The Australian Ministry of Defense has announced the initial operational readiness of Hawkei light armored vehicles. They should replace the Australian Army Land Rover SUVs with a four-by-four wheel formula. It is assumed that the Hawkei will reach full operational readiness by 2023.
Thales Australia won the tender for the development of the Hawkei in 2015. Under the contract, it must supply the Australian Armed Forces with 1,100 light armored vehicles and 1,058 trailers to replace Land Rover SUVs with a four-by-four wheel formula. The latter have been in service with the Australian army since 1958.
The creation of Hawkei was accompanied by sharp criticism. The National Audit Office in [...] a 2018 report stated that the Australian Army should not have rushed with the tender choice in favor of Thales Australia. Problems were found during the tests of the prototypes, and due to the revision, the company received permission for mass production [...] two years later than planned-in 2020. In the same year, the first five Hawkei from the first pre-production batch were sent to the army.
On July 11, the Australian Ministry of Defense announced the initial operational readiness of Hawkei light armored vehicles. They will reach full operational readiness by 2023. The military noted that together with Thales Australia, they solved the problem with braking, which they discovered in 2020. The Hawkei weighs seven tons and can carry four to six people. The armored vehicle is equipped with a six-cylinder diesel engine with a capacity of 268 horsepower and can move at a maximum speed of one hundred kilometers per hour on the highway. The range of the armored vehicle is more than a thousand kilometers.
In addition to armored cars, Thales Australia also supplies the Australian armed forces with F90 submachine guns, which we wrote about earlier. They are made in two versions — for close combat and for accurate shooting at relatively distant targets.
Vasilisa Chernyavtseva
