Project LAND 400 Phase 2 will acquire 225 Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles (CRV) to replace the Australian Light Armoured Vehicle (ASLAV).
The Phase 2 fleet will include seven variants. On 28 July 2016, Defence announced that BAE Systems Australia and Rheinmetall had been shortlisted to participate in the Risk Mitigation Activity, which is the second stage of the tender evaluation process.
Rheinmetall has offered the Boxer Multi Role Armoured Vehicle integrated with the Rheinmetall Lance turret.
Australian Department of Defence
March 14, 2018
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In an article by Matt Young, published on news.com.au about the selection of the new combat vehicle, a number of details were highlighted.
THE Australian Army is set for a massive overhaul of fighting vehicles in a “discrete” $200 billion reequipment megaproject to inject more power into Australia’s ageing fleet of armed forces — and this is only the beginning.
Australia’s top political military figures have announced the largest purchase in the history of the Australian Army which Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said was based on “lethality and survivability”.
The Turnbull Government plans to use the new Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle (CRV), known as “The Boxer”, to replace the Army’s current crop of substandard products, the Australian Light Armoured Vehicle, or ASLAV for short.
“We’ve put them in the heat, we’ve put them in the cold, we’ve put them in the wet, we’ve put them in the dry, we’ve shot at them, we’ve tried to blow them up,” Defence Minister Marise Payne said.
The move follows the Army being left forced to use substandard products in combat, threatening the lives of Australian soldiers by using older products not suited to modern day warfare, a security expert has told news.com.au.
“This is a large step up in terms of size and capability from the vehicle they are replacing,” Marcus Hellyer, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said.
“You could technically say that defence has undercapitalised its armoured vehicle fleet for decades.
“The Army got to the point where they couldn’t take ASLAVs any more to Afghanistan because they couldn’t withstand the blast of an improvised explosive device (IED).
“The kinds of vehicles that the Army currently has, the ASLAV, and M113, are just not capable of surviving on a modern battlefield, they can’t survive even in lower threat environments such as Afghanistan.
“We had ASLAVs blown up in Afghanistan and soldiers killed to the point where Army chose not to deploy any more. It didn’t even deploy its M113s to Afghanistan at all.
“The M113 is really a vehicle with a 1950s pedigree, and we still have M113s in the Army today that went to Vietnam. They are a much older technology.
“The Boxer will provide protection against those IEDs as well as rocket propelled grenades.”
