Fears over soldiers' safety have prompted the Australian Defence Force to quietly reject vehicles it is having specially built at a cost of $1.3 billion.
The ABC can reveal that just three months after celebrating the start of full production of the Hawkei vehicles, the government stopped accepting them amid concerns about their brakes.
French defence manufacturer Thales has a $1.3 billion contract to build 1,100 of the small tactical vehicles and their trailers at Bendigo in central Victoria.
In the six years since the contract was signed, the trouble-plagued program has been caught up in legal battles and a scathing audit of how the government selected the vehicle.
"Army will not accept these vehicles into service until the vehicles are safe to operate," a Defence spokesperson told the ABC.
The troubles with the Hawkei program comes after tension with the French government bubbled over Australia's decision to scrap a $90 billion project for submarines.
The Hawkeis are meant to replace ageing Defence vehicles. In announcing the contract in 2015, then-defence minister Marise Payne, now Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, said the vehicles were needed to "improve protection for soldiers".
In September 2020, the government celebrated Thales entering full production of the vehicles. Then-defence minister Linda Reynolds said the Australian Defence Force (ADF) would start receiving the vehicles in mid-2021. At the time, construction was forecast to go until the middle of 2022.
But within months, Defence had quietly started rejecting Hawkeis. It later reached an agreement with Thales to resolve the undisclosed brake issue.
"Defence identified an issue with the Hawkei's braking system and stopped accepting these vehicles in December 2020," a Defence spokesperson said.
"The vehicles remaining at the Thales facility in Bendigo will not be delivered to Army units until this work is completed."
Thales has continued to produce the vehicles. A spokeswoman told the ABC it expected to complete construction by the end of June.
The Hawkei is a smaller tactical vehicle with enhanced protection designed to replace the ADF's ageing Land Rovers in high-threat areas.
"The Hawkei will improve protection for soldiers and enable them to operate in high-risk areas," Senator Payne said in 2015.
The ABC supplied a series of questions to Thales about the contract, the brake issue, how many vehicles had been built and whether the government had taken possession of any of them.
"Our focus is on getting this advanced capability into the hands of Army units as quickly as possible," a Thales spokeswoman said.
The company confirm that it had begun construction on the 1,000th Hawkei on March 1 this year.
"The final Hawkei will come off the production line in Bendigo before the end of June 2022," a spokeswoman said.
While Defence now does not expect to have all the Hawkeis until the middle of 2023, Thales insisted an undisclosed number had been delivered to the ADF.
“Several hundred Hawkei vehicles have already been delivered to the Army, and the Hawkei is now being used safely by Army units around the country."
The Defence Department has refused to confirm how many Hawkeis it has taken ownership of.
Thales has been a long-term defence vehicle manufacturer in Bendigo, producing the much-lauded Bushmaster, an armoured personnel carrier.
The company developed the Hawkei from experience gained through the Bushmaster program.
In March last year, the ABC revealed a powerful new cabinet committee had been formed to tackle problems with Australia's multi-billion-dollar naval shipbuilding projects, and that the National Shipbuilding Advisory Board (NSAB) had been abolished.
There have also been troubles with other large Army projects, including a multi-billion-dollar light armoured vehicle project.
Malcolm Turnbull's government awarded Thales a sole-sourced contract to produce 1,100 Hawkeis in Australia in 2015.
Three defence ministers have overseen the project since it was announced: Christopher Pyne, Linda Reynolds and Peter Dutton, the incumbent.
In 2018, the ABC revealed Thales had launched legal action against the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) over a critical assessment of its Hawkei project.
The audit was eventually released and included a conclusion that: "Defence has not clearly demonstrated that the acquisition provides value for money, as it did not undertake robust benchmarking in the context of a sole-source procurement."
