Thales Australia demonstrated the capability of the Bushmaster armoured vehicle to Czech Ministry of Defence officials, according to an update from the multinational company on 6 August 2024.
Supported by indigenous Czech supplier VOP CZ and Thales Australia personnel, attendees observed the Bushmaster’s manoeuvrability at the VOP test track, as well as its payload and passenger configurations.
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Bushmaster is a 4×4 armoured vehicle that has been deployed in Afghanistan with the Australian Army. Thales Australia (formerly ADI) developed the platform and it remains in full production at Thales’s protected mobility systems manufacturing facility at Bendigo, Victoria.
Toward the end of last month, the supplier confirmed it would build 15 additional vehicles for the Australian Army’s command and control of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) long-range fires regiment.
Currently, the Thales parent company states that there are more than 1,200 Bushmasters in service across nine defence forces, from Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ukraine and the UK.
Thales Australia hopes to consolidate the Bushmaster’s European presence with Czechia beyond what little presence it has among Australia’s vehicle donations to Ukraine and while the UK operates only a handful of vehicles. The only committed European customer is the Netherlands, with 106 Bushmasters and four more Medical evacuation variant units.
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By GlobalData“In the future, we would like to become the centre of delivery and support for Bushmaster vehicles in the Central and Eastern European region,” said the interim director of VOP CZ, Martin Sturala.
“Thanks to this important project, we would also increase our workforce in areas of production, service and development, which is a real opportunity for our region and a promise of work for the future.
