Helicopters, transport aircraft, training jets and missile defense systems. The Armed Forces is currently planning numerous large-scale purchases, including a large number of vehicles – from simple trucks and buses through to the new Pandur Evolution and soon also rocket artillery.
There is no need to complain about too little work at the Vienna plant of Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles (RMMV) in Vienna for many years. Trucks for Great Britain and Australia, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Germany and many other countries have been rolling off the production line in Brunner Strasse in Liesing – and now increasingly also vehicles for the Austrian Armed Forces. After the company had repeatedly delivered smaller quantities to the army (for example five “light” and “medium” recovery vehicles in July 2022), in spring 2023 RMMV signed landed a seven-year framework agreement for up to 1,375 vehicles from the HX, TGS and TGM series. At the end of 2023, a further another batch of up to 300 logistics vehicles from the HX family was added.
New trucks for the troops also come from vehicle body builder Empl (-> Interview with Managing Director Joe Empl): By the end of last year, the Tyrolean company had delivered 24 medium-sized recovery vehicles on RMMV 42M 6×6 and 35 matching Quattro 4-axle trailers to the army. In January, Empl then announced the delivery of MUV functional vehicles built on Iveco Daily 70.20 in a wide range of equipment variants to replace the FM-Pinzgauer (-> introduced as Noriker in the German Armed Forces) and in November Empl also received a major order for major order for 800 swap bodies, more than 850 trucks equipped to accommodate these bodies and conversions of 18 existing bodies for troop maintenance. https://militaeraktuell.at/diehl-mbda-kongsberg-buhlen-um-schweizer-auftrag/ Two MAN Lion’s Coach high-capacity buses, 40 VW flatbeds, 25 VW ID.4s, 80 VW Golf 7 Variant and 302 Mitsubishi L200s were delivered to the army last year. And there is also a lot going on with armored vehicles.
A year ago, the army already finalized a around 760 million euros “Mech Package”under which the existing Leopard 2 and Ulan tank fleet will be replaced by the manufacturers Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW, now KNDS) and General Dynamics European Land Systems-Steyr (GDELS) among other things, new optics and electrical components for the turret drive.
Speaking of GDELS: after the first delivery of 100 new Pandur Evolution vehicles in 2018, the next 225 vehicles were ordered in February. A total of 1.8 billion euros will be spent on twelve different Pandur vehicle variants by 2032. These include versions with 120-millimeter crossbow mortars for electronic warfare and 36 vehicles with Skyranger anti-aircraft turrets from Rheinmetall Air Defense. The contract is also said to include options for a further 150 Pandur.
However, the armed forces are also already planning for the medium to long term in other areas – for example in rocket artillery. It is no secret that the existing M-109 howitzers are to be equipped with precision ammunition first (-> Interview with Chief of Armaments Major General Harald Vodosek) in order to increase their performance. The next step will be to replace the M-109 with a newly procured rocket artillery system. Possible successors would include Himars from Lockheed Martin or Puls from Elbit. Both variants can be integrated on various carrier platforms – both tracked and wheeled – and it is even conceivable that they could be built on a Pandur Evolution could even be possible. According to the manufacturer, the advantage of the pulse system is that it can be used to launch not only the company’s own missiles, but also products from other manufacturers such as the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) from Saab. However, a decision in this area is not expected for several years.
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