Australia — $8 Million to update the Austeyr rifle

The Min­is­ter for Defence Materiel Jason Clare today announced the next stage of the project to update the Austeyr rifle used by Aus­tralian sol­diers.

“This $8 mil­lion invest­ment will pro­duce a qual­i­fied rifle design ready for pro­duc­tion,” Mr Clare said. 

Changes to the Austeyr rifle will include: 

• A new mod­u­lar design that reduces the weight and improves the bal­ance of the weapon; 
• The inte­gra­tion of NATO stan­dard (Picatin­ny) rails to allow for a wide range of mil­i­tary off-the-shelf attach­ments to be fit­ted to the weapon to pro­vide the flex­i­bil­i­ty to recon­fig­ure the weapon accord­ing to the mis­sion; and 
• The inte­gra­tion of a grenade launch­er attach­ment and grenade launch­er sight into the rifle. 
• “The Austeyr rifles that our troops use are very effec­tive. This project is about mak­ing them even better.”

The bulk of the work will be done by the high­ly skilled work­force at the Sol­dier Sys­tems Cen­tre in Lith­gow, New South Wales. Rifles have been made at this site for the Aus­tralian Defence Force for the past 99 years. 

This is a com­po­nent of the $448.6 mil­lion LAND 125 Phase 3C program. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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