PETALING JAYA: After the heady and sometimes heaty discussions into the MRCA, its time get back into the ground, literally.
Yes, the Army is finally in the final stages of issuing the tender for the replacement on the Pinzgauer fleet. If you say, its about time, think again. The Pinzgauers were only put into service, in stages between 1995 to 1999.
So, the oldest are almost 15 years-old now while the youngest is around 12. So by the time, the first new trucks goes into service, the oldest Pinzgauers will be around for 20 years or so. Of course since the Army fleet is around 330 or so, technically they will be much younger, based on their individual usages of course. I am not sure about the mileage but they will be much lower than a commercial truck of the same year registration.
Despite this we have seen various Pinzgauers in junkyards, up for sale or in civilian hands already. The Pinzgauers were sold by Deftech (yes, the people behind AV8) some of which were imported directly from Steyr and some assembled in the Pekan plant.
If you say this sound similar to the AV8 programme, you are exactly on the button. They even said that they would market the Pinzgauers for the Asia-Pacific market. As far as I know that did not happen and production, oops, assembly, soon stop after the last vehicle was handed over.
The not-so-funny thing about the so-call export project was that when Steyr Daimler Puch when belly up in 2000, Deftech did not buy the rights for the vehicles which instead went to a UK based company.
We all know that the Army had trouble maintaining the Pinzgauers in service, both the 4X4 and 6X6 variants although most vehicles seen in civilian hands are mostly the former. Deftech officials, privately, blamed the Army for not giving them the contract to provide service and support for the trucks and instead rely a host of suppliers for parts and support. The Malay Mail carried a report about this last year.
Enough about the back ground already! What about the new tender? Industry insiders says that the tender programme to replace the Pinzgauers is expected to be issued within the next 12 month. It is expected that the Army will be looking to procure up to 300 trucks in the 2.5 tonne to 3 tonne category.
Pesaka Astana, which assembled trucks locally under the brand name Amdac has fired the first salvo signalling its attention to bid for the programme. It launched the Adiwira truck recently. The truck is the locally assembled version of the French company Acmat VLRA truck. The truck is available in both the 4X4 and 6X6 versions.
Apart from Pesaka Astana, who will be the other competitors? Unimog, courtesy of Deftech and a host of other vehicles from local companies like Weststar and SERT (the current supplier of Vamtac. SERT has announced recently that it is the sole distributor for Iveco Defence vehicles in Malaysia.
It appears that the Humvee-type vehicle would be excluded as does up-armoured variant of any of the above. That is the reason I believe SERT tie-up with Iveco. There will be others of course, many countries also manufacture similar trucks .
But as usual those with local assembly programme will probably selected as the Defence Minister had said all future defence deals must have local content. But apparently its ok to source parts and spares from overseas during its service in the armed forces.
Apart from the Pinzgauers, the Hicom Handalan, again another Deftech product from a Isuzu commercial truck, will also probably be started to replace during the same time period. The Army has had less problems with the Handalan although Deftech was also not given the contract to support. Being a COTS solution, the Handalan fared better than its stable.
It also scored in the export market, a dozen or so were exported to Brunei and about the same numbers were donated to Timor Leste FOC, including the spares and support.
To me the Unimog is the best vehicle for the job but I reserved my support due to the Deftech connection and the mandatory local assembly deal. Yes I know it will be difficult to proof that its cheaper to buy the Unimog directly from Germany than local assembly. Nonetheless I will state here, ditch the middleman and spare the armed forces budget.
–Malaysian Defence
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View Comments (40)
Hopefully, the army will do some soul searching and ask itself why so many Pinzgauers have ended up in ''besi buruk'' yards. Even some of our new Defender 101's, which have interior fittings not approved by Land Rover, are not in the best of condition, judging by the black smoke blowing out from the exhausts. What is needed is a totally new maintainance culture to ensure our soft skin vehicles are properly looked after. The problem with the Pinzgauers is that we didn't know how to maintain the suspension system, consisting of a drive train with a tube type chassis. The Brits and Kiwis are having no such problems with their 4x4 and 6x6 Pinzgaeurs.
ATM should learn how TNI still
able to operate 30-40 years military
equipment asset with good condition..good maintenance culture must be developed inside ATM..
dont simply waste malaysian tax payers money
'Nonetheless I will state here, ditch the middleman and spare the armed forces budget.'
I echo your last point. Malaysia is simply too small and its defence expenditures too low, to justify an arms industry. It may be possible to focus on one or so areas, but it is wishful thinking to imagine a South Korea-like arms industry. If the army needs new uniforms, then I would expect "local content", but no so for 90% of what the armed forces need. Better to go with COTS. But as you noted, how to prove 'that its cheaper to buy the Unimog directly from Germany than local assembly'.
As far as what to replace the Pinzagauers with, I'm not partial to any particular truck. It should be noted, however, that most "light" trucks available are seriously overweight, if the army limits itself to the 2.5t to 3t category. Are the new trucks expected to fulfill the same roles as the Pinzgauers? Gun tractors and mortar transporters?
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Yes
Pi mai pi mai tang tu jugak.
Brother, you can go round and round from 1st floor to 19th floor. There will be same story with all the sok sek sok sek but the authority just simply play ignorant as long as money coming.
Just hope for a Change over of government than everyone of them will shiver.
The air, the sea and the ground sama sahaja besar angan angan but not knowing what they want except for either they just follow the politicians to curry favor for personal glory or they are part of the conspirators.
National interest, and national security who cares after all anyone who can tell the rakyat when is the next war in Malaysia?
Lets produce more of the laughing general with birds' brain and did nothing hahahahahahhaaaa! what a waste!
Pesaka Astana looks good and sound familiar- don't you think so brother?
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Yes, its the same broken record...
funny fact about engineering development is when the same branch of the industry cant even make a basic truck, they want to skip the foundation to mess with state of art AFV.
Well, a change of government is one thing. Despite offering an alternative plan for almost everything, from tax rebates, education, oil prices, etc, - the opposition has yet to take the trouble to inform the rakyat what their approach will be with regards to defence. I'm very curious s to why the haven't?? A change of government will indeed 'make them shiver', but will it result in a more holistic and efficient defence policy? Will it ensure the MAF is sufficiently funded to meet its operational requirements and is provided with stuff that is really needed, as opposed to sexy items that look great on Merdeka Day but have little peacetime utility?
Hui,
The industry it is quite proficient in licensed assembling various vehicles, that's not the question. The question is whether they can go beyond that...
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Since national security issues are not discussed openly not even in closed door briefings in Parliament its hard for the opposition to make any counter proposals about it. Hence some loud mouths suggesting defence spending is wasteful due to alleged payment to Razak Baginda and others.
I am sure DSAI knows pretty much since he was the Finance Minister a decade ago so he was purview to the discussions that led to the procurement of the Scorpenes, NGPV and the Flankers. Mind you our strategic outlook remained the same despite all the time and maybe had even grown much worse due to the shrinking of natural resources. On why he is keeping quiet on the issue is of course the one million dollar question. I will try to speak to him on this issue.
This is our version of Juche! (North Korean policy of self reliance that pretty much wrecked the country) writ somewhat smaller.
Trucks are not so simple, well, good trucks anyway.
Worse, Malaysian Army truck drivers are specially trained to destroy gearboxes, the only one that could tahan the brutal changes was the legendary 911 (LA911) which was very under powered but had a gearbox the drivers could not defeat. Every other truck is destroyed by this Kuasa Ajaib.
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My limited experience with Army drivers showed that these guys never had proper training on how to drive their vehicles. You expect them to be trained on cross-country driving, nope.
Azlan,
To go beyond is what I am talking about. When they are no able to master the tech to design a truck, they should not think about tech beyond that.
Come to think of it, during the second emergency times the defence bang for the buck seems to be better utilised.
The maintenance of the trucks seems to be better.Not only the trucks but also the land rovers, the planes, the ships-all were maintained better as compared to now. Is it because these items have become more sophisticated or its just that our technology to maintain them has not grown since the second emergency times?.
If the ministry wants to break the monopoly of Deftech to both assemble and maintain these vehicles then a good programme for Deftech to appoint properly trained service agents-ala proton authorised service centres should be established. This will in turn maintain the standards and also make things more efficient. A central parts depot should also be set up so that part supply can be efficiently maintained and dispatched.
By good maintenance the life of the assets can be prolonged and made use of more efficiently.If the drivers trash the trucks, then come up with a discouraging policy for such method to treat their vehicle.
Each and every driver must be made responsible for their own trucks and if their trucks suffers more than a certain number of breakdowns or maintenance lapses then they should be sent for refresher training and maybe during their downtime made to do hard training like log exercises which would both toughen them up and make such downtime hard for the drivers.
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Yes, both procurement and operational issues started to go South in the late 80s, as a certain Tun policies started to bite in. Its a leadership issue, Lee, punishing rank and file soldiers or junior leaders will not solve anything apart from causing more people to leave service.
A number of LA911s are still used as towing vehicles. As long as there is no total revamp in our maintenance culture and the 'kuasa ajaib' still exists, we have to continue operating stuff like our supped up Isuzus. Forget more maintenance intensive stuff like Okoshs, Macs and Leylands.
Ym Lee,
Simple really.
1. We had a clear and present threat then.
2. The quality of our overall manpower just took a dip, starting in the early 80's.
3. We had a military leadership who actually spoke up for the needs of their men.
In Bosnia, MALBATT as a whole had a good reputation, first under the UN and later under NATO. Apart from the problems our people had with the cold, which is understandable, our drivers also had a notorious reputation for being 'risky' drivers, even during non-wintertime.
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Thats why I said buy the Unimogs and Zetros. But direct from Mercedes Germany.