Aussies beef up army vehicles

UPDATE: A$1.3 BILLION ON ARMOURED VEHICLES Prime Minister Turnbull announces plan to modernise the nation’s military.

Sydney

Australia will spend A$1.3 billion (R12.5 billion) on next-generation armoured land vehicles for its army, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday, as he announced the latest update to modernise the nation’s military.

Australian forces are part of the coalition fighting Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria, but Turnbull denied the procurement of 1 100 blast-resistant Hawkei’s from Thales Australia suggested a greater global engagement.

“I am not signalling that,” Turnbull told reporters at a joint press conference with Defence Minister Marise Payne at a test facility for the Hawkei vehicles north of Melbourne.

“However, the reality is IEDs (improvised explosive devices), for example, are a feature of the modern battlefield and regardless of the context in which the Australian Defence Force is operating that type of threat is almost certainly going to be there. These vehicles are able to operate in every terrain.”

Australia last year beefed up its air power with the $12.4 billion (R169 billion) purchase of 58 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to bring its total Joint Strike force to 72 planes, and this year said it would buy two long-distance C-17 Globemaster planes in an A$1 billion procurement to boost military and disaster relief operations worldwide.

Canberra has not yet decided on its biggest ever defence procurement programme – an estimated A$50 billion project to replace current diesel and electric-powered Collins Class submarines. –