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04 May 17. NIOA has joined the Rheinmetall Defence Australia team for its Land 400 Phase 2 bid to the Australian Defence Force, Rheinmetall announced on 2 May. The company has joined the team as the key supplier of ammunition and armament services. The Land 400 Phase 2 programme is seeking a mounted combat reconnaissance capability for the Australian Army. The Rheinmetall team’s offering is based on the Boxer armoured vehicle. Rheinmetall has committed to creating a programme of design, build and support for military vehicles in Australia if it is successful in its bid for the programme. NIOA’s capabilities will also boost the establishment of national infrastructure assets for military vehicles in Australia. Andrew Fletcher, managing director, Rheinmetall Defence Australia, said: ‘Working side by side on our Land 400 Phase 2 offer represents a natural next step in the relationship between Rheinmetall and NIOA. ‘Today’s agreement establishes yet another foundation in the development of Rheinmetall’s growing defence industrial network in Australia.’ (Source: Shephard)
03 May 17. The US Army is learning that it must adapt and change the way soldiers fight to succeed on future battlefields. That is being accelerated through multi-domain battle, in which future conflicts and adversaries will contest forces in all domains of war simultaneously. Within this new construct, logistical support could be one of the greatest challenges and concerns related to multi-domain battle for ground forces in the future.
The Army Capabilities Integration Center, or ARCIC, conducted the Demand Reduction Summit on April 19 to explore initiatives and objectives to aid development of an eventual demand reduction strategy.
“The Army must reduce its logistics and sustainment footprint to succeed on a multi-domain battlefield,” Col. Stephanie Gradford, chief of ARCIC’s Sustainment Division, told reporters during a media roundtable. The eventual strategy, she said, will improve freedom of movement and action during sustainment operations, especially in austere environments.
Components of a solution include reduced logistics demand, organic power generation, autonomous resupply, additional medical capabilities capacity and extended reach, she added.
“As we talk about multi-domain battle, the area that concerns me the most is not necessarily the tactical fight, but it’s our ability to logistically support and sustain over vast distances and over long periods of time when our logistical support can be attributed by kinetic operations or disrupted by cyber operations working against us,” Paul Rogers, director of the Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, said at a March conference. “If we want independent operations, we have to ensure logistical operations in a near-peer fight.”
Within these new battlefield concepts and based upon adversary’s denial goals, it is important to enable brigade combat teams to operate more independently. With logistical supply lines potentially being contested by adversaries, combined with theArmy’s own inherent sustainment woes, one solution being examined is additive manufacturing.
This could allow the Army to reduce demand at the point of need and produce combat spares or other critical items near the point of need so as to not rely upon a supply chain that will be contested or extended, said Col. Mark Simerly, chief of capability development and integration at Combined Arms Support Command.
The Army is also examining how to reduce fuel consumption through alternative measures as well as leveraging micro grid technologies and making water from hydrogen to lessen the need for logistical resupply.
Simerly noted that participants at the summit focused on improved distribution, or distribution through autonomy. These init