The “Mission Forward” continues to gather pace. On Saturday, Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner handed over new state-of-the-art equipment to the soldiers of the 4th Reconnaissance and Artillery Battalion, which is part of the 4th Armored Infantry Brigade, stationed at the Liechtenstein Barracks in Allentsteig as part of the “Open Day”.
A turret training system for the M109 self-propelled howitzer is now available to the troops. It is a “rolling simulator” that was created by converting an M109 howitzer at the Dutch company Van Halteren Technologies. “This system is truly unique,” emphasized Ed Noorlander, the company’s Technical Director, who traveled to Allentsteig especially for the handover. The crew in the fighting compartment can use it to train all operations (acquiring the target, loading the gun and much more) for deployment in complete safety, and this system also offers enormous cost savings, as it allows live-fire exercises to be reduced. Overall, the armed forces two such training devices, which can be converted back into combat-ready howitzers at any time if required.
The second new weapon system, which Minister Tanner will develop together with Brigadier Georg Kollmann (-> see interview “Then we will be at the forefront in Europe”) from the Procurement Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, is the state-of-the-art 77A1 MOD Nightfighter assault rifle from the Austrian arms manufacturer Steyr Arms (-> Czech RSBC Group takes over Steyr Arms). Thanks to its special color alloy, this weapon is invisible to infrared night vision devices and thus improves the night combat capability of soldiers.
At the handover, Tanner once again referred to the many financial failures of the past decades and emphasized how important it is right now for the armed forces to receive modern equipment as part of the “Mission Forward”.
“I am grateful to our soldiers, who have always fulfilled all their missions, even though we have not given them the most modern equipment because we believed that peace was a matter of course. Equipping the Austrian Armed Forces and our soldiers with state-of-the-art equipment is our task.”
Tanner emphasized that the tax money spent on this was “well invested” so that the soldiers can train in the best possible way for an emergency, which hopefully will not happen, and thanked the representatives of the defence industry for the good cooperation. This had always taken place “at eye level”.
After the official handover, the Minister took the opportunity to talk shop with the soldiers.
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