BAE Systems has won the five-year, $60 million contract to provide engineering, maintenance and supply support to the Royal Australian Navy's four upgraded guided missile frigates (FFGs).

In December, the Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) Alliance signed a further three contracts for elements of the ships' combat system: for the Infra Red Search and Track (IRST) capability, anti-ship missile and torpedo countermeasures, and Navigation Radar.

Deputy Chief of Army Major General Paul Symon has opened Thales's Australian Soldier Systems Development and Support Centre at Lithgow, NSW.

CEA Technologies' CEAFAR active phased array multi-function radar has been successfully demonstrated aboard a ship at sea, marking an important milestone for the RAN's ANZAC Anti-Ship Missile Defence (ASMD) Project.

The first of 42 MRH90 helicopters assembled by Australian Aerospace has been accepted by Defence at the company's facility in Brisbane; four aircraft manufactured in France by parent company Eurocopter have already been delivered.

As CEO of Rolls-Royce Australia Services, Tony Davis is responsible for the Australian arm of a company which provides half of the installed aero engines in the Australian and New Zealand defence forces, and has a leading position in the civil aerospace, marine and energy sectors.

Every nation with troops serving in Afghanistan imposes some sort of restriction on just how their soldiers can be used but some of these restrictive caveats are far more restrictive than others.

Defence is working its way towards 2nd Pass Approval for Army's new unit-level Battle Management System (BMS) under the combined Project Land 125 Ph.3/75 Ph.3.4 (conveniently abbreviated to Land 200).

Thales Australia and Canberra-based Kord Defence have signed a worldwide licensing agreement to use Kord's innovative Chordic control technology within the jointly developed Rifle Input Control (RIC).

The Minister for Defence Joel Fitzgibbon, confirmed that the 7th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment (7 RAR) has achieved its next major milestone in its growth to a full infantry battalion by deploying an operational combat team to Iraq.

An interesting feature of the Land Warfare Conference exhibition layout was the siting of Point Trading, representing the Heckler & Koch grenade machine gun (GMG), directly opposite Nioa Trading, offering the General Dynamics Mk-47 Lightweight Automatic Grenade Launcher (LAGL).

At LWC 2008 UK firm Selex Communications Ltd (formerly Marconi) announced it had secured a follow-on order from the DMO for a further 4,000 Personal Role Radios (PRR) under Project Land 125.

A soldier wearable system, known as Boomerang Warrior, is claimed to provide the same reliable performance and features as the vehicle mounted system but is smaller, lighter and integrated with tactical vests.

The safety of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is constantly being threatened by both trained snipers and rogue shooters in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are reported to be the second greatest cause of fatalities.

With the their AN/PRC-152 now selected for the dismounted requirements of Land 200's Combat Radio System and the mounted requirements when docked into a AN/PRC-110 vehicle adaptor, we suspect that Harris Communications will be looking to increase their reach into the ADF possibly through future replacements for the Army's Personal Role Radio acquired under Land 125.

The Australian Army might still get a new family of Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicles, or TUAVs, by early-2010 as originally planned - which says something about its original acquisition process which was cancelled in September last year.