All six hundred and twenty three Mechanised Infantry Vehicle Boxers are being delivered to a common build standard, which has made variant and build configuration effectively the same thing.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member for Huntingdon, asked for an updated breakdown of the 623 vehicles by variant, build configuration and role, referring back to an answer given in June 2021.
Luke Pollard, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry, said: “I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 18 December 2025 to Question 100025, which set out the number of Mechanised Infantry Vehicle (MIV) Boxers contracted for by variant. This information remains extant. As the Boxer programme has developed, build configuration and variant have become effectively interchangeable, with all 623 MIV Boxer vehicles being delivered to a common build standard. Consequently, a separate breakdown by build configuration is no longer relevant.
“The Department keeps under review its approach to the disclosure of information, taking account of a range of factors. An updated breakdown by role could pose a risk to operational security and, therefore, I am unable to provide this information.”
A common build standard means the hulls and drive modules come off the line identically whatever mission module they eventually carry, which is the design logic of the vehicle: the mission module can be lifted off and another fitted. Ministers confirmed earlier this month that Boxers will be able to recover one another in the field and that the vehicle has been built with the electrical and physical margin to take a remote weapon station later.
Boxer is being built in Britain by Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land at Telford and Stockton-on-Tees, with WFEL at Stockport, under contracts covering the 623 vehicles for the British Army.
Yes, just build the vehicles; the modular options can come afterwards if they are slowing the process. That said, there’s not much point to Boxer if we don’t take advantage of the payload flexibility. So, the UK will get 695 units in total if I include the 155 howitzer.
I thought he was in essence asking what the variant breakdown would be, getting a reply that the base vehicle can be any variant is not really answering the question and certainly not making it irrelevant. Surely we need to have some idea of what modules are planned to be used for it upon delivery, because we will need those modules there and ready to use in a developing conflict. You can’t just start ordering afterwards and expect instant delivery like it’s some industrial just in time process. Indeed I thought we already knew that fundamentally it being a modular system the base vehicle could carry pretty much any module, wasn’t that the whole point?
Spyintheshy, I totally misread that notice. Thanks for pointing it out, Sir.
Baltic Defence Review just released a Youtube alledging that the recovery, mortar and anti-tank overwatch variants are not being built.
Furthermore, given their weight they can not be recovered by another boxer.
So the question is, what is the truth?
I can readily believe the overwatch variant was just a pipe dream from the start.
I think someone was on here recently saying the recovery variant was looking dicey.
Ditching the mortar variant seems unlikely though, unless they intend to just use the troop transport with a dismounted mortar team
That said I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Not convinced the Minister does either. If it’s modular capability isn’t to be exploited why buy such an expensive vehicle purely on the basis that they might order some unspecified modules at some equally unspecified time in the future but we don’t presently know what they might or indeed might not be. Doesn’t instil me with confidence. Are they saying they are buying them without modules, with a standard module (one presumes troop carrier) or simply haven’t made a decision as yet.
My interpretation of the minister’s comment was that he was using the commonality of the hulls as a clever excuse to completely dodge talking about the mission modules Obese-Jecty was actually asking about.
Yup, politician-speak!
Dimwit, I too have read somewhere that the repair & recovery, mortar and anti-tank overwatch variants of Boxer are not now being built.
Quite crazy as they are all required in a mechanised infantry battalion. If the capability is not provided at all then vehicles will be lost to the unit through breakdown and bogging in…missions will not be achieved and lives may well be lost due to the lack of mortar and lesser provision of anti-tank fire. It is very hard to see how good alternative provision can be made for these three areas of a capability. Also why do this? To save money? or to buy more of another type of Boxer?
As to the Repair and Recovery variant, found at Company fitter section level. Its a bad idea to combine both these functions for a medium or light armoured vehicle. The Australians have proved it if doubt ever existed – they have tried and failed to engineer a combined repair and recovery Boxer. You cannot easily, if at all, package a powerful winch and crane and the vast array of other REME Special-To-Role (STR) kit and spares into the envelope of a single vehicle due to size and weight constraints. That is why we had REME vehicles with seperate repair and recovery functions for Warrior and FV430 series.
A key ‘law of physics’ is that a recovery vehicle must be equal or heavier in weight to the heaviest Boxer requiring recovery….a mouse cannot pull an elephant out of a swamp! There are two basic types of recovery – extrication of a casualty from the aforementioned swamp, bog or muddy field…and recovering/towing a broken down casualty with a serious problem to an area further to the rear where repairs can be conducted, such as LAD Main or a REME second line unit. For extrication you need that heavy REME recovery vehicle to stand on good ground, pay out a winch rope and haul the casualty out using a powerful winch. The recovery vehicle needs to be based in the Company fitter section travelling a tactical bound behind its F Echelon rifle company. It needs to have the same mobility and protection as the vehicle being supported for very obvious reasons. Extrications may very well be done under fire.
The other kind of recovery (a tow to a repair area) needs a straight bar connecting the REME wagon in front to the casualty behind. Forget buddy buddy recovery by another Boxer APC unless all Boxer APCs are to carry a straight bar and the Company OC doesn’t mind two APCs being out of the fight!
Sir, you’ve been promoted to Jonathan and Rodders (ABC Rodney) for the fulsome replies you give. Thank you!
What is wrong with Luke Pollard? Ben Obese-Jecty asks what the breakdown of the 623 ordered Boxers is, following the recent dramatic and unwelcome revelation that the BA will not now have the Repair & Recovery variant, the Mortar carrier and the Overwatch vehicle (with Brimstone). Pollard refers him to the contract order of 2021.
Interesting that the number of 623 is confirmed. The order included 50 REME, 28 Mortar variants. It did not list an Overwatch vehicle (as far as I could see).
Either those 78 vehicles with deleted roles will become troop carriers (makes sense as only 146 were ordered) or they become Boxer RCH-155s!
Still no news as to how the deleted capability will be covered. It is still required.
Good Morning Graham, I think you have hit the nail on the head and they will all be Troop Carriers, they are not extending Warrior, not ordered a Tracked replacement and getting the infantry under Armour has to take priority. Also when you look at the immediate available funding concentrating on the one common variant that we actually “Must Have” is basic Industrial efficiency.
Then it hit me is it actually possible that some bod in the MOD CS has actually stumbled on the MoSCoW method of prioritisation ? Now that would be a miracle !
Next year we will have a 10 year spending review that sets out the future Defence funding and cannot ignore our spending commitment to NATO. Boxer will be in full production so they can safely add extra volume and variants after the IFV requirement is met.
As an aside and based on your background would it make more sense to order additional REME Ajax variants instead of Boxers ! I always thought it a bit odd that using one wheeled vehicle to try and recover another wheeled vehicle is maybe not a good idea 🤔
Hi ABC, I hadn’t heard MoSCoW for a few years. Good to have a refresh. You advocate using it to determine the prioritisation of variants? Interesting and unusual. I doubt that anyone would say that the three variants chopped are in the ‘W’ camp of won’t have.
I am no fan of Boxer but our Mech Inf needs a modern wheeled armoured vehicle. Boxer is too expensive and we cannot buy enough. The army requirement was for about 1200 Boxers (and we were assured that funding was ringfenced…haha!) and that was when we were also retaining Warrior for the AI and upgrading it. To go from that to having no Warrior and only half the required number of Boxers is beyond a joke.
ILS requires that support is in place before a new equipment is fielded. That would mean the REME support for Boxer (in part represented by REME Boxer variants) is mandated to be in place before the APCs are fielded. So ILS has now gone to hell in a handcart! REME support is provided far forward at rifle company level by a small fitter section capable of conducting recovery and quick repairs on vehicles; they travel a tactical bound behind the company APCs. What’s a tactical bound? Depends on the ground…it could be 50m or 250m or something else. All manouevre units have a REME fitter section at Company/Squadron level. With the Boxer repair and recovery variant deleted what could take its place? Something with the same mobility and protection as Boxer and of the same or heavier weight than Boxer APC….that rather limits the options.
Order additional Atlas (recovery) and Apollo (repair) to support a Boxer battalion? They should be able to do the job but would not be cheap. I don’t get your view that it is odd for a wheeled recovery vehicle to recover another wheeled vehicle; all our wheeled vehicles from LandRovers to Mastiffs are recovered by wheeled ‘Wreckers’ – always have been. It would be a lot more odd for a tracked rec veh to recover a wheeled casualty – not sure we have ever done that before.
Similarly the deletion of the Boxer mortar carier is baffling. When Warrior replaced FV432 from 1987, there wasn’t enough money committed to the programme so a Warrior mortar carrier was not funded and FV432 had to continue to supply the mounted capability as it had from the mid-1960s. Not ideal as it was markedly slower and less well protected that the Warriors. What will the Boxer battalion do to carry mortars around? Run on 1960s era FV432s? They would have insufficient protection although the Bulldog Mk 3 is uparmoured, but probably less so than a Boxer – hopefully a Bulldog could still open the roof hatch to fire the mortars mounted? They will constantly be breaking down given their age, and they will be slowere on good roads.
Finally Boxer does not of course meet the IFV requirement. It is patently not an IFV, as the British version lacks a cannon. When Warrior is withdrawn we will not have an IFV – despite discussion about buying extra ARES and sticking a cannon on them to make an IFV nothing has changed. There is no money for an IFV. The tanks will have to fight alongside wheeled APCs with very light armament…not at all good.
I was reading about the FV432 upgrade to Bulldog the other day. I hadn’t realised that it was a pretty full-on upgrade. One element that stood out was that protection had been upgraded from Stanag level 1 to level 3 or 4, the latter with bolt-on panels I think, so basically the same as Warrior. That sounds OK for the mortar carrier for the armourerd infantry brigades.
It would be odd to mix in a tracked vehicle in a wheeled formation. The best answer for the mechanised units would be the up-armoured Patria 6 x 6, if we are going to buy Patrias. It is a 22 tonne vehicle, with suspension switched to hydro pneumatic and level 3 or 4 protection. In the meantime, maybe something from the Mastiff/Ridgeback series could serve in the wheeled mortar and WRV roles? I don’t know what is used for recovery in the Mastiff units, there must be a WRV of some kind that might cope with the much heavier weight of a Boxer. Or maybe not!
It won’t be covered Graham, any order booted past 2029.
The fact of the matter is GCAP and AUKUS ( two programmes on a parallel multi billion pound spending trajectory) are about to drain the pool dry, 2.4%, simply won’t come remotely close to funding everything and the Army is being starved of funds, it’s projects delayed, then renounced and delayed again.
3% won’t cover everything either for that matter, we all know it.
Labour won’t put the money in, so that I’m afraid is that….
Hi John C, our illustrious MoD adopted ILS in 1993 and made it mandatory for nearly all programmes. One tenet of that is that engineering and logistic support must be in place before a new capability is fielded viz. suitable REME Repair and Recovery variants must be in place before the very first Boxer arrives in unit lines….not several years later!
I think the Dreadnought programme is also draining the pool dry.
The next major war may well be principally a Land war (with Air support) against a peer opponent….and today Wes Streeting says that we have at most 1,000 days to get ready. The army will not be ready!
It’s depressing mate, it really is, the Army is being reduced to poorly equipped penny packet formations…
Another joust between Pollard and Obese-Jeckty, who obviously knows that several ‘specialist’ Boxer variant modules require a different base vehicle. Pollard is not taking the bait; all base vehicles will be the same build – we are not throwing away the main justifications for buying the Boxer in the first place.
@Graham. 78 vehicles with deleted roles is also the number of Warriors recently reported as being ‘disposed of.’ Is this co-incidence or is there a master plan of some sort?
” .. who obviously knows that several ‘specialist’ Boxer variant modules require a different base vehicle ..”
Really?? I don’t think that is true.
Isn’t that the logic of his question…that the build for base vehicle for a specialist variant must be customised in some way, so that you can infer the specialist module from the build / batch No of the base vehicle…or is he just guessing?
He’s asking how many of each variant is being acquired. The answer would embarrass the government so they replied with a bunch of bullshit.
Hi Paul, I don’t see that deleting three Boxer variants as being related to retiring Warrior IFVs. If the story was that 78 Warriors might be retained, then there just might have been linkage!
The MIV configuration is woefully under armed and can be best described as drone fodder. Any infantry vehicle that doesn’t have APS and an automated anti drone and surface strike/ counter armour turret is toast within 15kms of the “frontline”.
That’s the lesson from Ukraine our MOD are ignoring.
Not the only one.
The Minister’s answer on 18 December 2025 gave numbers for each variant.
Infantry Carrier 146
Specialist Carrier 200
Command 212
Ambulance 65
He says the information “remains extant”. I understand that to mean the information still exists. To me that does not mean it is still correct but I think that is what he was struggling to say.
They’re all charlatans. I fully expect some of the variants have been quietly cancelled to save money.
That number of 212 Command variants has always stuck me as completely disproportionate. One in every three Boxers will be command post! That is completely lopsided, I wonder what on earth.is the thinking behind it?
On Pollard’s reticence to spell out the numbers of the variants envisaged, I wonder if there is not another factor at play. Boxer.is a very expensive beast. Using it for many of the tasks required is overkill. With the original plan to field over 1,000 of them now reduced to the initial 623 and further pressure to find savings to remain within budget, I suspect there is a re-think underway.
For many of the roles, such as infantry platoon recon, mortar carrier, Anti tank squads/overwatch, AOPs, REME repair, field engineer and signals squads, etc, etc, Boxer is not necessary. A much cheaper up-armoured Patria would do the job adequately. That would mirror the current Warrior/FV-432 split, where Warrior is the frontline armoured element and Bulldog the lighter, cheaper battlefield support vehicle (ABSV).
That split arose out of financial necessity, there wasn’t the money to equip every element with Warrior.
It would be sensible, given the expense of Boxer, to have a lighter, cheaper vehicle providing the mechanised battlefield support role (MBSV). That would explain Pollard’s reticence on Boxer variants, because the final split may be up in the air at the moment.
“Lghter and cheaper” means it wont be “up-armoured”. So money will be saved with the tradeoff that British troops will be less protected and more will die.
Not so, the heavier version of the Patria has Stanag level 3 or 4 protection, which is about the same as Warrior. And a lot better than the FV432. It all depends which version of Patria the MOD goes for. The standard Patria CAVS has thin armour and IIRC level 2 protection. No doubt the MOD will opt for the cheaper, more vulnerable version to save money.