Thales Australia is so pleased with the job it has done on redesigning the Australian Army's F88 Austeyr combat rifle it wants to share the weapon with the world.
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Senior executives, including Thales Australia chief executive Chris Jenkins, are in Paris this week showcasing the Austeyr F90 at the Eurosatory defence expo.
Mr Jenkins told The Canberra Times from Paris that although the rifle, known locally as the EF88, or ''enhanced F88'', was just one of thousands of exhibits, it had generated a lot of interest from the moment the doors opened.
Even though the original F88, which Thales has made by the thousand for the ADF, was based on a design from Austria's Steyr Mannlicher, Thales is not taking coals to Newcastle.
Mr Jenkins said Steyr Mannlicher executives had been ''very impressed'' by the Australian redesign, carried out by experienced engineers at the former Lithgow Small Arms Factory and driven by the field experience of diggers in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
If European armies order the F90, their weapons would most probably be assembled in Europe but with a high level of Australian content.
''There would definitely be strong throwback to Australia,'' Mr Jenkins said.
The EF88 was developed in response to the ADF's requirements for an improved combat rifle as part of the Land 125 Soldier Combat System project.
Under the current timelines - which Thales hopes won't be varied as a result of the budget cutbacks - the government should have all the information it needs to make a decision on production by December. The current plan is for manufacture and distribution to begin next year. ''Obviously we are anxious about what comes out of the [post budget] deliberations,'' Mr Jenkins said. ''But we are encouraged by the feedback we have been getting [from within Army].''
He said few Defence capabilities were more fundamental than the soldier's combat rifle and that key priorities in the upgrade had been reliability, ease of use, versatility and lightness in the field.
''We were starting with an already good weapon in the F88,'' he said. ''The Lithgow engineers, who are real experts, were able to take weight incrementally from all parts of the design.''
Almost 400 grams - or just under 10 per cent of its overall weight - has been stripped from basic version of the rifle which now comes in at 3.4 kilograms.
Several seconds have been shaved off the reloading time and Mr Jenkins, who has tried the weapon himself on numerous occasions, said it is now more ''intuitive'' to use.
