THE Australian Defence Force has suspended the use of 230 Bendigo-built Hawkei vehicles after a "safety incident" in the Puckapunyal area east of Bendigo.
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No-one was injured in the incident a fortnight ago, Defence said in a statement to the Bendigo Advertiser.
"Defence and Thales are working together to investigate the cause of the incident," it said, referring to Defence's Bendigo-based manufacturer.
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The statement did not specify what happened, nor rule out an "initial operations capacity" decision Defence had expected to make this month.
That decision would effectively allow a minimum deployment of Hawkei and would come after Thales ramped up production at its North Bendigo factory this year.
The factory hit full production of the cutting-edge vehicle in September this year, with plans to build 50 vehicles and trailers a month.
Thales hopes to deliver 1100 vehicles to the military from mid-2021.
Defence has been testing earlier batches of vehicles at the tail-end of the multi-billion dollar project that has involved more than a decade of research and development.
Hawkei would be the military's only armoured vehicles strong enough to protect soldiers from blasts and still be light enough to be lifted by a Chinook helicopter.
Three months before the incident at Puckapunyal, Defence rolled out two stages of tests and evaluations in Townsville.
Defence says the outcome of those tests will inform the Army's decision on when to certify the vehicle's "initial operating capability".
In the first, Defence looked at Hawkei useability and payload. It also evaluated the vehicle's maintenance and support procedures, and set ups for their computer systems.
In the second stage of tests, soldiers from the army's 1 RAR battalion deployed 13 Hawkei mission systems to assess the vehicle's capability in the field.
Despite the set-back at Puckapunyal, Thales has had a series of wins this year with its Hawkei project, which were outlined in an independent Australian National Audit Office report.
That report found the manufacturer had remained in budget in 2020 and dealt with a series of reliability issues uncovered earlier in the development process.
It also showed that Thales had successfully worked around a series of disruptions that threatened to derail its timelines in 2020.
They included the COVID-19 pandemic which delayed some Defence tests on vehicles, as well as the collapse of engine supplier Steyr.
Thales - a multinational operation - dealt with Steyr's collapse by buying the German company for the rest of the Hawkei contract.
The manufacturer was contacted for comment about the incident at Puckapunyal and referred questions back to Defence.