French 155 mm gun on offer for Australia Land 17

[fantassin]

ADI Limited and Giat Industries team with CAESAR for land 17

9/28/2004


Melbourne, 28 September 2004 – ADI Limited (Australia) and Giat Industries (France) have signed a cooperation agreement to offer the proven CAESAR artillery system to the Australian Army for its Land 17 Artillery Replacement program.

The teaming agreement, signed at this year’s Land Warfare Conference, will enable the most advanced wheeled, self-propelled artillery system to be a key element of the networked system solution ADI is proposing for Land 17. This agreement covers both delivery and through life support of the system and the ability to provide ongoing development to meet the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) future needs.



The agreement follows a long assessment by ADI of the most flexible, effective and mature systems that meet Australia’s strategic and tactical requirements of the ADF’s future indirect fire weapons system.

“CAESAR has achieved what its competitors are still striving for. It is a cost-effective, low-risk, balanced system that offers a quantum shift in Army’s current capability. It would take the Army to the forefront of current developed technology. It provides substantial manpower efficiencies and much lower support costs compared to competing systems.” said Lucio Di Bartolomeo, ADI’s Managing Director.

"Both the French Army and United Defense, Giat's U.S. partner, have come to the same conclusion as ADI, added Luc Vigneron, CEO of Giat Industries. The French Army is on the eve of signing a contract for of 72 units and we are working with United Defense to offer CAESAR to the US Army.”

CAESAR is a lightweight 52 calibre, 155mm howitzer that is mounted on a 6x6 truck. Its ordnance is derived from the battle proven Giat 155mm gun systems used in previous towed and tracked configurations in the 1st Gulf War and Balkans War in particular. CAESAR provides both strategically agile air transportable firepower and the flexibility of a modular system that can be adjusted to meet changing battlefield requirements now and in the future.

ADI Limited is Australia’s oldest, largest and most diverse defence company with annual revenues in excess of $A700m. ADI is Australia’s pre-eminent defence prime contracting and systems integration company. It is a major supplier to the Australian Army and is actively engaged in providing product which will enable the army to meet its hardening and networking objectives. It constructs and maintains naval ships; designs and supplies command support systems, aviation mission systems and naval communications equipment; designs and manufacturers high mobility and protected military and emergency response vehicles; and supports the ADF’s small arms and its medium and large calibre guns systems. ADI is also the primary supplier of munitions to the ADF..

Heir to more than three centuries of land armament, Giat Industries' mission is to meet the requirements of the French Army as well as other armies worldwide. Giat has acquired unrivalled expertise in all the components of modern air-land systems: protection, command, mobility, fires, and support. Giat Industries generated revenues of 729 million euros in 2003 and allocates 20 % of sales invested in research and development. Giat Industries equipment and customer's services (MBTs, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, munitions, information terminal systems, product support and upgrades) is in service in over 100 countries.

http://www.giat-industries.fr/us_index.asp

[David Lehmann]

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/caesar/

Interesting, Australia has already bought Airbus A330 tanker aircrafts, Tigre attack helicopters and AFAIK has choosen or has good chance to choose the NH-90 transport helicopters instead of more UH-60 Blackhawks.

Regards,

David

[ShotOver]

Yeah mate, NH-90 helos are goin to the troops. And the blackhawks are all being moved to New South Wales for use in TAG-E and/or other CT Teams.

[MARINO]

Astralian navy plans to buy 2 LHD in Spain(from IZAR) and also F-100 AEGIS Frigate(Alvaro de Bazan Class)

[David Lehmann]

Hello,

I thought that the LHD choice was not yet finished and that there were good chance for the brad new French Mistral LHD class.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?prod=47638&session=dae.5836068.1100527790.QZi4rsOa9dUAAFwH4TI&modele=jdc_1

http://www.yaffa.com.au/defence/current/9-103.htm

http://frenchnavy.free.fr/ships/lhd/ntcd.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/mistral.htm

http://www.dcn.fr/us/produits/batiments_projection.html

Regards,

David

[fantassin]

Yes, the choice should be made during the second half of 2005; the Aussies are interested in the BPC Mistral Class but the Spanish ships are cheaper and the spanish also throw a frigate in the bargain for a very good price apparently...we shall see.

[Harlequin]

... but the Spanish ships are cheaper and the spanish also throw a frigate in the bargain for a very good price apparently...we shall see.
The spanish LHD _was_ cheaper before spain had to pay back under EU law illegal state aid for Izar.

De facto, when Spain can get 8 Billion EUR in EU agrar aid per year, they should not take that as an excuse to divert state money to subsidise their ship yards ;)

[Michael RVR]

From what i've seen the spanish ships are bigger and more capable anyway, so to me they would be the logical choice, even if they were more expensive.

:)

[digrar]

From what I have read in our press the Spainish ships are a better match for us. We will see.

[Nizark]

man, sounds like the Aussies are gearing up for a fight! Glad to have them as an partner

[Loco]

... but the Spanish ships are cheaper and the spanish also throw a frigate in the bargain for a very good price apparently...we shall see.
The spanish LHD _was_ cheaper before spain had to pay back under EU law illegal state aid for Izar.

De facto, when Spain can get 8 Billion EUR in EU agrar aid per year, they should not take that as an excuse to divert state money to subsidise their ship yards ;)
I´ve read the same about this months ago in a thread about frigates are being built in Spain for Norway, and it´s wrong. I´ll explain and I hope it´ll be enough once time:
In Spain, like in many contries, there´re companies that operates under the civil law although they´re owned by the State, like Izar(shipyards). Time ago we had a big public group, which operated in many fields(agriculture, industrie, services...) but many of this companies were sold to private share owners in public offers(Telefonica or Repsol) or were sold to a private owner in a contest(Santa Barbara, weapons, sold to General Dynamics). Still there´re some companies owned by spanish state like Paradores(luxury class hotels in castles or other monuments) and Izar. Izar was the result of the union of militar shipyards(former Bazán Astilleros) and civil shipyards. When both militar and civil shipyards were mixed in the same corporation there were strong criticisms in Spain because militar shipyards were profitable themselves alone, but the civil shipyards had losses, and still they have losses, and the purpose of that union was trying to benefit the civil sector of the wealth of the militar sector, that not only is strategic for Spain and I don´t need to say the reason, but it´s too a good business and returns many euros to Spain thanks to exports. In Europe and in USA everybody subsidiates its own industry, the big fail of PP goverment(uhh? weren´t they perfect??) was that they subsidiated the factory, Izar, when in fact they should subsidiated the customers, and of course they didn´t say anything before the elections they lost. The same by the way that are doing our french, german, italians, british, etc. competitors. Spain didn´t cheat in the contests for selling war ships to Norway, for example, we didn´t need to do it, as I said UE hasn´t any problem with the militar branch of Izar, the problem is clear: the civil shipyards were the ones subsidiated. Spain will attend the contest for the australian navy without any problem, and I hope we will win the contest as we did in the case of Norway. If we have some industrie we can compare with advantage with the ones of France and Germany, it´s military shipyards, and our european "friends" know it.
And of course Spain diverted no money from our peasants for shipyards, this isn´t an smart statement, every euro you receive from EU must be used in the use it´s given for. Btw, is France the one that gets more money for agriculture use. In my opinion, I´d impede any euro for agriculture, period.
And it would deserve a whole thread what´s the worth of the UE for, since when Spain joined the EU has lost thousands of employes in shipyards and EU has tolerated that South Korea became the main shipyard of the world, nothing less than the 70% of world civil ships are built in SKorea, when Europe built 30 years ago the same percentage, and SKorea has developed ths monopoly not only subsidiating but with dumping.