In response to a question from David Reed, Conservative MP for Exmouth and Exeter East, about improving the technological capabilities of combat brigades, the Ministry of Defence outlined its plans to modernise the British Army through significant investment and advanced systems.
Luke Pollard, Armed Forces Minister, provided details on the measures being implemented to ratchet up the British Army’s lethality, mobility, and protection.
Pollard described the initiative as part of a comprehensive effort to prepare the Army for modern conflicts. “The Army is currently undergoing a combined programme of work to ensure that our manoeuvre forces will have the lethality, protection, and mobility to fight and win against any adversary,” he said, as quoted in the recent update.
He explained that this modernisation will include billions of pounds of investment over the next decade, with future capability development guided by the forthcoming Strategic Defence Review. “Whilst the Army’s modernisation will continue over the next decade with a programme of investment worth billions of pounds, the future capability development priorities will be guided by the Strategic Defence Review,” Pollard said.
Pollard highlighted the new capabilities set to be integrated into Brigade Combat Teams, which will include the AJAX, BOXER, and Challenger 3 armoured vehicles. Air support will also play a crucial role, with the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capability and Boeing AH-64E Apache helicopters forming part of the modernisation efforts. He added, “In the longer term, the Army will experiment with multiplying crewed aviation mass and lethality whilst enhancing its survivability through Launched Effects.”
The minister also stressed that the Army’s strength lies in its personnel as much as its platforms. “The strength of the British Army comes not just from its platforms and capabilities, but from its people, and the new Government is working to address challenges in recruitment we inherited,” Pollard said.
He hinted at forthcoming measures to tackle recruitment challenges, stating, “We have made some announcements on this area and plan to make further announcements in due course.”
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He added, “In the longer term, the Army will experiment with multiplying crewed aviation mass and lethality whilst enhancing its survivability through Launched Effects.”
I read that at face value or it has an entirely different meaning?
I guess there are no more plain awards to be had!
Should that read uncrewed?
What more crewed aviation could the Army want?
He’s saying they will multiply the mass and lethality of AAC’s crewed aviation (Apaches, Wildcats and the like) by adding uncrewed stuff.
Launched Effects is US Army speak. Our own military, who I thought had already taken incomprehensibility to its highest limits, are learning yet more ways to frazzle English from our transatlantic cousins. Originally, Air Launched Effects (ALE) referred to UAVs and loitering munitions launched from aircraft. The category expanded to include ground-launched stuff, hence just Launched Effects (LE).
A big problem in saying all this is all our potential adversaries will do exactly the same, probably more of it, and probably sooner!! Hope the powers that be don’t forget the real stuff that’s needed and not just the latest toys.
Drones .
Loitering munitions?
So no change then..
Lions led by donkeys as usual, ‘Brigade combat teams’ wouldn’t that constitute a ‘Divisional battle group ?’ you may think I Don’t know wtf I’m talking about, but in my defence neither do the M.O.D. !!! and who’s Luke Pollard, would that be Sue’s brother ?
Any ideas like these always bring Tennyson to mind.
Drones to the left of them, Drones to the right.
Onward rode the Bct’s
Ours is not to reason why, Ours is but to do or die.
Please forgive my scepticism and educate me on what they’re up to. 🤷
A BCT is yet another Americanism, as Jon refers too above.
They are Brigades.
Even our aircrew are now “aviators”
Thankyou for your reply Daniele.
Whatever next ! kampfgruppen ? 😉
all bollox management speak..don’t use plain English just make up words and give it more meanless words in the name..everyone does it.
Ajax is a complete dead duck……..whoever made those decisions should lose their gold plated pension!
Why do you think Ajax is a dead duck?
Good morning Graham, talking of Ajax i think you mentioned in another post that the Army might be looking at a turreted Ares for an IFV? I guess that’s more or less the Ascod 2? Sounds too sensible. And the Overwatch, Mortar launch, possibly Ajax based or more Boxer or a mix?
From Jane’s:
The UK plans to procure more modules than chassis for the next batches of Boxer armoured vehicle procurement, British Army officers said on the last day of SAE Media Group’s Future Armoured Vehicles Survivability (FAVS) 2024 conference held in London from 11 to 13 November.
The next batches will be specialised versions of Boxer: Repair & Recovery, Armoured Mortar, Close Support Bridging, Mobile Fires Platform (MFP), Short Range Air Defence (SHORAD), Serpens Deep Find Radar (DFR), and Mounted Close Combat Overwatch (MCCO). SHORAD Boxers include Command and Control, Forward Repair Team, Active Sensor, Counter-Small Aerial Targets (C-SAT), and SHORAD Mounted variants.
British Army Major Mark Lewis, Senior Officer 2 (SO2) Boxer Futures, outlined “areas of interest” for upgrading the vehicle’s survivability on the last day of SAE Media Group’s Future Armoured Vehicles Survivability (FAVS) 2024 conference held in London from 11 to 13 November.
Those areas include human-machine interface (HMI), active protection systems (APSs) composite armour, and using uncrewed systems with Boxer. The latter would use Boxer as a mother ship for uncrewed air and ground vehicles, with the possibility of the armoured vehicle also being unmanned. HMI could be used to improve the employment of the Boxer’s fire-control system and battle management system, according to Maj Lewis.
He noted that another way to improve Boxer survivability is by increasing its lethality. He said the vehicle’s RS4 remote-controlled weapon station (RCWS) could be replaced by the RS6 RCWS and spoke about giving it a counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) capability with the use of airburst and programmable munition and, further in the future, directed energy weapons. Javelin missiles could increase the Boxer’s anti-armour capabilities, and the Mounted Close Combat Overwatch (MCCO) variant could increase the Boxer’s range to 10 km. Greater range and therefore lethality could also be achieved with the introduction of the Boxer Armoured Mortar, according to Maj Lewis.
That’s quite a list. We’ll have to leave all this to the experts. Just hope for UK 🇬🇧 lads sake they get the tracked and wheeled balance right for the battlefield. I’d put tracked in first, wheeled second. With sensible up-arming. What’s working and what’s not working in Ukraine must be quite eye opening as well as horrific. I, we sure hope, that Ukraine has the means and will to push the Russian forces out of its territory in the near future. Strength to 🇺🇦 ! Strength to 🇬🇧 and the democratic world!
The RS6 is interesting, as that would be a major upgrade in firepower.
Matches with what they recently said about trying different turrets on Boxer.
RS6 is an RWS rather than a turret
It can take cannon
Pedantic. You know what I meant.
The cannon is the important bit…not stealing the armoured infantry’s section cannons is really important.
If my memory serves me correctly, wasn’t the T34 (arguably the best medium ever) a tractor chassis with a bit of plating and a gun ?
I think our students of war need to study a bit more.😴
I’m sure you know once it kicks off in ernest all plans are out the window and it’s down to tech, industrial capacity, intel and the bravery of the few at the sharp end. ❤️✌️
“wasn’t the T34 (arguably the best medium ever) a tractor chassis with a bit of plating and a gun ?”
No.
I will take that as a ‘yes’ 😋
Majors are not Senior Officers. SO2 stands for Staff Officer Grade 2.
This is a direct quote from Janes; not my opinion.
OK. Thanks. Just putting the correction out there.
This all sounds like a wish list.
Let’s hope they go through with it. They didn’t with Warrior variants and ended up still using 60 year FV430s.
Thanks Sam.
No worries.
“procure more modules than chassis”
That’s the bit that worries me.
Just another way to cut as they’ll be left sat at Ashchurch, as like any asset it can only be in one place at one time.
Very plausibly.
Someone pointed out it would be much better to get more drive than mission modules, as the power train is the bit most likely to result in unavailability.
The opposite of what they’re planning then.
Daniele told me about the rumour that the Army was looking at adapting ARES to take a cannon (not in a turret as it has no turret aperture and ring, but in a RWS) and more dismounts and so to become an IFV.
It’s a very wacky way to get a modern IFV, and almost certainly a very slow and expensive project. Also we would have to buy many hundreds of extra ARES to do this. Why not just buy ASCOD2 ie Ulan/Pizarro?
The overwatch and mortar carriers are Boxer variants.
If the ARES conversions go ahead we will have tracked/wheeled mix infantry battalions in the armoured brigades.
Graham, out of interest, what is the physical difference between baseline ASCOD2 and Ajax? Is it a bit longer to fit the extra dismounts in or something? Or is it just systems, internal fittings and armour?
The biggest physical difference is the extra meter of length that Ajax has. Obviously there are changes to the armament and sensors, and engine and armour.The turret ring is much bigger on Ajax… the list of changes is pretty long.
As Dern says Ajax is actually longer than ASCOD2 – 7.62m against 6.83m, and yet the scout/recce version does not carry any dismounts, whilst ASCOD 2 has 8 dismounts.
Again, as Dern says there are mdifferences between ASCOD2 and Ajax, probably too many to totally list. Suspension is a bit different with a different damper type.
Weight is different (Spanish Pizarro is 26.3t, Austrian Ulan is 28t, Ajax is 38t with stretch potential to 42t) – partly due to greater length of Ajax but also due to different armour configuration and different turret (Ajax has larger turret ring ie larger turret) and cannon/ammo. Mission kit is of course hugely different – Ajax is recce, Ulan/Pizarro are IFVs.
GDUK has spent massive money and taken a ridiculous amount of time taking a quite good Austrian/Spanish IFV and turning it into a recce vehicle (and other variants, one of which is the turret-less ARES which takes just 4 (some say 5 at a push) dismounts. A possible army intention is to undo all of that work and turn an Ajax variant (ARES) into an IFV with a cannon in an external RWS, that can presumably carry 7 dismounts. If only we could have had upgraded Warrior for our armoured infantry in the first place (and kept Boxer for the Mech Inf as per Plan A)…or failing that have a purpose-built modern IFV, such as CV90, except that would have been expensive and several major AFV programmes clashed when Boxer was brought forward
Shame we didn’t go down the cv90 route a lot of nato countries use it so the interoperability of spares on the battlefield would be useful
You can have a turret with a big ring but the basket having a smaller diameter.
We had a couple at larkhill for a while they parked one on hardstanding and had to remove one of the side panels with a forklift just to change a top roller I asked them could they be changed on rough terrain they said no excellent design
As an ex-REME guy I am horrified by that.
Back in the day, every new equipment at an early stage in its development went to a MAG (Maintenence Advisory Group) REME for an Ease of Maintenance Assessment.
I guess they don’t do that now.
I asked them where the bv was going in the back all I received at the time was a blank look
David, you just keep coming up with very bad news! But thanks for it anyway. Interesting and horrifyong to hear hpw procurement is now done. There has got to be a BV in all Ajax variants, surely?
I should hope so I was on M109 A1 2 3 they didn’t have bv.s because they were us built so I jury rigged one to the back of the slave socket worked a treat
Every AJAX has a BV Graham, don’t worry.
Sounds like that was a PSO fit prototype, the training and MCO armour need a small chain hoist to lift the side panels whilst the PSO fit needs a bigger chain hoist, all part of the CES.
I wonder how wheeled Boxer with its MG, instead of enhanced Warrior (a tracked IFV with a stabilised 40mm cannon) will ‘enhance Brigade combat capabilities’?
‘I’ll get my coat!’
…except if that somewhat crazy plan to convert some ARES to IFVs sees the light of day.
It won’t though will it. Various reputable sources reporting they’re going for more Boxer variants.
There won’t be any money left for much else.
Ummm 🤔
6 new boxes of right angle torches with “enhanced effect” long life batteries.