Intercom systems for thousands of new Australian military vehicles are being provided by Thales to Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles Australia.

Under an Australian project, the Australian Defense Force will acquire up to 2,536 medium and heavy category logistic trucks, including protected vehicles for operational deployment and tactical training and unprotected vehicles for tactical training purposes. The vehicles are being manufactured by Rheinmetall.

Thales said the intercoms being supplied are its new Sotas Lite system, which is a modular, open architecture and scalable system for vehicles which do not require extensive inter-vehicle networking capabilities.

The Sotas product family can easily be upgraded for new sizing and functional requirements, providing great flexibility to support the broad range of wheeled and tracked military tactical vehicles.

Thales said that under the contract it will conduct the design activities for the C4I system to be installed in the vehicles, integrating customer-furnished radios and systems into the intercom system.

Thales in the Netherlands will supply Sotas Lite systems.