The Army will procure a Heavy Wheeled Recovery Vehicle to recover Boxer in the field, the order remains at 623 vehicles with more than five hundred being built in Britain, and seventy two Boxer RCH artillery vehicles are being bought, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member for Huntingdon, asked how Boxer will be repaired in the field given that no repair and recovery variant has been ordered.
Luke Pollard MP said: “Boxer is a world-class vehicle that will boost our soldiers in a variety of military missions and scenarios across the globe. As I said in Parliament on 19 October 2026, the programme is hugely successful, delivering important capability and national benefit.
“The Army will absolutely have the ability to recover and support Boxer vehicles on the battlefield, such as through the Boxer support variants and the wider force, including the Heavy Wheeled Recovery Vehicle which we will procure.
“There has been no change to our order of 623 Boxer vehicles, of which over 500 are being built here in the UK, and we are buying 72 Boxer RCH Artillery vehicles.
“The work in Telford, Stockport and plenty of other locations across the country is backing more than 1,000 British jobs.”
The commitment to buy the recovery vehicle firms up an answer given the day before, in which Pollard said the Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft armoured recovery module had been assessed for the role and rejected, the department concluding that a generic heavy wheeled recovery vehicle would offer greater utility and affordability across the force. He also set out that Boxers currently recover one another peer to peer, backed where needed by the Support Vehicle (Recovery) and the Challenger Armoured Repair and Recovery Vehicle.
The RCH 155 is the wheeled self-propelled gun built on the Boxer drive module, pairing the artillery turret developed by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann with the vehicle already in British service. Seventy two of them will replace the AS90 in the close support artillery role.
All 623 Mechanised Infantry Vehicle Boxers are being delivered to a common build standard, and ministers confirmed last week that a planned third batch is no longer being pursued through the Boxer programme, a decision that cannot be tied to a single date because it was taken as part of the work on the Defence Investment Plan.
Sounds like the Boxer version was rejected and we will get some extra vehicles. I hope I am understanding correctly.
But, with the way politicians and especially Ministers mince and play with words I’d like to hear it specifically. For example I would like to hear we are getting 623 Boxers AND ON TOP OF THAT 72 Artillery boxers. The way things are, those Artillery could be included in the 623. I would love to be corrected but I have never seen clarification that the 72 are a separate and additional buy.
Finally some common sense, someone in the MoD or treasury has told the army to sort its shit out and forget using £7 million armoured vehicles as tow trucks, we need high end vehicles like boxer and Ajax to fight, not do basic utility roles than can be easily done by vehicles that are ten times cheaper.
Hopefully we can now see a massive order for Patria 6X6 to do many of these more mundane tasks.
The order for 623 Boxers was placed some time back. There is no indication that it might be cut, which would incur considerable penaly costs.
Now the order for the 72 Boxer RCH has been placed snd manufacture is underway. Agsin, there is no indication that it might be cut, which would again incur condiderable penalty charges.
I think we can confidently look forward to both being delivered, so 695 equipments total, plus a future batch of.some COTS recovery vehicles
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Bit confused a out the so called ‘ Boxer support vehicle where necessary ‘ what on earth is that ? I thought that the whole point of this decision was that the whole fleet aside of course from RCH155 would-be built to the same standard and pretty much identical in every way . This article specifically stated that the 623 Mechanised Infantry Vehicles are being delivered to a common build standard – does this include the RWS?