Fact Check – Conservative manifesto claims Boxer is ‘made in Britain’

Agreed, it’s ridiculous to say call the “Made in Britain” tag false over what are technicalities. If the vast majority are being built in this country, from a majority of British components, thats about as “Made in Britain” as anything else we produce for defence.

You wouldn’t say the T26 isn’t made in Britain, despite almost it’s entire armament being American (Mk45, Mk41, Phalanx, Bushmaster 30mm).

In defence of the article, only 60% (by value) of that 94% is UK content. So only 60% of the value of each vehicle is sourced from UK industry.
Yes, absolutely, global supply chains and all of that. But it will be down to what 60% of the vehicle is British. Is that just the assembly line work of putting together all of the German manufactured components? Or are there (more high value) technology elements involved? I’d expect comms and any tactical systems to be British (Bowman), and that’s expensive, so likely makes up quite a high percentage of the vehicle’s value. So what’s left of that 60% after the comms, tactical systems and the final assembly?
What’s the big deal about that? Comms and tactical systems are armed forces-dependent, meaning that no army uses the same stuff. Expertise built up in the UK for these things is of limited (though good) value for longer term export potential. From an industrial “making things” perspective, the UK is in a position where it needs to be making the complex, high end, high value stuff to be competitive due to high relative wages (and because we have a relatively well educated workforce, this is achievable). That means we don’t just want to be bolting mission modules to Boxer chassis and wiring them together. We want to be creating and developing IP in advanced and complex machinery and then building it (think Rolls Royce and that GE plant that makes the electric motors for T26). As far as AFVs go, that’s gearboxes, powerplants, protection systems, turret machinery and suchlike. That’s what we want to have market share in in the UK, because it’s expensive enough to make our workforce competitive on other projects than the army’s Boxers alone. Even non-military ones; think of all the mining and industrial requirements for large plant with complex drive systems. I think the article is right for highlighting that.
If anyone (Daniele?) has any information regarding the specifics of the workshare on this deal, it’d be interesting to break it down.

The T31’s ambitious aspect isn’t actually to do with hull numbers: it’s to produce a frigate for £250mn, which is ridiculously cheap compared to other modern ships. If we actually succeed in doing that, then it opens up the possibility of expanding the fleet and reviving warship exports.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty ambitious to me.

Spot on Daniele, the stories could be classed as dis-information.

Perhaps ‘ambitious’ in this instance refers to just getting them off a drawingboard, Daniele?

I agree again, Daniele.

The fact remains that currently, 3 T23 hulls and all 14 T22 hulls were paid off far too early without replacement. I’ll save delving further into it for now as this article is about the Boxer project, but I do advocate upping the budget allowance slightly per vessel and preparing to order a second batch.

I also agree with the ‘ambitious’ budget!

The article is stretching it’s limit. The issue of Boxer is it’s overwhelmingly British made and it was involved years ago with the project. Pretty sad about the comments here.

There are modules with 30mm, 40mm, 155mm +more whether we buy those is a massively different story, I also believe the header picture is the command unit variant

From plants that make the required steel. I would be far more angry about the situation if our warships were produced from the wrong type of steel, than if we’re spending a bit in Sweden, France or Spain.
Would I prefer that it was British produced steel? Of course. But British steel plants have not decided to specialise in anything other than railway track (as far as I’m aware), pretty much everything else is standard structural stuff, and all of the plants are using heavily outdated technologies which are inefficient so they aren’t even always cost competitive. That would be due to enormous underinvestment in British industry and a complete lack of anything approaching a functional industrial strategy for the UK. The National Shipbuilding Strategy is a great start, but it should be forming part of a greater strategy that covers defence, energy, steel, and space. But that takes long term focus and investment on the part of successive governments and budgets, and that focus has really only been on enabling the financial sector since the 80s.
I support your disappointment that the steel isn’t British, but that specific act isn’t what is selling out the British economy; it’s the decades of neglect and asset stripping of British industry by successive conservative and Labour governments that has sold out UK PLC.

if its AH36 plate then the majority will be produced in the UK – but where the raw material comes from the produce the plate may be another matter. nowadays most engineering steels are specialised by country and what they are set up for producing – the Germans and Swedes are better at the stainless steels, the Dutch, Poles and Czechs are geared more towards mild steel tubes and billets. The UK do a lot of plate, sections, beams and profiles.

its what the market demands dictates and where the firms choose to specialize.

At the end of the day (and what is often overlooked) its the valuable parts that creat the jobs and bring in the GDP – engines, gensets, armaments, radar and propulsion system. Steel hull fabrication does not generate high profits and secure jobs, fitting them out with high vaue British equipment does.