There has been a bit of a flurry of interest recently over the British army’s ‘new’ armoured fighting vehicles, following on from the long-delayed publication of the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which in turn laid out how the 62 recommendations of George Robertson’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of June 2025 were to be funded.
Leave aside for the moment that the SDR was out of date before the ink was dry, and the DIP vague and underwhelming. Lots of new military equipment is now in development or on offer, but still with little detail on how it’s going to be paid for.
Let’s take the British army’s armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) programmes as an example. Without getting right down into the weeds, there are three main vehicle types we should consider: Challenger 3 (CR3), the army’s ‘new’ main battle tank (MBT); the troubled Ajax armoured cavalry vehicle programme; and Boxer, the new eight-wheeled infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) plus variants.
CR3 is arguably not a new MBT at all, but an upgrade to the current Challenger 2 tank which officially entered service in 1998, so at 25+ years old it is mighty long in the tooth for a tank which has had no major upgrades since then. The new Challenger basically takes the old hull and plonks a new turret on top. And at long last a British tank will mount the Rheinmetall 120 mm smoothbore gun, firing ammunition which is compatible with that of our NATO allies.
It will not be a bad tank at all, but it has several flaws. It retains the same 1200hp engine as its predecessor, which the Ukrainians have flagged up as being underpowered for their current needs. Only 148 are being procured on current plans, which means that they might last a fortnight in a peer-to-peer conventional conflict. And only 60 active protection systems (APS) – which automatically intercept incoming missiles and projectiles – are being bought, meaning 88 CR3s will be without.
My personal view, however, is that it will probably be the last western MBT designed and built to an outdated, nay obsolete, design philosophy.
What do I mean by that? Well, there is an emerging consensus that the current generation of western MBTs – Leopard 2, M1A2 Abrams, and now CR3 – are now too big, too heavy, too expensive, and too vulnerable to favour continuing their particular design parameters. They represent, essentially, putting all your eggs into one basket. And, as we have seen in Ukraine and elsewhere, one relatively cheap drone can eliminate such expensive and sophisticated vehicles given a bit of luck.
Next, Ajax, a slow-motion car crash of a project and a prime example of how not to do military equipment procurement. Suffice to say it is over 10 years late, has cost approximately £6.3 billion to date, and those vehicles which have been completed and delivered can’t be used because the noise and vibration they generate have permanently damaged the health of some of their crews.
And time has moved on. It was designed in the pre-drone era and is now very vulnerable on the modern battlefield. So Ajax is now a legacy vehicle – which doesn’t work – looking for a role. At 42 tonnes, with a huge thermal (thanks, crew heaters!) and acoustic signature, it’s basically a target just waiting to be taken out. Putting our boys and girls in it will be bordering on the criminal. It should have been cancelled years ago.
Thankfully, there is some optimism when it comes to Boxer, the eight-wheeled IFV now coming into service with the British army. Originally a joint Dutch/German initiative, it is in service with a large number of operators around the globe. Typically, the UK was part of the original consortium to produce the vehicle, withdrew from the project in 2003, and rejoined in 2018 after domestic initiatives failed. Britain now has 100 vehicles delivered plus another 523 on order.
Despite the delay, the good news for the British army is that Boxer is now a combat-proven and mature vehicle design. I still have some concerns about its size and weight – and cost – and am not so sure about the RCH-155 self-propelled artillery model ordered by the UK in May of this year – it looks a bit top-heavy to me – but by all accounts it seems to be very capable. So for once it looks like the army is getting an IFV which does what it says on the tin.
But there’s no hiding the fact that equipment procurement for the British army is a bit of a mess. I have written about this extensively in the past and don’t need to repeat the arguments here, but the root causes are a sclerotic MoD rooted in practices which might have been acceptable in the 1950s but cannot hope to keep up with the pace of modern technological advances, plus a pathological fascination with ‘gold-plating’ every requirement.
The answer lies in a complete revision and remodelling of the MoD. Is Andy Burnham the man to pick up the challenge?
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“not so sure about the RCH-155 self-propelled artillery model ordered by the UK in May of this year – it looks a bit top-heavy to me”
Wow, in depth technical analysis there. 🤦🏻♂️
😂
The kind of in depth analysis we are use to from Senior Army officers and especially Stuart Crawford 🤦♂️
Here we go again, trying to justify why we don’t need a big MBT. These views are exactly why we are ending up with 148CH3. During the last twenty years, debates within UK tank circles have been about the relevance of a heavy battle tank on the modern battle front, leading to virtually zero upgrades to Challenger2. I don’t agree that the CH3 is out of touch with contemporary thinking, as our foes continue to build them in considerable numbers, meaning that their use is still relevant. However, I could be persuaded to accept the modest CH3 numbers as their roles could become more specialised but the heavy horse is not dead yet.
He’s not wrong about Boxer regards its cost. So much so, that the batch 2 order of Boxer is nowhere to be seen. It was reported at one time that over 1,000 would be procured.
Beyond some recovery variants and the RCH155s, might not see many more.
On the RCH155s, assume they will come out of the existing Boxer order, an easy win for HMT.
I think also it’s well known amongst defence watchers that Nick isn’t a Challenger fan and never has been, preferring Leopard 2.
So I wasn’t expecting a glowing aprisal as we’ve had articles like this before.
Going OT, reports on X that cameras installed on our 20 K3 Scout USVs have been discovered to be sending data back to China! “Heartbeat” or “Handshake” signals that can I understand compromise the USVs location.
Apparently MoD have now acted on this apparent breach.
Boxer is a great vehicle with plenty of uses but we don’t need 1000 and never did. It should be reserved for high end roles like RCH155 and front lines with the Patria 6X6 which is four times cheaper making up the bulk of the multi wheeled fleet. It’s not a utility vehicle.
Germany is doing this as well.
Totally agree. I’m still hoping for a big order of Patria CAVS.
Nick? Apologies. Stuart.
In what ways, specifically, is SDR outdated? The writing team took full cognisance of the Ukraine war.
Colonel Stuart insists that the Boxer as ordered by Britain is an IFV. It is not. It lacks a cannon. It is an APC intended to fill the Mechanised Infantry Vehicle requirement in 1 Div. (Of course due to the bad decision to cancel WCSP and also to retire Warrior from service (not mentioned by Stuart), the Boxer has been forced to fill the vacated role in 3 Div which it will probably not do well, but it has not suddenly become an IFV as a result of its reassignment). No concerns expressed about mobility of Boxer in thick glutinous mud or snow or its ability to keep up with the tanks in its new role. Also we have not ordered enough Boxers (or a cheaper alternative such as a Patria).
Stuart thinks that 148 CR3s will not last a fortnight in combat. 148 tanks are not in the field force – it might be three Type 44 regiments ie 132. Since Sep 2023, just two CR2s are confirmed to have been destroyed by enemy weapons…so how are 148 or 132 going to be destroyed in a fortnight, especially those with Trophy APS and all having even better armour than CR2?
CR3 retains the CV12 set to deliver 1200hp but this one will have a few improvements. I know the tabloids consider it to be underpowered but does the Ukrainian Army say that? In many YouTube videos I have seen the Ukrainian crewman praise the tank but do not mention any lack of power. Due to its superior suspension it can match Leo2 for cross-country speed. The CV12 is tweakable to deliver up to 1500hp but at the expense of higher fuel consumption and potentially reduced reliability. I agree that all tanks should have APS. It would have been useful if Stuart could have said something more about the tank after CR3, or that we are observers on the Franco-German tank programme.
Is it true that Ajax can’t be used? Three or four enquiries were launched. The conclusion of the H&S-orientated one was that Ajax could continue to be trialled or evaluated providing crews and REME follow certain stringent procedures…and that is now happening. Surely Ajax is not looking for a new role because of the drone threat? Are other AFVs being reroled because of the drone threat? Is that ‘a thing’? Doom and gloom about enemy attack drones with no recognition that counter-measures exists and are being developed all the time.
I await SDSR30 with interest, I fully expect them (with the current direction of travel) to announce Chally3 to be gone by 2035 and an end to the UK MBT.
We’ve reduced it to a niche capability anyway.
Right or wrong, its the next low hanging fruit, ripe to pluck by 2030.
Massed conventional warfare will be won by who has the largest number numbers of direct and in-direct fires and equally vast numbers of counter systems. More specifically, who has the industrial capability to mass manufacture the above quickly and in quantity.
After all, you can have as many regional/ local/ point layered air defence systems, all the way down to individual protection like Trophy, as you like, it isn’t stopping the thousands of cheap attack drones you are likely to be facing post 2030, especially if they are being employed by a country spending many billions on it, like the US or China.
It is difficult to reconcile “gold plating” with a warmed over obsolete MBT with an engine that isn’t powerful enough.
Ajax has been a car crash of a project, but a lot of this article does seem to just be making the mistake of thinking drones can do anything and everything.
The power plant is not the same as the cH2 one, it has a upgraded fuel injection system and cooling system. The new upgraded power pack for CH3 is rated from 12000 – 15000 bhp. This is coupled with an upgraded transmission and suspension. This will result in a much more mobile vehicle and not the one we see in Ukraine. I think however the idea of a large maned recon vehicle has had its day and we should have ditched Ajax in favour of unmanned vehicles.
The British army is and always has been out of its depth on vehicle procurement. The CH3 was a good move as it was cheap and it’s a very useful stop gap that didn’t not allow senior army leadership to fanny around with 2,000 pages of requirements like it did for Ajax.
Military vehicles are easy to acquire and our army leadership needs to stop pretending that it has any insight that the rest of NATO doesn’t have. We should either buy off the shelf with minimal modifications under UOR program or join Germany on multi national programmes.
Germany has proven to be the world leader in this regard. We should focus on UK only projects for aircraft, missiles and ships all of which we are excellent at rather than armoured vehicles which we have always been very mediocre at.