid spending, or can put off spending in the next couple of years.

All well and good, so long as it doesn't result in inefficiencies and cost blowouts down the track, or worse, troops dying because they didn't have the gear they were meant to have.

This is not a political statement, rather one of fact, both sides of politics have skimped and cut funding for short term political objectives, look good now, let the next government cop the blame for the hole.

 

[ngatimozart]

We are getting very close to the long promised but yet to be delivered surplus, do not expect the government to spend a single cent they can avoid spending, or can put off spending in the next couple of years.

All well and good, so long as it doesn't result in inefficiencies and cost blowouts down the track, or worse, troops dying because they didn't have the gear they were meant to have.

This is not a political statement, rather one of fact, both sides of politics have skimped and cut funding for short term political objectives, look good now, let the next government cop the blame for the hole.

SOP for most western govt at present, isn't it?

 

[Volkodav]

SOP for most western govt at present, isn't it?

Pretty much.

 

[seaspear]

With the EOS R400 werent these units also to be added to the Hawkei that is in full production now?

 

[ADMk2]

And only 82 EOS R400 Remote Weapon Stations, which will be fitted to most versions, have been ordered.
This is despite around 211 Boxers being ordered.
Hopefully this is only an initial order.

May be a manufacturing capacity issue with EOS, or a delivery timing issue. Army is not EOS only customer, I see no reason why this will only ever be the sole acquisition of RWS systems for the Boxer vehicles...

Tranche 1, if you like...

 

[Bob53]

Only 1 in 3 Boxer CRVs to ATGM. https://defencetechnologyreview.par...echnology-review/dtr-dec-jan-2020/flipbook/6/

@Bob53 We have an expectation that posts have a commentary that is longer than one line of text.

Ngatimozart

Sorry to Mods for the brief post.....flicked that in on Christie day after a huge fill of Turkey and spuds when my brother in law who was a M113 driver mentioned it to me. Hoping it only a tranche 1 buy as suggested.

 

[Bob53]

Interesting article from the drive.com on the level of readiness of the German Army Tigers and NH90s. Most of the fingers are getting pointed at Airbus who do a lot of the outsourced maintenance. Germany Has Fewer Than 10 Tiger And 12 NH90 Helicopters Ready For Combat

 

[aussienscale]

Interesting article from the drive.com on the level of readiness of the German Army Tigers and NH90s. Most of the fingers are getting pointed at Airbus who do a lot of the outsourced maintenance. Germany Has Fewer Than 10 Tiger And 12 NH90 Helicopters Ready For Combat

Takao or Raven could comment better, but I do recall some discussion some time ago that Australia actually now has a very good availability rate, one of, if not, the highest in the world IIRC

Cheers

 

[oldsig127]

Interesting article from the drive.com on the level of readiness of the German Army Tigers and NH90s. Most of the fingers are getting pointed at Airbus who do a lot of the outsourced maintenance. Germany Has Fewer Than 10 Tiger And 12 NH90 Helicopters Ready For Combat

It's worth reading the WHOLE article, which has an inflammatory and misleading headline. In fact, it's more about the parlous state of most of the German forces, with a long list including fighters, tanks,frigates and submarine (0 out of 6 serviceable.

Naturally, if you have an axe to grind about our forces like News Ltd and SMH and the ABC, you don't look past the headline. This forum is better than that.

oldsig

 

[ngatimozart]

Takao or Raven could comment better, but I do recall some discussion some time ago that Australia actually now has a very good availability rate, one of, if not, the highest in the world IIRC

Cheers

The RNZAF has a pretty high availability rate with its NH90s as well. Both nations and Germany are part of the NH90 users group and a lot of knowledge is passed back and forth amongst group members. I would agree with @oldsig127 in that the biggest problems the Germans have are the parlous state of their armed forces bought on by years of neglect by the Bundestag. Maybe it's about time that they brought their maintenance back in-house.

 

[Takao]

The German military is on a whole new level of dumbness when it comes to maintenance. This is in terms of the force maintenance (talking uniformed and contracted) and the design of their platforms.

When I was last involved with ARH, we rarely looked to the German's for advice and suggestions. I don't know what the situation is now, but we didn't even consider the German's to be an equivalent airworthiness authority. We did for the RAF, RN, US Army, USAF, USN and French - but not the Germans (which was frustrating when we would get German documents from Eurocopter...). Their entire military is screwed with serviceability - and it's not a recent thing. I've been tracking these reports (and they have been getting worse) since about 2013. It has to be systemic and cultural - which means that they are screwed.

Talking locally, the advantage of ARH is that it is (pretty much) the majority of the Tiger fleet. The UHT - isn't. Beyond basic airframe and electronics, there isn't a huge amount of commonality between the UHT and the ARH/HAP. The HAD will do new engines, but the 'bits' that break regularly are still pretty common. This means that we have a deeper pool of experience and knowledge to draw upon than the Germans. Our Airbus staff are damn good and, while having a different purpose to those in green, have the same goal in mind. Most of the senior people are ex-Army and one of the major interfaces to the Regt is one of the best WO2's we had. The blue and green teams in Darwin work hand-in-glove, and I've seen them kick massive goals and push hours to get aircraft back to the Regt. Supply chains can be hard - but I understand that has improved dramatically over the past 5 - 8 years with effots from the ADF (in understanding what we need v what we want and not breaking stuff) and Airbus (improving linkages and spares). Furthermore, the stories about the German Army maintainers makes the LNP's stories of unions look efficient. I get RAEME is called a union - but at least we keep the mission focus on the pointy end.

I can't speak to MRH; but the ARH is the oddity to the rule that German stuff is complex. The maintenance:flying hour is about the same as any medium, twin-engined military helicopter and, while not as idiot-proof as a AH-64 or AH-1, with the right people (which we now have - we lost our way in the late 2000s) it's no real challenge to maintain. Certainly nothing beyond the pale. Their trucks though - how the hell a simple 8-wheeled truck can be so complicated is something only Rheinmetall can answer. The G-Wagons? Some of it was us, but gosh, what a maintenance pig. Why use one part when 14 will do? The AFVs are no different - Leopard, Boxer, Lynx, Puma - all are wonderful examples of over-engineering. I've heard their naval vessels are the same, and the bits that the German's designed of the Tornado and Typhoon. All that means that is that the German military starts on the backfoot already. It demands more maintenance time, more spare parts and a higher-skilled workforce (in a world where, frankly, there are better options out there - especially in Europe).

If we didn't buy anything German again, I'd be a happy little Vegemite. Except a bratwurst.

 

[John Fedup]

Over engineering kit seems to be an old problem with Germany military kit, the WW2 Tiger is one example, great tank except for the maintenance factor and production difficulties. Not familiar with any Canadian Leo2 maintenance issues. G-Wagons were understandably deficient for Afghanistan duty.

 

[Volkodav]

….Most of the senior people are ex-Army and one of the major interfaces to the Regt is one of the best WO2's we had. ]\

And an absolute petrol head too! Definitely one of the good guys, he leaves quite a few recent SNCOs and Capts for dead.

Airbus side, they are definitely helped in recruiting ex Army Maintainers by the governments failure to give their people the civilian recognised trades they were promised when they joined. Good tradies leave the army after a decade or more with big holes in their qualifications that will take them years and thousands of dollars of their own money to fill, then there's the sad fact that some of the gaps require a civilian employer to take them on as partially qualified trainees to provide the certification required for them to do the job Defence allegedly trained them to do. I sometimes wonder what is going to happen once defence runs out of the older members who were trained under the old systems, recruit more ex RN and British Army REME types I suppose, we'd be screwed without them as things stand now.

 

[Bob53]

@Takao interesting to hear about the cities of the German vehicles. I just assumed Mercedes and Rhinemetall would of built in modern maintenance engineering these days.

I hope the Boxers we not going to be a maintenance nightmare going forward. Do they do a repair assessment of all of the typical repair jobs when reviewing vehicles for selection?

 

[Takao]

@Takao interesting to hear about the cities of the German vehicles. I just assumed Mercedes and Rhinemetall would of built in modern maintenance engineering these days.

I hope the Boxers we not going to be a maintenance nightmare going forward. Do they do a repair assessment of all of the typical repair jobs when reviewing vehicles for selection?

I don't know what it is, perhaps a cultural difference or a (traditional?) inability to think beyond 500 km from the German border? When you compare American kit (and increasingly Brit) to German the former is dead set idiot proof. It's designed with a less-technical maintenance workforce (our senior CFN are technical equals of a US Army SGT); everything is designed around that. Black box in, black box out; simple manuals; 'chunky' parts - it's all simple. Now, there is a price to pay. You need a superb logistics system. You need $$ for spares. You are going to fund many more civilian companies with your defence budget because bits will be sent back despite being servicible (because the book says). There is little troubleshooting capability at the unit level, so there is less flexibility.

For the US military, this works. It simplifies expeditionary ops as long as that supply chain is there (and have there ever been anyone as good at logistics as the Americans?) - which is something the Germans have been discouraged from doing for generations. Furthermore, the factories that built the German stuff are right there - connected by awesome autobahns and filled with a technical workforce that has usually been the envy of Europe for more than a century. An AFV or truck can be mechanically complex (because that's German...) and still work in the military because worse case ops have you fighting in Poland or the Ukraine - not far at all. Even better - that supply line is from the user to the engineer which means putting a Rhinemetall or Mercedes team in the field to fix something is easy.

So yes, the German stuff is built for modern maintenance - but in the same way Audi, Porsche or BMW is. As long as the company is just there, and you don't push it hard in rough terrain, and you have a very technical workforce, and a guaranteed supply chain - all good! I'm not sure we can guarantee all that though...

There is consideration of the maintenance and supply chain taken into account during the T&E of all platforms. Sometimes it is less than we should (*waves at Tiger*) but you also may not be able to test every job in every set of conditions. I do know that the peeps who helped establish the LAND 400-2 competition looked beyond the shooty bits and pulled all types of people in to review their criteria and update it - including loggies. Certainly the entire Program was keen on testing all the bits that have hurt us in the past, even pulling pilots and RAEME peeps from the aviation world in to discuss T&E for ARH, MRH and CH-47 and what lessons could be applied. I am confident that, should it be declassified enough, the LAND 400 T&E could become an exemplar for the future.

Boxer may be a maintenance pig - but..... that may not be the fault of Rhinemetall. An AFV nowadays is a complex beast and we often under-estimate that for all equipment (*waves at Tiger again*), but especially AFVs. Hopefully that removes some of the risks that the areas of over-engineering have introduced. There is also significant onus on us to actually do our job in setting up the maintenance/engineering/supply workforce appropriately in a way that is commiserate with the complexity of the platform. If I asked you to maintain a, let's say, AH-1 fleet with the logistics workforce for Unimog's you would laugh at me. Jet turbine? Complex electronics? Complex mechanical systems? Treated like a truck? Takao - are you an idiot? Except if you replace the AH with an M....

 

[south]

Boxer may be a maintenance pig - but..... that may not be the fault of Rhinemetall. An AFV nowadays is a complex beast and we often under-estimate that for all equipment (*waves at Tiger again*), but especially AFVs. Hopefully that removes some of the risks that the areas of over-engineering have introduced. There is also significant onus on us to actually do our job in setting up the maintenance/engineering/supply workforce appropriately in a way that is commiserate with the complexity of the platform. If I asked you to maintain a, let's say, AH-1 fleet with the logistics workforce for Unimog's you would laugh at me. Jet turbine? Complex electronics? Complex mechanical systems? Treated like a truck? Takao - are you an idiot? Except if you replace the AH with an M....

G'day Takao - quick question. Is this an Army cultural aspect? You have alluded on a number of occasions to Army underestimating the complexity of tiger (and probably to a similar extent MRH-90); however one look at the cockpit and spec sheet and you can tell that it is a completely different beast to a UH-1 Bushranger / Kiowa. Why was there such an issue on the maintenance side?

 

[Volkodav]

Just had a thought in regards to ADF, in particular Army, aiding civilian authorities. I was wondering if it would be useful to re raise a Pioneer capability, i.e. units trained in both infantry and light engineering roles.

The current deployments to aid in firefighting, logistic support, route clearance, firebreak creation, evacuations etc. would be ideal for pioneers, more so than either infantry or combat engineers.

It occurs to me that deployments to Afghanistan etc. required significant engineering support for the security operations, while the reconstruction and training missions required significant security. This again seems ideal for pioneers.