Serco and Civmec have formed a joint venture to bid to supply the ‘Oboe' Littoral Manoeuvre Vessel Medium (pictured) to the Australian Army. (Serco)
Serco Australia and Civmec have formed a joint venture (JV) to bid to supply the Australian Army with a new amphibious landing craft.
The companies said on 9 May that their new firm – named Australian Maritime Alliance (AMA) – will bid for the Land 8710 Phase 1A programme to enhance the army's amphibious assault capabilities.
The JV was announced to coincide with the opening day of the Indo Pacific 2022 exhibition in Sydney.
Under the alliance, AMA will propose meeting the Land 8710 requirement with Serco Australia's ‘Oboe' Littoral Manoeuvre Vessel Medium (LMV-M). A statement said the design of the Oboe has been “optimised and refined” over the past year to meet the requirement.
Serco Australia told Janes that the baseline design of the Oboe LMV-M has a length of 42 m, a 9 m beam, and a full-load displacement of 22 tonnes. The vessel will have a range of 1,000 n miles, and will be able to reach a maximum speed of 24 kt.
The company also said that the Oboe design has been crafted to self-deploy across open ocean areas and to conduct ship-to-shore and shore-to-shore operations. “The design has sufficient space and power for a customer-defined suite of command, control, and communication systems and weapon mounts,” Serco Australia added.
Serco Defence ' s managing director Clint Thomas said that AMA will seek to support its Oboe bid by leveraging industry capability across Western Australia, Serco's global shipbuilding expertise, and Civmec's workforce skills, technologies, and infrastructure capacity.
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