Land Warfare 2007: Sappers get armour for Afghanistan | ADM Feb 07

1 February 2007

By Gregor Ferguson

The Royal Australian Engineers got a welcome Christmas present: a fleet of armoured engineer vehicles for its sappers working in southern Afghanistan.

The Army has taken delivery of 12 armoured engineer vehicles which were scheduled to be deployed to the 1st Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) in southern Afghanistan early this year.

The vehicles consists of COTS earthmovers, loaders, bulldozers, graders and rollers from a variety of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM); they were fitted with armoured cabs in a rapid acquisition program, Project Paladin, by prime contractor Thales Australia at Bendigo.

The company delivered the upgraded vehicles to the DMO on 30 November and they were handed over to the Army 15 December at the School of Military Engineering at Moorebank, NSW.

The vehicles were to be shipped and airfreighted to Oruzgan Province in Afghanistan early this year. At present, the 400-strong 1 RTF is equipped with ASLAVs and Bushmasters.

According to Land Commander MGEN Mark Kelly, who attended the handover, the sappers are delivered to and from their work sites under protection, but the unprotected cabs of the equipment they are currently using means they can only be employed in relatively low-risk locations.

The armoured cabs of their new equipment will allow them to venture further afield.

Project Paladin got under way in June 2006 when the DMO received a Materiel Support Order from Army, following a first warning order in May; the statement of work was passed to Thales Australia the following month, and the modified vehicles were handed over to the DMO on 30 November - which was when the paper work finally caught up with the program to allow Thales Australia and the DMO to sign the $5 million prime contract.

The total project value is $11.4 million, including the acquisition of the COTS engineer plant: two Caterpillar D5G medium dozers; two Komatsu PC130 medium excavators; four John Deere JD270 skid-steer loaders; two caterpillar 563-series rollers; and two Hitachi LX100 front end loaders.

The armour modification consists of ballistic steel plate and glass apertures around the cabs.

Exact details of the level of ballistic, mine and blast protection have not been disclosed in order to protect the operators.

However, the level of protection is understood to be not less than that of the Army's existing Bushmaster IMVs which are manufactured in the same Thales Australia facility at Bendigo.

Indeed, in order to reduce time and risk the armour kits developed for the sappers make extensive use of existing Bushmaster components, including windows, latches and other pre-tested and certified items.

This meant Thales Australia could provide rapidly designed mock-ups of the armour kits so that 1 RTF sappers could train on representative equipment in Darwin before departing for Afghanistan.

It also means the logistics chain set up to support the Bushmaster in Afghanistan can also support the sappers' equipment.

The engineer plant was selected with the additional weight and stability demands of the armour in mind; according to Thales all of the OEMs were happy to provide CAD data in order to hasten and simplify the design and integration of the armour.

According to the Head of DMO's Land Systems Division, Colin Sharpe, all parties focused on getting the job done in order to support the sappers in Afghanistan, without worrying too much about the paperwork.

The level of commercial risk they all shouldered is evident in the fact the prime contract was only signed on the day Thales Australia delivered the finished vehicles.

In many ways Project Paladin was a model for a complex, developmental, rapid acquisition program.

It made extensive use of the skills and capabilities of Australian industry, including Thales, armour plate suppliers Bisalloy and BlueScope Steel, and other automotive and military sub-contractors and suppliers around Bendigo.

The use of MOTS Bushmaster components hastened the process still further.

As happened two years ago with the bar armour modification kits for the Al Mutthana Task Force ASLAVs, the DMO and Australian industry demonstrated they could meet a complex, urgent operational requirement quickly and cost-effectively.