Defence has contracted L3Harris Technologies to deliver an advanced command and control suite for Army Bushmaster vehicles, allowing encrypted communications.
L3Harris Communications Australia Managing Director Andrew Rushbrook said by providing a complete design-through-installation C4I solution, they were delivering advanced, integrated communications systems to support Australian warfighters’ success in today's increasingly complex environments.
This upgrade, delivered through the LAND 4111 Phase 2 program will equip more than 80 command and troop carrier variant vehicles attached to operational Army units.
Installation will be performed over the next three years, with L3Harris equipping the selected Bushmasters with the resilient, interoperable communication systems at the company’s Indo-Pacific Regional Support Centre in Pinkenba, Queensland.
Speaking at the Land Forces defence expo in Perth, Mr Rushbrook said L3Harris opened the regional support centre in March last year to support the Australian Defence Force and the New Zealand Defence Force.
Currently the centre was doing servicing for the Philippines and Indonesia.
“That concept is there. But it is a sovereign concept design. When we won LAND 4111 Tranche 2 with regard to the Bushmaster C4I integration, all that tactical communications network work will be dolne by Australians in Australia for the ADF,” he said.
“In addition to that we have been able to support that with apprenticeship schemes and it has increased our workforce. It has been an important prtogram for us.”
L3Harris radios are made in the US and provide very high levels of security though encryption and frequency agility.
For the Bushmaster integration program, the actual radios are government furnished equipment which L3Harris will integrate.
These are used by the US military and are highly restricted though the US ITAR regime. They are more readily supplied to Australia, a close ally of the US, through AUKUS agreements.
“The suite of L3Harris waveforms is being used in the Ukraine at the moment. It is being used around the world,” Rushbrook said.
“They are ITAR waveforms because secret sauce in those waveforms has to be protected.”