The Afghanistan conflict has produced some quality literature and more is sure to appear. For this correspondent a standout remains Dead Men Risen by Toby Harnden which recounts the tour of the Welsh Guards in Helmand in 2009.
In this period, Helmand was the true badlands and for this mission the UK battalion had insufficient men and helicopters and their armoured vehicles were inadequate for omnipresent threat of IEDs.
No more clearly was that demonstrated than on July 1, 2009 when a Viking armoured vehicle detonated a large IED, killing the battalion’s commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe. The Viking is a curious dual tracked tractor-trailer vehicle useful in lots of places for moving men and kit. But its flat under body armour and absence of V-shaped hull made it a death trap in places where IEDs were thick on the ground.
The UK subsequently withdrew Vikings from operations in Afghanistan, replacing them with the Singapore Technologies Kinetics Bronco, a vehicle similar in appearance but much resistant to insurgent IEDs.
The point of all this is Australia has been exceptionally fortunate from the outset to be equipped with armoured vehicles appropriate to the IED threat. Not all kit issued to diggers in Afghanistan has been brilliant but few criticisms could be levelled at ASLAV and Bushmaster armoured vehicles.
Plenty have been blown up, some catastrophically damaged but just one Australian soldier has been killed as the direct consequence of an IED strike on a vehicle. That was Trooper David Pearce, killed when his ASLAV hit an IED on October 8, 2007. On balance, the Bushmaster would probably be the better choice to get blown up in. No soldier has ever died in one, though plenty have been damaged, some catastrophically. That’s been a significant sales point for Thales in seeking foreign military sales, which so far amount to around four dozen, not at all bad for a vehicle which experienced a difficult development path. At one stage sections of the army appeared positively disenchanted, branding this Project Winnebago after the bloated US-made camper vans. What they wanted was more ASLAVs.
So Australia is set to emerge from Afghanistan with a substantial fleet of ASLAV and Bushmaster vehicles which provided sound service and for which defence is already thinking about a replacement through Project Land 400, now known as Project Destrier.
This emerged from the 2009 Defence White Paper which envisaged some 1,100 deployable protected vehicles able to be employed in close combat in tasks across the spectrum of conflict. The 2013 Defence White Paper reiterated the need for credible high-end capabilities, specifically new armoured vehicles with improved firepower, protection and mobility compared with existing systems.
Enough would be needed to equip the armoured cavalry regiment in each of three multi-role combat brigades as a central element of the land combat envisaged in Force 2030.
The Land 400 project team sees a well armoured class of fast moving infantry fighting vehicles, wheeled or tracked, able to conduct a range of missions – direct fire overwatch, scout, coordinate fires, carry a section of nine infantry up to assault dismount point and then to support them against opposition.
The Land 400 Land Combat Vehicle System (LCVS) would do the job now performed by three types of vehicle – the ASLAV, Vietnam-era but now upgraded M-113 Armoured personnel Carriers and the Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicle.
Each of the legacy vehicles performs a particular job well. For example the ASLAV gun car variant has a truly impressive ability to reach out and obliterate distant targets by day or night with its 25mm gun. Having travelled in the back of an ASLAV troop carrier across southern Iraq, your correspondent and presumably most soldiers, would much prefer to travel in a Bushmaster.
Defence is looking at a military off-the-shelf (MOTS) or Australianised MOTS solution and there would appear to be plenty of potential contenders out there. For starters, there’s the US Army’s new requirement for a Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), a tracked or wheeled infantry fighting vehicle featuring the best aspects of proven legacy systems such as Stryker.
The requirement does specify that the chosen vehicle needs to be air transportable “by strategic assets” where necessary. The defence briefing literature says LCVS will feature “precision lethality, survivability, integration and sustainability.”
But that may not be enough because what it also needs in the current fiscal environment is world class affordability, considering the large inventory of well-performing legacy vehicles and the absence of money, a problem likely to endure for some years.
Already first pass, initially scheduled for 2013, has been pushed out to FY 2013/14-2014/15.
In the 2011 Army User Requirement, initial operating capability was listed at 2022 but a briefing in June now puts that at FY 2026/27-2027/28.
So could a sufficiently compelling business case be made for Land 400? That will be up to the next government and the new defence minister who will have to juggle a whole variety of competing project demands.
In this Australia isn’t alone as the US military has its own budget problems which in terms of big numbers make Australian issues seem modest indeed. In a report in April the US Congressional Budget Office queried whether the GCV requirement could not be met by any number of alternatives, all substantially cheaper and likely to be available much sooner.
For example, upgrading existing Bradley infantry fighting vehicles could save some US$20 billion. That would deliver a vehicle with more firepower than envisaged for GCV but with capacity for only seven troops.
It’s even been suggested the project could be cancelled entirely, leaving Australia with the choice of going it alone or postponing until better times.
