The Ministry of Defence is taking a two-phase approach to delivering an improved version of the British Army’s Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicle, restarting trials on the current platform under controlled conditions before rolling in significant changes within months, the Ministry of Defence has told Parliament.
The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, set out the plan on Monday in a written answer to the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, Ben Obese-Jecty, who had asked what progress had been made on what he called Ajax 2.
Pollard told him the department was “working on a phased approach to delivering an improved Ajax vehicle”, beginning with a first phase that would restart trials on the current version of Ajax, with a limited number of vehicles operated “under tightly controlled conditions and maintenance regimes”.
The second phase, Pollard said, would deliver “a number of significant enhancements within months”, including improvements to air filtration, crew-compartment heating and the electrical power generation system, which he described as “key themes identified and prioritised following Exercise Titan Storm”. He added that he would continue to keep the House informed of developments through written ministerial statements, as he had been doing since the exercise.
The programme has had a long and well-documented set of problems, with trials repeatedly suspended through the early 2020s after crews reported noise and vibration so severe that some suffered hearing loss and other injuries, prompting a series of reviews by the National Audit Office and the Commons Defence and Public Accounts Committees.
Improved? Scrapping it would be an improvement.
If the total sum of It’s parts work then just work on the few bad bits.
It’s how things develop.
Problem is a lot of the issues aren’t consistent across the fleet, and there are many issues.
A bit like “British Leyland” then 😁
GD resemble that comment.
From my understanding the Ajax’x actual systems used for recce are really good. But then when compared to the legacy Scimitar, anything will be a significant improvement.
I trust Pollard, decent type, truthful and totally trustworthy. Just like the rest of HM Government, “nation first”.
👍
Though on this one I agree with keeping the asset and working on fixes. As the alternative to me is worse, writes off billions and throws away the parts that work, the all important ISTAR and Digital side.
How is any of the ‘improvements’ listed going to remedy vibration issues etc? Those problems should have been identified yonks ago by the trails team but hay ho waffle on as usual! ( I do want this vehicle to succeed)
I read that the warnings from ATDU were ignored higher up?
There’s the epicentre that should be named, shamed and held to account, somehow?
I think they were. But project management, politics and budgets being what they are…
Hopefully MoD will also schedule a suite of courses to teach RAC crewmen how to operate the vehicle safely and ‘within carefully prescribed limits’ and to do Level 1 maintenance properly with no screw-ups this time! …and teach REME tradesmen how to undertake Level 2 and 3 maintenance on Ajax. Those previous courses they all did obviously were useless as so many got ill!
Given that outsourcing is so popular these days maybe the courses could be delivered by the experts from GDUK? Should only cost another £1million or two!
RAC ?
Probably better off waiting for “Green Flag”.
You get free recovery with them.
Two phases. The £2 biilion extra wasted money (just guessing) followed by the £1biilion wastage. Then we’ll have a handful of vehicles we can use part of the time. 🫣
Lets hope its like the Manchester and Lancaster.
Its SA80 2.0. They were never going to cancel it given the billions spent, it is a matter of trying to work in fixes. The only thing to be done is to keep their noses to the grindstone over these and get the thing delivered and operational. Still a need for armoured recon, but it’s verging dangerously close to obsolescence given time elapsed.
And so it carries on to big to scrap, to poorly built to do it job, year after year month after month the samre old story, who pays for all this? meanwhile the Army scraped all the CVRTs with out a working replacement, that was smart.
Ajax will not be scrapped it will be a case just get on with it while money is chucked at it and crews find work arounds to keep some at the top happy.
I’m led to believe that one of the quickest and simplest ways to improve the Ajax would be to fit it with these continuous rubber tracks. Is that true and feasible.
Silly questiona from a non-tank person, but how will full rubber tracks go in wet slippery ice muddy conditions? Will they grip well enough to hold a 40tn vehicle? Won’t a hybrid steel rubber track be better? Could hydro-suspension fix the Ajax weight squeaky ride problem and if so why don’t they try it out on a reworked Ajax?
All those are apparently on the GD demo Blackjax version so they should have an idea if it works or not,if so just bloody get on with the mods and stop buggering around!