New
EQUIPMENT
MILITARY
THE EF88 “w hen The whole” is greater than the sum of its Ancillary parts Nine months ago, in CONTACT issue 47, I heralded the arrival of the Australian Army’s new assault rifle, the Enhanced F88 (EF88). At the time, I noted the EF88 only constituted part of the total EF88 system. Indeed, the whole of the EF88 system would not be realised until its remaining parts, state-of-the-art surveillance target acquisition (STA) ancillaries, were introduced in 2016. Well, here they are. This article completes the story commenced in September last year. It describes the comprehensive EF88 system that will be issued to Australian Army soldiers, Air Force security forces and Navy boarding parties from mid 2016. In other words, for the first time, this article presents the whole of the EF88 system’s parts. And, without doubt, the whole of the EF88 system will drive an extraordinary enhancement to the lethality of the Australian Defence Force’s close combatants.
The ‘EF88 System’is a watershed event Watershed events rarely occur in armies. Once in a generation? Perhaps even less frequent than that. Well, from mid 2016, the ADF’s close combatants will experience a watershed enhancement to their lethality. The catalyst for this watershed enhancement is the introduction EF88 system, which includes the leading EF88 weapon in standard and carbine variants, plus a range of state-of-the-art STA ancillaries.
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