White_Wolf
Master at Arms
Background - over the past few months, Australia experienced some of the worst bush fires ever. Over 10 million hectares were devastated, loss of human and animal life, property, many were impacted directly and indirectly. We had a few days where visibility was under 100 meters due to smoke, I had to evacuate the office one day due to fires coming very close to the building and so on.
This was the first time ever that Defense was called upon, to evacuate people from beaches.
Some, if not most fires were in such remote locations, that only air support could hit them, nothing on the ground was capable to reach those remote locations, due to lack of roads. Australia is almost as big as continental USA minus Alaska and only less than 25 million people live here, mainly in big cities along the coast. The few inland places are usually small communities, without too many assets in terms of fire fighting capabilities.
I heard a while back that the Australian army will be replacing their fleet of ASLAVs (Canadian LAV for Australia - AS is the NATO code) with some other APCs soon, so, I thought of an option where the retired ASLAVs would be refitted to fight fires in remote areas. They are 8x8 powerful vehicles, can cross bodies of water, they are protected against smoke (poor air quality in general), have the mechanical power to get over obstacles, can do 100 km/h on roads, they are heavy enough to be protected against pyro-convection and so on.
My idea is to show an ASLAV Phase 3, with a water canon instead of its' usual 25mm canon, with a water tank fitted inside and some more features that I haven't figured out just yet. The vehicle will be painted in a mixed yellow - aboriginal scheme, like some of the Canberra fire fighting trucks.
I will be using Trumpeter's 1/35 05535 kit, with a lot of scratch building. Well, significant amount at least.
I started two days ago, apologies for not having a starting photo.
Thanks for watching.
Laurence
This was the first time ever that Defense was called upon, to evacuate people from beaches.
Some, if not most fires were in such remote locations, that only air support could hit them, nothing on the ground was capable to reach those remote locations, due to lack of roads. Australia is almost as big as continental USA minus Alaska and only less than 25 million people live here, mainly in big cities along the coast. The few inland places are usually small communities, without too many assets in terms of fire fighting capabilities.
I heard a while back that the Australian army will be replacing their fleet of ASLAVs (Canadian LAV for Australia - AS is the NATO code) with some other APCs soon, so, I thought of an option where the retired ASLAVs would be refitted to fight fires in remote areas. They are 8x8 powerful vehicles, can cross bodies of water, they are protected against smoke (poor air quality in general), have the mechanical power to get over obstacles, can do 100 km/h on roads, they are heavy enough to be protected against pyro-convection and so on.
My idea is to show an ASLAV Phase 3, with a water canon instead of its' usual 25mm canon, with a water tank fitted inside and some more features that I haven't figured out just yet. The vehicle will be painted in a mixed yellow - aboriginal scheme, like some of the Canberra fire fighting trucks.
I will be using Trumpeter's 1/35 05535 kit, with a lot of scratch building. Well, significant amount at least.
I started two days ago, apologies for not having a starting photo.
Thanks for watching.
Laurence
:drinks 
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