The Government has confirmed that the British Army’s Ajax armoured vehicle programme is still expected to achieve Full Operating Capability by the end of 2029, provided the project survives an ongoing ministerial review.
In a written answer to Conservative MP Mark Francois on 19 February, Defence Minister Luke Pollard said that “Safety investigations and a Ministerial Review into the Armoured Cavalry Programme (commonly known as Ajax) remain ongoing.”
He added: “However, on current plans, Full Operating Capability for the Armoured Cavalry Programme is still expected to be achieved by the end of 2029.”
Ajax forms the centrepiece of the Army’s future armoured cavalry capability and is intended to replace ageing reconnaissance platforms. The programme comprises a family of six tracked vehicle variants, with a total of 589 vehicles on order.
Full Operating Capability would indicate that the Army has received, fielded and trained on the complete fleet required for operational deployment. The 2029 target has been referenced in previous parliamentary material and remains the planning assumption, subject to the outcome of current investigations.
The programme has been beset by delays and technical challenges, most notably persistent concerns over noise and vibration affecting crews during trials. Initial Operating Capability was declared in late 2025 but later withdrawn.
Ministers have made clear that a wider decision on the future of Ajax remains outstanding. Defence Secretary John Healey has framed the choice in stark terms as whether to “back it or scrap it”, pending the findings of the ministerial review and associated safety work.
For the moment, the Ministry of Defence maintains that, if the programme proceeds, Full Operating Capability by the end of 2029 remains achievable. The review’s conclusions will determine whether that timetable stands or the Army’s armoured cavalry plans are reshaped once again.
Turn It into an Unmanned Asset.
Beat me to it, hey we can fill them with all those humanoid robots that just like Ajax look superficially impressive from the outside but are about as useful and reliable as a Cybertruck in terms of real capability.
Well this is definitely a milestone that WILL NOT be met.
Pretty definite comment there,do you have any insider info or like the rest of us just a tad sceptical?
Having spent 23 yrs in the Army, then a further 23 working in the Defence Industry, some 5 years as a contractor embedded within DE&S, I can smell BS from miles away.
No insider info, and anyone who is only “a tad” sceptical, obviously is either delusional or doesn’t understand what a cluster MOD procurement has become since it all collocated in Abbeywood. It has inherited the worst of all 3 services errors and faults, and little to No best practices.
Perhaps the biggest failure is the constant moving of staff from not only 1 team to another, but from one domain to another.
Calm your skin mate!it was a tongue in cheek remark,obviously unlike the most of us you have some experience of DE&S and your observations carry some weight,of course we will believe the FOC when we see it!
Jacko, no offence taken.
So how do you feel merging DE&S with other areas under the NAD Group will go? Better or worse (to quote my optician).
Mark,
I too worked at Abbeywood as a contractor, 2009-2011, my first role after army service of 34 years. Defence Procurement has surely been tri-service and colocated there for many years [site officially opened in 1996, colocation achieved by 2010?], so it is shocking that clusters are so widespread and have not been ironed out.
My ‘take’ was that clusters were not all-pervading and that only the limited amount of bad stuff hit the headlines. I worked in three areas (AVST in Combat Vehicle Tracked Division (I think it was called); the Operational Vehicles Office; Dismounted Close Combat IPT) …and all worked well.
The 432 suspension arms sometimes used to exceed the diameter, instead of sending them back to the manufacturer they used to send them to another firm in Southampton for machining. The CR2 idler arms sometimes came in over sized, as with AJAX quality control has gone the same way.
I would not be so certain that MoD can’t officially meet FOC in 2029 (& then fail spectacularly). Too many people have turned a blind eye for so long on Ajax, it seems to have a life of its own. Everyone involved is no doubt hoping it survives long enough for them to collect & move on. But I agree, it has gone past the point of no return some time ago. This may be unpopular, but I think the Minister should look outside UK for advice (Turkey, Poland, Korea, Japan, etc – or multiples thereof). ie knowledgeable people that have no skin in the game (either politically or industrially) but actual Defence force people (or retired), not defence industry.
DJ, its all to do with the engineering. DE&S should bring in some seriously good engineers from outside GDUK to advise and oversee them…and its also about the Project Management – better expertise is required in GDUK and in DE&S.
We did a cost analysis on a recent project. Looking at the cost differences between engineering and project control/management. I was shocked by the findings in engineering the allocated resource as in full time engineers cost 35%, whilst program control/management cost 50%. The remaining was split between commercial and other suppliers.
As an engineer who does a lot of project control and management, I had to ask why the costs were justified. But they did come up with some compelling answers. Which I thought was mostly BS. I suspect Ajax has had the same problems, too many managers not enough engineers.
DaveyB, I too was an engineer before I retired and a REME officer for 34 years and worked at Abbeywood as a civilian consultant/contractor after Army service. The choice of GDUK to build a complex, cutting-edge tracked recce vehicle was astonishing (in a bad way). They only had expertise in avionics and military radio (largely Bowman). They had never built any sort of vehicle before, not even a pedal car! Initially they did not even have a factory until they found an abandoned factory that used to make forklift trucks – it was outfitted as an Assembly Hall, not a proper AFV factory, hence their need for bought-in hulls (and a lot more besides).
In contrast BAE’s bid to develop a recce variant of the highly regarded CV90 was rejected.
I wonder how GDUK built its workforce, many of whom had doubtless never even seen a AFV before. Did the parent GD (USA) draft in scores of skilled AFV designers, developers, QA, production personnel from the US. It seems not.
Certainly the quality of GDUK’s engineers and other technical personnel must be suspect.
We did a cost analysis on a recent project. Looking at the cost differences between engineering and project control/management. I was shocked by the findings in engineering the allocated resource as in full time engineers cost 35%, whilst program control/management cost 50%. The remaining was split between commercial and other suppliers.
As an engineer who does a lot of project control and management, I had to ask why the costs were justified. But they did come up with some compelling answers. Which I thought was mostly BS. I suspect Ajax has had the same problems, too many managers not enough engineers.
As they say most of the money (4 billion) has been spent on the project you have to wonder if they have enough to finish building the remaining vehicles. General Dynamics UK made small losses the last two years.
Scrapping them would be a waste of time and then a whole new concept and designed.
Why do they persist with this money pit! Just buy something tgat works CV90….
Because like a the other services our custy old air marshals, admiral and army generals don’t want to see the British forces using other countries cast offs
I would hardly describe CV90 as a cast off. ASCOD on the other hand, the Americans have literally cancelled their ASCOD derived AFV programme.
Rob, be realistic. Where is MoD going to find another £5.5 – £6bn from?
Hi,
Yes but it may work out less expensive then persisting with a seriously flawed platform. Its the old story – we have spent so much already we cannot cancel it… just a few million more and it will be good. The MoD cannot admit they have bought a lemon! If you ask me we should move to drones for recon not huge lumbering expensive platforms. Plus they will not get active protection so they will be sitting ducks. This is old tech for the last war.
Because it wont be a “just” would it. The requirement would have to be re-specc’d, plans for design, evaluaon, testing and manufacturing put in place. They are not buying a washing machine.
We have bought a washing machine – its valled Ajax….
The capacity of the Authority to cover-up cock-ups never ceases to amaze me. They have poured £billions of taxpayers money into Ajax over the duration of this project and many people accept that we should cut our losses and scrap it. Except Healey, who has organised yet another review
Wallace had the chance to do so in 2023. He could have saved a couple of £bn, recovered more by suing GD and ordered CV90 from BAEs. The hulls could have been sold to the Brazilians or donated to Ukraine
The MoD continues to pretend that the Ajax project is recoverable, when clearly it is not. They are all running around trying to cover up their part in it, hoping that their careers will not be affected.
If they were working in the private sector they would be negotiating with their benefits work coach, trying to avoid being sanctioned while they are actively seeking work
In the end almost all the money has been paid.. 5 billion pounds and the company is a loss making LTD company with only debt.. there is nothing to Sue.. it’s why they have not just binned it they are trying to see if there is anything they can salvage from this utter cockup… GD Corporation are not idiots they are completely isolated from risk by using a shell limited company… even general dynamics Europe land systems are isolated from risk.. Because although is was GDLSE who build the shite hulls that are causing most of the issues.. their contract was with GDLS UK not HMG, so only GDLS UK could take legal action on breach of contract on the hulls being shite and one GD subsidiary is not going to take another one to court.. and HMG can only take the entity to court it has the contract with and that is GDLS UK.. which is a limited company and has no capital value… basically HMG is screwed whenever it does, it’s just trying to figure the least worse.
Cannot blame the present administration for this one in any shape or form or whatever bad deal they get out of it.. because essentially that 5 billion is gone and all they can do if figure out what to do with the broken vehicles it purchased.
No, but it was the last Labour government that picked GD Ascod & the Welsh factory, & the Tories that let the Army do a major change to spec in 2016.
Picking the thing was not the issue.. in theory it was a mature platform.. the issue was programme oversight and a shite contract.. and that was all done from 2010 onwards.. the initial selection was made in March 2010 the contract was signed in 2014.
It wasn’t a mature platform. ASCOD had N&V issues in 2010 as Carew Wilkes stated in Parliament he called it a feature of the design.
GD stated in their bid that ASCOD had been ‘verified’ to 40T never seen proof of this.
Adding over 10T to a 26T torsion bar suspension design that already had N&V issues was a recipe for disaster.
Even the Austrian version of ASCOD (Ulan) changed out the Spanish dampers to high quality Horstman designs.
This is before you even consider that MoD let a FFP contract for something that wasn’t designed, didn’t exist to a company , area, factory that had zero experience in the field, What could possibly go wrong?
John, AFV projects are very long gestation with most taking at least 10 years. Ajax if fully fielded (FOC) in end-2029 will have taken 19 years from initial Contract Award in 2010!!
Can you imagine taking delivery now of a brand new car that had Contract Award in 2005!
My point is that so much changes over that time – the nature of the Threat; new fittable technolgies; new materials especially armour; legislative changes (eg on vehicle emissions).
It is no surprise that a change of Spec occurs over this time – this is commonplace. the only surprise is that there was only one Spec change in all this time.
Silly question,, but can the UK government further intervene and buy out or nationalise GDLS UK? If contract has not beem fulfilled satisfactorilly and they’re in debt?
But there are essentially no real assets.. they could probably take them for everything but it’s net worth is only 300million, with 1 billion in assets and 700million in liabilities.. and you can bet those assets would not actually realise 1 billion as they are accounting assets not what someone would actually pay.. and those 700million in liabilities are real hard debts..
Definitely rates as a silly question,There is nothing to buy.
General Dynamics will have to overcharge for parts and service contract to fund the building of the remaining vehicles.
Look for who the shreholders are making fortunes by cocking up contracts like this, profitting from failures yet still grifting the taxpayer. That’s probably the main reason we just plough on as public oversight is mostly trumped by billionaire greed.
Too much time and money spent on it, buying some thing else will badly effect other projects, ideal thing would be fix it get it in to service still not sure why we need a 40 ton recce vehicle? we have enough wheel light vehicles for that,
If fixed we would need to add the types/variants of Ajax, IFV/Over watch, etc, but knowing the UK that will mess that up and drag that out at great cost. Hope not but MOD buying history repeats its self over and over again.
Martin, why do you think an armoured division should have light, wheeled recce vehicles operating in the Direct Fire Zone? Ajax’s predecessor, Scimitar, was armoured and tracked (albeit much lighter). I served 4 tours in BAOR; recce (and liasion) vehicles going back over decades were all armoured and most were tracked..
Of course I have not seen any Requirements document for Ajax but clearly protection was very highly ‘ranked’. The protection that would meet the Requirement clearly could only be met by a significantly heavier vehicle than Scimitar. It represents a dramatic departure from past practice and many would say that Ajax represents a vehicle that conducts ‘recce by fighting’ rather than the classic British method of ‘recce by stealth’.
God question, Ajax would be ideal in fight or if contacted but our way is, Recce is by steulth. The USA doe reccee by fire, which i agree we must be able to do. Ajax is not that vehicle for stealth.
Best recce is one that is not seen so what it finds is unknown to an enemy. Its merely an opion, but as an FOO assistant/warrior opv crew i’d rather be not see and not have to fight, of course there is time to fight and be seen to get info that is needed. I have done Arty Recce which is not the same as battle Group or higher recce.
Its a change in docturing which may be the way ahead but not every thing the USA does works for us.
Shows what a farce the concepts of IOC and FOC are. This is the same MoD demanding £14 billion a year more in tax payer funds to fight a war that’s they now say is coming next Tuesday while they still fanny around with their never ending “programs”. The SDR was all about adding even more new programs and future capabilities because drones, drones, drones, hypersonics and AI and let’s be agile blah blah blah.
News flash for the service chiefs, if things are as bad as you say then why are you not ordering more planes, more men, more frigates and missile defences for the UK.
None of these things are even in your unfunded plans much less the plans you want £14 billion a year more for. Instead your pumping yet more money into special forces and power projection capabilities all designed to fit inside a US led coalition that no longer exists because the typical UK service chief doesn’t like thinking for themselves and likes the nice comfortable blanket and associated future consultancy gigs in the US MIC.
These same as*holes that gutted the MoD since 2010 (Defence Ministers as well) then have the brass neck to write a letter to the press calling for desperately needed funding for the armed forces while all shovelling even more tax payer cash into their mouths in “retirement” telling us it’s 1936. As if this statement washes them for any blame for all the damage they caused over 15 years.
I agree with you Jim, but why are you putting a line in the sand at 2010?
Governance of both colours have caused huge damage to the armed forces since 1991.
The Options for change review set the theme in 1990, instead of re-imagining the armed forces for the post Cold War period and the 21st Century, they simply started salami slicing capability, they have all simply carried on, diverting defence money and generally pissing what’s left against the wall on stupid ( tail wags the dog) programmes like Ajax until we get where we are today.
We have virtually disarmed…
This is just a case of when ‘Too big to fail’ fails.
Yep, again, another great jobs for the boys programme heads for the ‘tits up’ list.
Another 4 years 🤣🤣🤣🤣
2029?! Why not asap in 2026!? Give them more time and they’ll take even more time. Someone’s going to need some balls to fix this.
I don’t think it’s actually fixable. It’s said that plaster & paint can hide many a fault, but at some point, later down the track, someone is going to be caught out. It’s a case of when, not if.
It’s obsolete and would not survive, Ukraine has proven that. I’m afraid army thinking is very much wedded to the past.
For some reason, I can see it lasting another 3 years!
But then again, they are so deeply infatuated with sorting it out that they will continue to throw money at it within the remaining time
Thinking that it will be some miracle on the battlefield
See my comment above. The Minister needs to go ask someone else for advice. It is pointless asking the army or industry. They are incapable of independent advice on this issue. So are many of the normal go to alllies. GD is a US company. BAE is the obvious opponent (via a Swedish subsidiary). Germany does Boxer, France involved in the cannon, Spain built the dodgy hulls. Go talk to someone who doesn’t really care what any of these think, but are professional enough to tell you what you want to know & the experience to back it up.
MOD is supposed to give impartial advice, but they’ll only do so if the minister asks for it without the usual constraints. Not the NAD or the SRO (who might still be the relatively new NAD), but low enough down that they aren’t political and have had the time and space to think about it professionally.
So basically never?
So the nightmare goes on surely the Army can’t wait till 2029 .Who ever made this decision needs help Don’t wast more money on this Ajax go for CV90 and be done with it for for heavens sake . 🙄
Is this the bit where we wait until 2029 and then announce that the Ajax project needs to be cancelled and that an alternative must be sourced?
2029 you say, general election year, quite the coincidence that…
Shove it into the hands of the next administration to sort out.
To be honest this is one shiteshow they can if they wanted to wheel out and say look what the conservatives did for 10 years.. just spent 5 billion on a load of broken vehicles that cannot be used.. politically this is a no skin off labour political hatchet job if they wanted..
Morning Jonathan, they could, but then they would be forced to launch a replacement programme.
We are all well aware this government has zero interest in defence, lots of hot air and bullshit, but very little of any substance.
They will likely just let this shit show rumble on until its not their problem anymore.
Then the 50 odd remaining Labour MP’s on the opposition benches can ‘howl’ about the ‘cuts’…
I believe thats how it works mate, its just another political football to them, they couldn’t give a toss regathe state of the armed forces.
Exactly.
For me, the MoD and the Army can take more of the blame than all the governments in power during this shambles. We all know the Treasury would have willingly cancelled this at the first sign of trouble. The MoD and Army would have been telling MPs that these were just teething problems and that everything would be fine, and MPs took that advice. Things obviously changed when the injuries happened just after declaring IOC (again, on advice from the Army).
Artillery, on the other hand, was a political decision to buy the RCH 155 and give away the AS90.
If the AS90 had had the Braveheart barrel upgrade to 40 km range it would have saved the need to buy something new.
I think even if we had upgraded at the time, AS90 is still a 1990s platform underneath it all. It’s probably time for something new now.The point I’m trying to make is that we did not transition properly, and now we are stuck with 14 Archers because of political decisions.
Just had a Quick Look and the people asking for CV90 may have a point!
600 Mk4 would cost approximately $5.5b
However we don’t want IFVs,some would need to be configured as Recce vehicles(Ajax) which would be the more expensive option of any order but looking at the variants on offer it seems most of our requirements could be met with the cost of those cheaper than a recce version!
The problem remains though WHEN would we be able to get them because as usual we go to the back of any queue!
Just a ramble I know but it would seem the option could be there.😀
Reconfigured as a recce vehicle you say. Hmmm
Pick up the ‘jobs for the boys ‘ secure phone line and get to work…
Righto, let’s make it 3 foot longer and 2 foot wider, better change the engine too. Chuck away Ajax electronics and magic source, then start again, bound to be getting obsolete by now anyway.
What do you mean its rattling itself to bits, best cancel it and start again.
There you go Jacko, that takes you to 2040🤣🤣🤣
😂recce version already exists but I get your point we would gold plate it👍
Yes, but it doesn’t use UK recce equipment, which is pretty much the whole point of the vehicle, with the way that its sensors & processing capabilities are integrated into future battlefield management plans
Sweden ,Norway and the Netherlands use them already
Could the Scimitar/Scorpion chassis be upgraded to fit the CTA 40mm turret?
Blimey people are getting in a tizzy about CR2 hulls and you suggest CVRT ones,they came into service in the 70,s😀
Why? Ajax (as a recce vehicle), did not need a CTA turret to begin with. Why do you want a new, heavy, expensive turret on a 50 year old vehicle armed with a cannon you can’t afford to fire?
The turret is integral to its capabilities as a recce vehicle – that’s where all the sensors are. If we moved to CVRT/CV()/ whatever, we would either have to migrate the current turret, or design a completely new one for the CV90
There are only two real alternatives -move the recce capabilities to a Boxer module (much simpler to design a module around the known requirements than to modify an existing vehicle to accommodate them) and order some traked Boxer at some point in the future (Germany has now got behind developing them), OR
Start from scratch with an unmanned robot version, incorporating all the planned capabilities into a smaller tracked vehicle, using a manned vehicle for C&C & the drones (along with UAVs) as the forward elements
As you point out, the whole idea of boxer is to enable you to do just that. Recce boxer modules exist already (not in UK), so it’s not hard to get some idea of what a boxer based vehicle should be capable of in that role. How much better would a new module with the Ajax turret be over the existing recce module, which has a 30mm turret? How unique are Ajax capabilities over equivalent from other modern nations? And is that uniqueness worth the money (bearing in mind what is currently doing the job)?
Excessive recoil 20,000 lbs through short springs, this is why Americans turned it down and seem to be going for bushmaster 50 mm cannon. Barrel life poor and very expensive rounds.
I think there is still a running WW1 Vickers tank at Bovington, could we not pop a periscope on it and baskets of carrier pigeons for ‘electronically secure’ communications.
I can get a working prototype going for a trifling one £billion, guaranteed to be quieter and less vibration than Ajax too….
Well the 6 pounder gun has a greater effective range. Perhaps your onto something.
That’s a non starter, among many other reasons, we wouldn’t want a fast nimble and easily air transportable recce asset Quentin,
The MoD prefer a tracked steam roller for the job, have another think….
‘On current plans’ ie the plans have not, and will not, be updated until the safety investigations and the Ministerial Review are complete. So there’s nothing to see here. We won’t know what is actually happening until these endless reviews and investigations report back.
In other words, find a patch of very long grass and kick the ball as ‘far’ into it as you possibly can….
I’m sure they want this problem to go away ASAP. It’s costing more and more and generating extremely bad PR. I haven’t mentioned ‘giving the Army the capabilities,’ as I’m sure that is much further down their priority list.
Scrapping the Army might achieve the 5 Billion savings though.
‘Island nation’ and that…
More importantly, have you seen the pic of Andrew in the back of the car after being released from arrest? Looks like something out of Dawn of the Dead! 🧟♂️
Plonker! His arrest will be for him, what the Americans call ‘ a meeting with Jesus’.
100%
‘Anything but BAE’ said the VSO
Just Me…VSO is your abbreviation for Very Senior Officer?
Given our financial situation and the difficulty of procuring a replacement quickly I would think there is huge pressure to get something useful out of what we have. How is the Ajax+Boxer hybrid cavalry thing going?
Very disingenuous for Pollard to say that on current plans FOC will be achieved bythe end of 2029. Assuming Ajax is to be fixed, rather than scrapped, the fix programme is likely to take a very long time, so it would be better to say that he doesn’t know when FOC will be.
2029
You will have had a full generation of soldiers 300-Spartan’s Generation done a full career in the Army before this thing comes online.
Ha, I remember when the Spartans started showing up and they were the newbies. They must be the ‘old heads’ now. Do you know what number we’re on now?
One of mates told me the other day new troopys are showing up in the mid 304’s.
The youngest of the Spartan Generation must be at the 15 year point of their careers at least.
👍 Crazy how time flies!
I fully agree with Rob N on this one – It’s old lumbering tech and the march of time/technology has overtaken this (also a possibly flawed design) . Recon drones and agility with precision deep strike are better options for a limited budget . Take it squarely on the chin, lessons learned and think creatively . Air sea and land drones, that buddy-up, nano technologies and (unfortunately) off the shelf products with as much industrial offset possible, while still building up ones own base at a realistic pace .
Jimmy, the army invariably has a range of equipment to fulfil a task or role – I once counted that we had well over half a dozen ways to kill a tank. Intentional. It would be folly to conduct recce solely by drone – they have their vulnerabilities and limitations.
You might be right Graham . It just feels like a very expensive and increasingly vulnerable (and still flawed) solution in an ever changing military environment…
All those precious eggs in one glaring obvious (and loud) nest 🪺