Australian Media "Decision to Introduce Hanwha Redbacks"

129 Redback Armored Vehicles... Worth 2.067 Trillion Won

Hanwha Aerospace has reportedly been selected as the supplier of armored vehicles worth 2 trillion won by the Australian government.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Australian local media outlets ABC and Financial Review reported on the 26th (local time) that “The Australian Military Security Committee decided the day before to provide 129 Redback infantry fighting vehicles to the Australian Army, and this fact was notified to Hanwha Defense and the Korean government on the same day.”

However, Hanwha Aerospace stated that it has not yet received an official document from the Australian government. The local media’s reference to Hanwha Defense appears to refer to Hanwha Defense Australia, the local subsidiary of Hanwha Aerospace.

According to local reports, Hanwha Aerospace will produce 129 Redback vehicles to replace the Australian Army’s M113 armored vehicles under the 'LAND 400 Phase 3 project.' The project scale is about 2.4 billion Australian dollars (approximately 2 trillion 670 billion won). The Australian armored vehicle procurement project was originally planned to order 450 new armored vehicles worth 10 billion Australian dollars. However, the Labor government significantly reduced the project scale in April and changed the order to only 129 vehicles.

Defense Minister Richard Marles stated that Hanwha Defense was excluded from the armored vehicle contract selection process because it is currently building an AS-9 self-propelled artillery factory in his electoral district of Geelong. Australia announced its new armored vehicle procurement plan in September 2019 and shortlisted Hanwha Defense’s Redback and Germany’s Rheinmetall Lynx as the final candidates. ABC previously reported that the Redback was evaluated as superior to the Lynx during the Australian Army’s 2021 risk mitigation activity campaign.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.