Thales today announced that it has secured Boeing to provide Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) to Thales’s bid for the Australian Army’s LAND 121 Phase 4 program.
LAND 121, also known as Project Overlander, will replace the Army’s fleet of logistic support vehicles. Phase 4 will provide armoured light mobility vehicles to improve the safety of deployed troops.
Thales is offering a Protected Mobility Vehicle – Light (PMV-L) for Land 121 Phase 4.
Boeing subsidiary Boeing Defence Australia will provide Thales’s vehicle with ILS, a technique which ensures the supportability of an equipment item during its design and development. The end goal of ILS is to create systems that last longer and require less support, thereby saving costs by achieving a higher return on long-term investments.
“Boeing Defence Australia is a leader in this field, and our collective strength means we will be highly competitive in this bid,” said Ian Irving, Vice President of Thales Australia’s Land & Joint Systems Division.
“We have taken significant expertise from around the world and combined it with our many years of experience with the successful Bushmaster program to offer the Commonwealth, the Defence Materiel Organization and the Australian Defence Force a solution that meets LAND 121 Phase 4 requirements,” Mr Irving added.
“The partnership between Boeing Defence Australia and Thales Australia creates a strong and well-equipped team that uses both companies’ best practices to provide the leading incountry ILS solution for Land 121 Phase 4,” said John Duddy, Boeing Defence Australia Vice President and Managing Director. “We will draw on our excellence in supply chain modelling, 3-D interactive technical publications and global supply chain management when tailoring requirements to fully complement Thales’s PMV-L design.”
“This partnership is all about delivering world-class capability to the Australian Defence Force,” Mr Irving said. “Our highly skilled workforce in Bendigo, Victoria, already provides unrivalled local expertise in delivering protected mobility solutions. We are now in a position to offer even more capability to our customers, covering the entire development and supply chain process.”
Boeing Defence Australia, a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary and a business unit of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, has nearly 2,000 employees at 13 locations throughout Australia supporting programs for the Australian government and defence forces, international and commercial customers.
Thales is a global technology leader for the Aerospace, Space, Defence, Security and Transportation markets. In 2008, the company generated revenues of 12.7 billion euros (equivalent of AUD22.1 billion) with 68,000 employees in 50 countries.
Thales Australia is a trusted partner of the Australian Defence Force and is also present in commercial sectors ranging from air traffic management to security systems and services. Employing around 3,500 people in over 35 sites across the country, Thales Australia recorded revenues of more than AUD1 billion in 2008.
