Army sells fleet of personnel carriers to Australia

The New Zealand Army's fleet of tired armoured personnel carriers will go to a new home in Australia.

The Army has sold its fleet of 62 35-year-old M113 APCs to an Australian collector and they will be transported across the Tasman as soon as the US State Department gives final approval.

The fleet attracted a surprising level of interest from collectors and scrap metal dealers, and the Army was very happy with the price, said the assistant Chief of General Staff (Logistics) Colonel Peter Cunningham.

The carriers were retired last year and stripped of their .50 calibre machine guns and any other sensitive military gear for the sale.

About 12 had been given to the Army Museum in Waiouru.

Col Cunningham said if the Australian collector wanted to sell any of the carriers, he too would probably require US State Department approval.

The name of the collector and the tender price would not be revealed until an end-user certificate had been approved by the State Department and the deal had been signed off, Col Cunningham said.

The Australian Army also has M113 armoured personnel carriers similar to the New Zealand machines and three years ago it announced a $500 million upgrade project for 350 of them.

The upgrade included new engines, an interior re-design and a new gun turret. Germany, Canada and Denmark were also upgrading their fleets.

Col Cunningham said it was unlikely the Australian military would be interested in any of the New Zealand carriers.

New Zealand replaced the tracked M113 with eight-wheeled LAV IIIs.

Once the deal was finalised they were likely to leave the country within two months.

The US State Department was very busy with the war in Iraq and the final approval could be several weeks away, Col Cunningham said.

He said the Army was very happy with the 22 registrations of interest in the fleet, from which 11 or 12 tenders were received.

"We got a tremendous response."

In later years Army engineers struggled to keep the tired and unreliable carriers going. They also lacked speed, firepower and protection, and several years ago in Bosnia, the heavy armour added to the M113s meant they could not keep up with the convoys they were meant to protect.

Few of the fleet sold to the Australian collector were operational and most of them would be towed onto a transporter for shipping across the Tasman.

- NZPA