Defence Business: Wheels on fire | ADM August 2011
Gregor Ferguson and Julian Kerr | Sydney and Anglesea
The Hawkei light protected vehicle has emerged with incredible speed. Thales Australia and its partners, Israeli armour specialist Plasan Sasa (responsible for the hull design and armour manufacture), Boeing Defence Australia (responsible for logistics support) and Melbourne-based production engineering specialist PAC Group started the conceptual work on the Hawkei in 2008. The first formal design meeting was held in Bendigo in April 2009, and Thales submitted its bid for the Manufactured & Supported in Australia (MSA) component of Project Land 121 Ph.4 on 30 September 2009.
That same day, Plasan Sasa began blast testing hull prototypes in Israel. Barely thirteen months later the vehicle was launched formally at the Land Warfare Conference in Brisbane. And in June this year specialist defence and motoring writers were able to ride as passengers in Beta versions of the Hawkei at the Anglesea proving ground near Geelong.
First some background: Project Land 121 Ph.4 seeks to replace around 1,300 Army Landrover 4x4 and 6x6 Perenties with a new Protected Mobility Vehicle (Light), or PMV(L), in several versions: about 50 6-seat recce variants; about 650 4-6-seat liaison and command & control vehicle with a 2.5-3 tonne payload, and around 600 utility variants with a 2-3-person cab and flat load bed capable of carrying the volume equivalent of four ammunition pallets or a half-ISO container, and a payload of 3 tonnes. The vehicle must be highly mobile, light enough to be slung below a CH-47D Chinook and offer similar protection to the Bushmaster PMV.
The requirement for a strongly armoured wheeled vehicle in the 7 tonne class is roughly consistent with the requirement by the US Army and US Marines for a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace the massive US fleet of armoured Humvees. At the LWC in 2008 then-defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced that Australia would pay $40 million to become a partner in the JLTV program, with the clear intent this would satisfy the PMV(L) requirement.
Subsequently, in response to local industry pressure, Defence also solicited industry proposals for an MSA option; this vehicle would be assembled in Australia and supported by a local supply chain and industry base. As a further back-up Project Land 121 Ph.4 also includes provision for the so-called Market Available Option, in effect a fully imported MOTS solution.
The MSA requirements are relatively loose, unlike the JLTV’s; the whole purpose of the MSA exercise is to help defence define its requirements. However, in avoiding detailed, prescriptive specifications it has allowed the bidders to be more innovative than might otherwise have been the case. It’s not clear whether a future phase of the project will specify Defence’s user requirements in more detail, requiring minor design changes to the Hawkei and its MSA rivals.
Nevertheless, the Hawkei Industry Team has met the high-level MSA requirements with just two variants of a basic design – a ute and a 4-6 seater capable of being re-roled in the field for recce, liaison or command and control on the move. In its most basic configuration it weighs 6.81 tonnes, can handle a 2.5-3-tonne payload and offers the same levels of blast and mine protection as the Bushmaster. A B-Kit of appliqué armour consisting of externally mounted ceramic panels weighing some 600kg increases the protection to a much higher, so-called ‘Objective Level’ which isn’t specified. Nor, for that matter is the protection level of the Bushmaster, for obvious reasons. The GVM is 10.6 tonnes.
The Hawkei design is driven by Thales’s understanding of Defence’s needs, but also reflects the needs of other potential customers so has left and right-hand drive options. The basic configuration places the crew in a protected hull designed by Plasan to which are attached sub-frames front and rear carrying the engine, transmission and axles. These are located well forward and aft of the crew compartment with only the main propeller shaft passing underneath it, to reduce the risk of penetration. The underside of the hull uses a triple-vee configuration for mine blast attenuation, with crew seats separated from the floor structure and suspended instead from the roof to prevent leg and spinal injuries.
The 7-tonne weight target makes the design process a zero-sum game. To control weight the armour is concentrated around the crew compartment: the underlying philosophy is that any blast serious enough to damage the vehicle will likely immobilise it anyway so there’s little point in protecting the drive train and engine. To ensure the integrity of the armour the areas which can’t easily be reached from outside the vehicle, such as the floor and key bulkheads, are designed from the outset to deliver the objective level of protection, with spall liners already built in on the assembly line.
The B-Kit’s appliqué panels are designed for two people to be able to fit or remove them within 30 minutes, though the company has shown it can be down in less than half of this time without undue haste. To allow an easy two-man lift no panel weighs more than 50kg and they are simply located in position by lugs and brackets and then secured by heavy snap locks which are sized to handle much heavier armour panels in the future, if required. There are 21 panels covering the sides, front, back and roof of the vehicle and the drive line and suspension are designed to accommodate even heavier armour in the future.
So far the Hawkei Industry team has carried out its own blast and ballistic testing in Israel, in some cases with Israel Defence Force observers, on three test rigs, five hulls and two complete vehicles, along with other tests on smaller components such as armour panels and transparencies.
Unlike the Bushmaster the Hawkei employs bonded and bolted construction. This is easier to repair, easier to upgrade throughout its service life and easier to build, especially in high volumes, says Thales. This is the technique employed by Navistar in its Maxpro MRAP vehicle for the US Army which has seen production rates of 800-1,000 vehicles a month. The technique also allows distributed manufacture and so greater flexibility in the manufacturing supply chain.
Field repairs require only a tented workshop: dissolving the adhesive bond and then re-applying it after replacing damaged hull components doesn’t require a climate-controlled environment.
Thales told the media at Anglesea that it was unable to comment on Project Land 121 Ph.4 and the user trials program which had just come to a climax with a full-scale under-belly blast test of one of the Hawkei prototypes at Puckapunyal. While the company steadfastly refused to discuss these and other tests, however, the body language from the project team was confident and up-beat.
The drive line consists of a 200kW Steyr M16 3.2 litre diesel engine driving through a ZF 6-speed transmission with a torque converter lock and two-speed GHM transfer case. The axles employ independent coil sprung suspension, four-wheel disc brakes with ABS and four-wheel steering. An inline starter/generator produces 65kW (105kW at peak power) and 750v to power the vehicle’s electronics payload.
The Hawkei uses Michelin 365/80R tyres with runflat inserts and a central tyre inflation system. It doesn’t employ active suspension which adds to the cost and weight; the JLTV program is the only market which demands this.
The Vehicle Electronic Architecture (VEA) is based on Thales’s own SOTAS (Signal Onboard Two-wire Audio System), an integrated internal voice and data communications system already aboard the Bushmaster. This is integrated with a Boeing Health & Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) and power management system and is configured to support a greatly expanded mission role kit.
The intent is that there will be no mission-specific variants of the Hawkei: it is pre-wired for additional sensors, antennas, processors, displays and communications system to simplify configuration management and so that the integrity of the ballistic protection isn’t compromised by the need to disassemble any of it to install new cabling or equipment.
Overall, the Hawkei achieves about 70 per cent Australian industry content, roughly the same as the Bushmaster. The steel used on the Hawkei, is locally sourced; the ceramic armour currently comes from Plasan in Israel, but they are looking for a local partner who could manufacture it.
With less than half a dozen alpha- and beta-test vehicles manufactured so far the Hawkei Industry Team has already designed an assembly line able to handle high production rates and modelled a supply chain that’s able to keep up with the hoped-for domestic and export sales and sustainment demand.
The five test vehicles built so far consist of the original Mule prototype which enabled initial track testing, and then alpha- and beta-test versions of the command vehicle and ute. These started track testing in August and the alpha command vehicle was the LWC display item. The alpha-test ute and beta-test command and control vehicles were handed over to Defence on 23 February this year to start the Land 121 Ph.4 test program at Monegeeta; the alpha-test command and beta-test ute variants were retained for company testing.
It was these that ADM got to examine at Anglesea. The company’s in-house test program has accumulated some 40,000 test kilometres already, ADM was told, and needs to achieve 80-100,000km to build up a performance-based understanding of how it works and what it takes to keep going. The HUMS records multiple performance and mechanical parameters for downloading after each drive. This is common within the commercial trucking industry and resembles the regime being developed for the Joint Strike Fighter, but is new to the Australian Army, at least at this level of sophistication.
To market, to market…
For an 8.5-tonne vehicle (in the configuration shown to us) the Hawkei command vehicle is remarkably nimble. None of the media were allowed to drive it, but subjective impressions from both front and back passenger seats were positive. The Hawkei rides smoothly, seems to handle and corner well and its brakes are powerful.
Occupants wear a four-point harness. Visibility from the front seats is good, in spite of the thick windscreen pillars, and even in the back there’s sufficient visibility through the front windscreen and small rear side windows to maintain situational awareness. The command variant has four doors and space in the ‘boot’ for cargo and equipment. The ute is a three-seater with plenty of space in the cab for personal equipment and weapons.
The Anglesea test track was rain-soaked and the cross-country course was very demanding. With low-range selected and the torque converter locked the Hawkei had no difficulty negotiating steep, muddy tracks and creek beds, with noise levels low enough for conversation between helmet-wearing occupants.
The Hawkei amply demonstrated its potential – its actual strengths and weaknesses have been examined more closely by Defence in its Customer Evaluation Trials at Monegeeta, but the overall impression was of a well thought-out design with considerable attention paid to its useability on a day to day basis as well as to the protection of its occupants.
Last month Thales and its partners were due to start design activity for the gamma-test variant of the Hawkei with the intent of starting prototype testing of two vehicles early next year. This rapid prototyping and test program is designed to present a market-ready product by April 2012.
The media presentation at Anglesea was the first step in a global marketing campaign for the Hawkei, including a significant presence at EuroSatory in Paris in June 2012, and possibly the DVD military vehicle event at Millbrook in the UK shortly afterwards.
Thales submitted a response to the Pentagon’s JLTV market survey in May this year, but won’t decide whether or not to submit a bid for the four-year JLTV Engineering Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase until it sees the RFT later this year or early in 2012, ADM was told. However, the Australian and international market for the Hawkei is significant and more than justifies the $30 million invested in R&D so far, which includes the $9 million initial design activity contracts awarded to Thales and its two MSA rivals, General Dynamics Land Systems Australia and Force Protection.
Project Land 121 Ph.4 alone will be worth some $1.5 billion, with a production run of 1,300 vehicles – one of the largest programs of its kind in the world. The $21 million (and counting) which the industry partners have invested represents less than 1.5 per cent of the project’s total budget but is still probably the highest level of privately funded R&D on a single project in recent Australian defence industry history. The effort has demanded 150,000 man hours of work from 43 engineers, the construction of five (soon to be seven) running prototypes, blast tests on no less than 10 major test articles (including two complete vehicles), and a lightning-fast 18-month progression from concept to prototype.
The Hawkei’s first challenge is to impress the DMO and Army in the Commonwealth Evaluation Trial at Monegeeta. If it has achieved this, it faces further commercial hurdles with down-selects and competitive tenders to follow against two world-class rivals who have already completed development and qualification testing and in one case – GD’s Eagle IV – already has vehicles operational in the field. And Defence hasn’t said yet how it plans to approach the next stages of Project Land 121 Ph.4: the recent four-year delay in the JLTV program could make the MSA option considerably more attractive to Canberra than was the case 18 months ago; this in turn could bolster the Hawkei’s prospects, but it will need to fight for success against strong and credible competition.
Subject: Land