The Ministry of Defence has unveiled the first fully British-made Boxer armoured vehicle at the International Armoured Vehicle Conference in Farnborough, marking a significant milestone for the UK’s defence industry.
As part of a £5 billion investment, the Boxer programme will deliver 623 advanced armoured vehicles to the British Army, supporting more than 6,000 jobs nationwide, including 400 in Telford and Stockport and 1,000 across the UK supply chain.
Manufactured by Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land in Telford, the Boxer showcases the UK’s growing expertise in defence innovation. Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, Maria Eagle MP, highlighted Boxer’s transformative impact, stating, “The home-grown production of this world-class vehicle exemplifies our Government’s Plan for Change, deepening our partnership with industry to deliver thousands of highly skilled jobs and drive growth across the UK.”
Boxer, an eight-wheeled, all-terrain armoured fighting vehicle, is designed to rapidly transport soldiers and mission systems across diverse military scenarios. Its modular design allows for quick reconfiguration, ensuring adaptability for future missions. The vehicle forms a cornerstone of the British Army’s modernisation efforts, alongside the Challenger 3 tanks and Ajax platforms.
John Abunassar, CEO of Rheinmetall in the UK, praised the collaboration, saying, “The unveiling of the first British-made Boxer is a historic moment for UK defence manufacturing. It not only symbolises the return of armoured vehicle production to British soil but also underscores Rheinmetall’s commitment to delivering sovereign capability, innovation, and economic prosperity for the UK.”
This development aligns with the UK Government’s Defence Industrial Strategy, fostering long-term partnerships between government and industry to boost regional prosperity, skilled jobs, and national resilience. The strategy, open for consultation until February 2025, will be published later this year with a remit extending to 2035.
Boxer’s production builds on lessons from international partners, including Germany, Lithuania, and Australia, reinforcing the UK’s commitment to global defence collaboration and innovation.
A 36 tonne truck with a .50 cal. Yay!
To be followed one hopes by a few hundred Boxers with a 30mm RWS.
If they were planning that, they would be making a bid deal about it.
I fear this is all we’re getting.
I think they are serious about more Boxer variants though; turreted 120mm mortar?
Paul, Further Boxer orders are expected as only 623 have been ordered, unless of course the reworked ARES (quasi-IFV) become a real funded project.
Agree entirely!
But guns and ATGM’s cost money, and to be frank, they can be quite dangerous… But this does seam like a lot of money for very little in terms of lethality (and we are, apparantly, aiming to triple lethality).
This is a vast reduction of lethality. We could have had upgraded Warrior for our Armd Inf with a stabilised 40mmm cannon. That would have defeated enemy BMPs…and more (Bradley with its little 25mm cannon has disabled Russian tanks in Ukraine).
Quite likely that BMPs will defeat these Boxers.
IIRC Boxer is only rated for 14.5mm so a BMP wouldn’t have any issues.
Hi Tomartyr, the max calibre weapon for the Kongsberg RS4 RWS is indeed a 12.7mm, but it would not surprise me if we were only fitting a 7.62mm MG as MoD has plenty of those.
Full list of weapons suited for the RS4 is: Browning M2 and WKM-B (12.7 mm), M249 (5.56 mm), M240, UKM-2000C and M134 Gatling (7.62 mm), MK19, MK47 and H&K GMG (40 mm grenade launchers with airburst option), various Non-Lethal effectors. The RS4 allows for M240 (6.62 mm) coax kit orvarious ATGM integrations.
14.5mm (STANAG level 4) ALL AROUND, from the front supposedly it’s rated to level 6, 30mm APFSDS from the likes of BMP-2 or 3…
But it’s not going to be of much use if you can’t shoot back.
Jim, it might be of use if a dismount is carrying an NLAW with them….
Why so many ‘command and control variants? Totally disproportionate!
I take it you’ve made a complete TO&E for every Boxer equipped unit to come to that conclusion yes?
Wonderful. Equipped to defend itself from …ermmm, practically nothing.
Alarming to think that Boxer is likely to come off second best if faced by even a very old BMP-1.
Well it’s only option is to run away…better hope a 30-40 ton wheeled vehicle can run away fast in deep Eastern European mud….
Absolutely. Fucking shocking that anyone in senior army leadership just accepts this. Its not like we have a huge Army that can afford losses operating in the manner the Russians do.
Also completely lacking in any sort of drone or ATGM defences. Has nobody learned anything from Ukraine?
If these deploy as they are now they are nothing but targets. It’ll be the snatch landrover scandal all over again.
Hi New Me, of course senior army leadership had no part in the decision making process to equip the AI with the Boxer. The army had specified a Requirement for an upgraded Warrior for the AI and a Requirement for Boxer for the Mech Inf.
Political/financial decision to reduce the lethality and cross-country mobility of the Infantry in our two armoured brigades.
The contract was signed back in 2019, years before fpv drones were recognised as a threat.
Given how slowly government procurement moves, it’s unlikely they will have reacted to that yet.
Maybe in another 5 years time there will be a movement to fix that… Then there won’t be the money to do it till it’s being sent out to a conflict and then after the PR disaster of getting soldiers killed, THEN they’ll magically find the money to fix it.
Ajax and Boxer combined are, what, 14 Billion, or was it more?
For that outlay, for 1212 vehicles, not a single Infantry Battalion is yet scheduled to be correctly equipped with the different versions required, from Mortar to 30mm Cannon to ATGW to a Striker replacement.
There are more C2 versions between Boxer and Ajax than there are Infantry Carriers.
Why is that?
And the army fan boys in the media and online target the RN and Aircraft Carriers for the militaries ills?
I also read that HMG continue to refuse to release the NATO Defence Planning Capability Planning reports detailing WHAT NATO wants members to be able to do. Handy, as then one can not openly judge how much HMG are ignoring them.
The Netherlands has no such issues, and is happily putting 30mm Cannon on vehicles, as the NATO requirement.
NATO also requires Brigades and Divisions to have THEIR OWN ENABLERS. The lack of these in the British Army I have highlighted countless times, leaving some of our Brigades paper formations unable to deploy without substantial reservist support.
I’ll also be interested to see how much of Boxer Labour claim as their own, considering they have ordered nothing, and actually withdrew from the program in 2003, and cancelled all follow up programs, directly leaving the Army in the mess it is in now.
Careful what you claim, Pollard and Healey.
When you think the fucking idiots cancelled the upgrade of 380 warriors because it was going to cost 1.5 billion…which is around half the price we are paying per boxer.
It beggars belief…especially because the evidence coming out of Ukraine is that the infantry fighting vehicles of the armoured infantry are massively important..that section cannon is an irreplaceable asset on the battlefield..the other evidence is that is functionally irrelevant what armoured box the mechanised infantry turn up in as long as they have a reliable armoured box that gets them to where they need to deploy.
Essentially the learning from Ukraine is that the army has pissed its money away on a profoundly sub optimal set of choices for the infanty. Instead they should have
1) spent 1.5 billion on the 380 warriors upgrade with the 40mm for 6 armoured infantry battalions
2) purchase a armoured box for everyone else like the VBMR Griffon..something like that should cost no more that 1.5 million each so 3 billion would buy you 2000 of the things…essentially you could give a decent modern armoured against 14.5mm rounds and mine resistant to every single infantry battalion in the army..
Total cost 4.5 billion..that’s a billion less than we are paying for 650ish boxers…
Jon, This was not a decision made by senior army leadership.
I’m not sure on that, Graham.
I believe it was General Carters baby to bring forward MIV Boxer rather than wait, as part of the Strike Bdes fiasco that wrecked the existing 3 AI Bdes we had at that time.
Sure, HMG are responsible for funding.
But why did he do that? Seeming as the accepted plan, A2020, was less than 5 years old and clearly decided to upgrade Challenger, the Armoured Cavalry, and Warrior, FIRST?
The MIV program, which was Boxer, was a footnote to happen later after 2027, after the other 3 programs had been paid for.
Hi Daniele, I have heard you say this before and you could well be right but the decision to cancel WCSP and to replace Warrior by Boxer, was a political decision.
Why would Carter have brought Boxer forward? It was his idea to introduce Strike brigades with Boxer as you say, so I presume he was focussed only on his pipedream/legacy. Maybe he was worried that if Boxer remained ‘at the back of the queue’ a future Government might overlook or cancel it. Don’t know – only guessing.
Graham, Carter brought Boxer forward after French operations in the Sahel. He was a product of a Light Infantry unit, that had served in repeated light infantry coin operations and, what we forget now, at the time there was little indication that we might have to fight a land war in Europe.
Instead he looked at Herrick, and at the French blitz across the Sahel and concluded that the best option would be medium weight units that could execute long road marches under their own steam. It was less to do with pipedream/legacy and more to do with the direction he saw future wars as going, with strategic and operational mobility being more important than raw firepower initially, and then protected mobility bring more important than armour in a coin environment.
Basically, and it’s kind of hard to blame him in the first half of the 2010s, he was betting that a colonial blitz was more likely than a armoured punch up eastern Europe.
Even after 2014 crimea there was some validity in that argument. Remember the British presence in Estonia didn’t exist when 2020 refine was penned, nor was rail baltica a thing, Sweden and Finland were neutral so the Baltic wasn’t Lake NATO yet.
In that context a mechanised force that could race to the Sulwalski gap by road while armour got loaded onto trains in Germany, to be unloaded and reloaded onto Russian gauge trains in Poland to then head up to the Baltics, still made a degree of sense.
Now we’re dealing with the fallout, but Strike, had the climate of 2005-2015 continued wasn’t a bad idea (although it had its own compromises, eg Ajax and towed 105). Carter’s failing was putting armoured objections down to Capbadge politics and not forseening EFP/Cabrit, and Ukraine.
Just to note Jon, I believe that was due to General Carter deciding MIV ,so Boxer, could not wait until 2027 and it was brought forward alongside spend on Ajax, WCSP, CH3.
Something had to give.
WHY was the original, sensible plan from 2010 not followed?
Yes indeed, the whole strike concept has rather screwed the army over…the thing is it was a concept that has no proof or real validity to the concept for a European battlefield, its essentially assumed the modern battlefield would be permeable…but in reality in the European context that is generally not the case especially in the Eastern European mud seasons…You still have to punch your way through and you cannot be fluid when your logistic trains are bound to roads..strike essentially requires massive dominance in ISTAR, air space dominance and the correct terrain….but for some reason some in the west decided it would work everywhere against everyone…
As for why was the plan not followed…which one I get confused…
Always liked plan that came out first in the defence basing review, the 5 multi role brigades idea each with a MBT regiment, armoured cav regiment, armoured infantry battalion, Mec infantry battalion and 2 light role infantry.. that seemed balanced with 2/3 of the army being focused on the heavy formation end of things.
Even the actual end army 2020 was pretty good with a proper armoured division of 3 heavy brigades, air assault brigade and the adaptable force division of 7 infantry brigades…although in reality those 7 infantry brigades held a lot of paper tiger infantry battalions it did mean that the essentially the army could deploy a heavy brigade, air assault brigade and an infantry brigade into a proper divisional effort and sustain that effort.
In reality it was all on general Carter in 2015 as you say..it was he who decided that he would move the armoured division from a sensible 3 proper heavy brigades with an MBT regiment, armoured cav, 2 armoured infantry and 1 mec infantry…to only having 2 heavy brigades and then creating the elusive 2 meduim strike brigades..and then as you say the entire armoued vehicle procurement process was essentially hijacked by his desire for wheeled armoured vehicles for the strike brigades… at the same time pretty much gutting the adaptive division, by stealing a brigade to turn into a strike brigade ( which never happened ) and then stripping out five light role infantry battalions and turning then into under strength specialists battalions…but most telling was the bonfire of CS and CCS that Carter undertook…removing three battalions of mechanical engineers, one regiment of engineers, one medical regiment, one field hospital and a logistic brigade HQ…., but then even that plan was not followed…
It’s interesting because we always blame the governments..because they in the end are the final arbiters and the buck stops with them..but the same thing happened with the RN and yes Cameron delayed the frigates until they fell apart when he got in in 2010 and Labour hacked the T45 programme down…to 6…but the RN did burn many hundreds of millions on design and concept work over a decade on the frigates and about three different concept programmes.because it could not decided what a frigate should look like..if it had not wasted that money and all the money on refits…it could have had a decent frigate program up and running by 2010 with 17-20 on the order books…with T45 it could have gone for a slightly cheaper AAW destroyer and the UK did not need to walk away from the horizon..in the end the issue was it paid 1 billion per destroyer when it could have got them for .75billion per destroyer..as that was the budge and that is what France ended up paying.
Spot on, you’re well informed mate.
The lack of CS CSS is hurting us now. Strike was about cuts, been saying it ever since when one looks at the ORBAT and what the army lost to enable it.
As I said to Graham. The issue is that strike wasn’t designed for a modern European battlefield. It was designed for a colonial blitz, ala the French in the Sahel, or if we’d have another Afghan. While 2020 refine was being penned British soldiers where still parading on red square, and even after tensions rose, it still looked like we where going to need to rush forces to eastern Poland across a very long road March. (With NATO forces permanently stationed in the Baltics, the rail baltica project well under way, and a much more NATO baltic that’s become less of an issue now of course).
I’m also going to throw shade at the 7 infantry brigades in 1 Div. Because in reality that was two light infantry brigades, and some regional commands that happened to have some battalions under their command. Plus the creation of the SpecInf group was probably the single best idea that 2020 refine had. Essentially creating the busiest formation in the army, out of what had previously been 4 infantry battalions with no role. (And if it was a cost cutting exercise it failed spectacularly as SpecInf/ASOB has been rather expensive compared to 4 Light role battalions.)
Not saying that we don’t need a heavier punch, but I’d caution about being too prescriptive about the lessons from Ukraine.
It is very unlikely that any potential war between us (alongside NATO) against the Russians would stagnate into a similar sort of static trench warfare.
Even then, Ukraine has showed the value of manoeuvre warfare when they can overcome the minefields and front lines, both in 2022 and in Kursk last year. If they had the sort of air power NATO can bring to bear, I don’t think punching a hole through would be nearly as difficult as Ukraine found it in their failed summer counter-offensive. (Not providing tanks till a few weeks before did nothing to help that situation.)
Had the Ukrainians had much more substantial mechanised forces in 2022, they could have enveloped vast parts of the Russian army causing a rout and cascading defeats, potentially winning the war then.
I do have reservations about the survivability and firepower of these vehicles, and I think they’re awfully expensive for an APC and we would be better to replace Warrior with a proper IFV. But I don’t think trying to make them more mobile is a bad thing.
Source regarding section cannon in Ukraine?
Everyone laughs at the project. Yet for some reason the Boxer project is escaping the radar . The build schedule looks quite poor , and as far as I am aware they are still undergoing trials even though in full service in other nations . Then ofcourse their is the firepower issue . But I guess the firepower issue of 30mm cannon and stuff would mean committing these for ifv vehicles , which I font believe we are fully committed to , because of cost /politics and maybe an actual tracked ifv down the road which is well over the horizon at the moment
Edit laughs at the Ajax project
Rst, I have stopped laughing at the Ajax project. The problems were fixed, after a fashion, and these vehicles, long overdue, will soon come into service. Although I think they are unlikely to be that stealthy (meant in the old-fashioned sense) they are well protected, exceptionally well armed and have good cross-country performance…not to mention an outstanding sensor, dats fusion and secure comms/networking capability.
Agree for all its teething problems Ajax is a pretty potent vehicle..my only concern is how will operating a 40+ ton very large tracked vehicle impact on the mobility of the armoured cav and they are pretty huge…not something your hiding in a bush or crossing a lot of dodgy eastern European bridges with.
Hi Daniele, I easily found the NATO Defence Planning Capability Review for 2021/2022 for Slovakia. It was in the NATO archive and was Unclassified. As you say finding a current one for UK is impossible. Much MoD info that used to be in the public domain is not now. The Defence Select Committee critically commented on that recently.
By design, to hide loss of capability, cuts, and army incompetence going round in circles literally mutilating themselves because of Strike.
Nothing more.
Well said as always Daniele…. just painful the government(s) don’t listen!
It will be interesting to see if they can keep up with tracked vehicles on cross country terrain previously wheeled vehicles were sadly lacking this ability.
Brian, I too have said this. The issue is most acute when that terrain is rain-soaked and the vehicles have to plough through thick glutinous mud, as is often the case in Eastern Europe between late autumn and early Spring. Snow and ice will also prove challenging to traverse at speed on a wheeled vehicle.
Not just mud, soft sand is also a problem for heavy 8×8 AFVs. Not that we ever go anywhere that has soft sand.
Judging on what nations that have to fight in sandy conditions (eg Africa) choose, it seems like wheeled vehicles are very much seen as suitable for sand.
Not just eastern Europe try Salisbury plain!
Still only 623 ordered. Army requirement was for more than twice that.
I believe funding is in place for nearly double the current contract for 623.
I believe the army requirement was around 1500 armoured vehicles + the 360 warriors to be upgraded..so close to 2000 vehicles…if any form of sanity had been in place they could have got 2000 decent 25ton APCs for 3 billion and well as the 360 warriors for 1.5 billion…or a billion less than they have spent on 650 boxers.
Think this is pure MOD hype as don’t expect 50% by value is British, e.g. the engines might be assembled in UK, a screw driver plant as all the components come from MTU in Germany and expect MOD classify them 100% British.
Notwithstanding all the mistakes of the past we should celebrate this news. It marks the success of a lot of hard work and skills transfer by Rheinmetall.
The first tranche are indeed APCs, expensive but good. The 50cal RWS can also mount a pair of Javelin I think. Unless there is some kind of Dr Who resurrection performed by the SDR Warrior will stay dead and Boxer is the future. I would expect to see announcements on other variants around the time of the SDR.
Paul, are you sure our Boxers will have 0.50 Cal MGs in the RWS? There are so many 7.62mm MGs that could be fitted.
All the Boxer variants have long been declared for Tr1 and Tr2 orders. MoD is buying two tranches (so far) totalling:
146 Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV)
60 Engineer Section Vehicle (ESV)
62 Recce/Fire Support Vehicles (Recce/FSV)
28 Mortar Carrying Variant (MCV)
50 Equipment Support/ES Repair (Rep)
158 Command-and-Control (C2V) and C2 Utility (C2U)
19 Observation Post Vehicle (OPV)
24 Beyond-Line-Of-Sight (BLOS) observation platforms
11 Electronic Warfare and SIGINT (ESWI) platforms
65 Ambulance
Hi Graham, you got me there. The Kongsberg data sheet says the 50cal is an integrated weapon but I have no source that says that it will be fitted on the UK Boxers.
The data sheet talks of many possible options for the RS4. The video released to Forces News last week shows Boxers with 7.62 MGs.
Is this supposed to be the equivalent of the EBRC or the Griffon? Seems under equipped
EBRC counterpart is Ajax, Boxer is more a Griffon counterpart. Griffon also only carrier 50cal
More importantly Griffon is cheap as chips to buy and you could get 650 for well under a billion.
At a guess I’d say that’s the price you pay for Stanag lvl 6 protection and modularity, instead of a fixed vehicle with lvl 4 protection.
Indeed and it’s a really important point, is all that money spent on Stanag 6 vs Stanag 4 worth the money on an APC for mech infantry, when the point of mec infantry is that the infantry debus well before contact and the APC buggers off…on an IFV that is going to push up and support with direct fire or engage other IFVs it’s worth the money…on an APC it’s more debatable.
It’s the price of modularity I’m afraid. It’s why the T-14 armata modularity struggles, it has the same problem written even larger:
IF Boxer is supposed to have a common drive module that can have an APC module attached, or a artillery module, or an IFV module, or an ATGM module that is simply swapped out, then you need the drive module to be capable of sustaining the most demanding role (ie the cab needs to be armoured enough to be an ifv) otherwise the modularity fails.
People love to swoon over the modular aspect “one common platform” but it comes at a literally price.
On the bright side extra armour certainly can be usefully. A Boxer can probably afford to debus it’s infantry on an objective much more securely than a Griffon, which might choose to wait behind a terrain feature instead.
Also, worth remembering we’ve seen everything from Bradley’s, to Humvees, and M113s staying to provide fire support when Ukrainians carry out assaults. A 40mm gmg on a stanag 6 platform is not an IFV, but against dug in light or mechanised infantry that’s still a pretty decent support platform.
Good points on the modular issue..sometimes just buying a basic purpose build vehicle is better…I wonder if they will mount a 40mm gmg on the weapons mount, it would settle the issue of a direct fire platform for the section..if not give the ability to engage IFVs.
@Jonathan they should do (as in they will unless something really weird happens not “in my opinion they should”) even in LMPVs and WIMKS the break down tends to be an even split between GPMG/HMG on half and 40mm GMG on the other half of vehicles.
Hi Dern, replying to your post today (22 Jan of 1048hrs, my post appears here as that one is missing its reply button). Great post. I have always thought it prudent for the army to have heavy (mainly tracked), medium (wheeled armoured) and light capability. We are no strangers to wheeled APCs. I remember the medium-weight Saracens and Humber Pigs doing ‘APC’ or patrol duty in NI, followed by IS Saxons. But Strike was of course very different. I don’t think it was irrational for Carter to look at what other armies were doing and to consider wheeled medium vehicles to be suitable for APC/Patrol duties out of the NATO area, such as the French did – hence MIV which was to be filled by Boxer….and recce/fire support coming from Ajax in those Strike brigades. That they had utility in being able to race to an eastern European conflict as you describe was very advantageous. A pity that to create one of those two Strike Brigades meant the loss of one of the armoured brigades.
Then it all went wrong – due to yet another Orbat change. Suddenly Strike brigades are no more but the 3rd armoured brigade is not reinstated. 1 DRSBCT is created and the concept just may not work or work well – what is the CONOPS? Do the Ajax exist solely to cue the artillery or do they fight their own fight? How big an issue is it that this brigade has no Infantry and so can’t really hold ground? Should this brigade be well forward where Ajax likes to be or quite well to the rear where fires are apt to be? Should Ajax be actively using its 40mm in firefights or focus on Surveillance or Recce and cueing fires?
Certainly 3 Div is badly unbalanced. It went more wrong when Carter accelerated the Boxer fielding as you and Daniele say, causing politicos and beancounters to axe WCSP and thus force Boxer into what has been the IFV role in the ABCTs. Terrible idea – Boxer can be taken out by enemy BMPs surely and cannot fire anything useful against them. It has gone from bad to worse to terrible.
I wonder what the French, the Americans and others make of all this. It is all so incoherent.
Hi Graham I agree with you on the fact having a medium wheeled armoured brigade for swift world wide deployment was a reasonable idea, the issue really was the cost and loss of the 3rd heavy brigade…the strike brigades should have been constituted from 1st division’s infantry battalions and light cav…that would have worked very well and created a very balanced force…in the end a heavy brigade was cut and the strike brigades did not even appear…as you pointed out the DRSBCT is a totally unproven concept full of component regiments that don’t really fit together and are essentially just a load of CS formations thrown together without MBT regiments or Infantry Battalions… infact the reality of what is going to happen is on any major heavy brigade deployment..the armoured cav and fires regiments in the DRSBCT will just be attached to the armoured infantry brigade combat team….
EXACTLY!!!!
Form it from the 2 “deployable” Brigades in 1 Div ( out of 7 ) that at that time had CS CSS.
3 Div as was with Strike on top in 1 would have been superb.
To a certain degree that did happen. But that’s also pretending that 3XX didn’t have Mastiff in its orbat.
What is the CONOPS; how is Ajax used? Speaking as a civvie layman I would say you have hit the nail on the head. For what they are Ajax, Boxer and CR3 are good foundations. It’s already been said that army numbers will not increase; neither probably will budgets, at least not by much. Now its up to the well paid with lots of gold braid to fill in the gaps, to come up with a coherent plan and organisation and to sell it to the SDR and govt. i.e. to do their job. There is obviously a lot of professional expertise here if they get stuck 🙂
A browning up top have they learned nothing from Ukraine ffs
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. If anyone has watched the interview with the colonel from REME and two NCO’s from 1 RRF, they all speak through gritted teeth. One of those “don’t criticise or make a less than positive comment” interviews on it.
I am past the point of feeling despondent about the government, MOD and how short-changed are our Armed Forces.
Ex-RM, where is the interview to be found?
BFBS Force News YouTube channel.
Doesn’t seem particularly gritted teeth to me…
Hi Ex-RM, The Lt Col was QRH rather than REME, if we watched the same video clip on Boxer. For the first time I saw that the RWS housed a 7.62mm GPMG, rather than a 12.7mm or 0.50 HMG, which some on here were speculating at. Such a drop in lethality from the 40mm CTAS stab cannon that the armoured infantry were supposed to get in WCSP.
About the same firepower as a 1950s Saracen!!
The good news is that thanks to Boxer’s modularity the firepower can always be increased at a later date.
The bad news is that this means nobody ever has to be the one who makes a final decision, and so the buck passes on.
I don’t understand why anyone with previous military service should be surprised. By the time they decide on manufacturers then R & D change the spec during manufacture, then the trials. Then the delays bringing it into service. By which time the price has increased by 200%. We all know by this time it is out of date or not fit for purpose. Then we are stuck with it for 30 years. But hey it’s new!
I am fairly sure Boxer is being bought as a firm price contract.
Yep after all how could we possibly pay more…insanity expensive APC..you could pick up 5-6 Griffons for the price we are paying for 1 boxer.
I would say that the price of Boxer is really to do with the price we are paying Rheinmetall for the training and skills transfer involved in rebuilding armoured vehicle manufacturing in the UK and sealing the strategic govt to govt defence agreement with Germany. Similar issue to shipbuilding skills and the price of River 2 OPV.
Hi Paul, no Boxer is essentially just insanity expensive, the Australians are paying even more than we are..
The one positive about Boxer amd Ajax is that we are actually building some armoured vehicles in the UK again, after years of failing to produce anything except factory closures.
The Boxer negatives are considerable. We are rushing down the road of acquiring a very expensive wheeled armoured truck that can’t provide any useful fire support against enemy APCs, can’t keep up with our tracked AFVs off road in inclement eastern European weather and, being largely tied to road travel, is predictable and vulnerable to enemy artillery targeting. It is not the AIFV needed for a peer conflict in Eastern Europe.
It is time that the CGS listened to his armoured commanders and reshaped the Army’s AFV plans. We are stuck with Boxer for the forseeable future and need to make the best of it. That certainly requires fitting a 30 or 40mm cannon to the APC version without further ado. Better to spend the money on making it at least useful on the battlefield, rather than ordering a second batch of under-armed wheeled APCs with limited value on the battlefield..
The AFV programme needs to be split into two programmes:
1. Armoured Fighting Vehicles (Tracked) [AFV(T)], comprising Ajax, Challenger 3 and a tracked successor to Warrior and FV430 Bulldog, as well as CRARRV, Titan, Trojan and Terrier. Plans need drawn up now for a future AIFV and ABSV, with manufacture to get going immediately after Challenger 3 production is complete
There is a very strong case for resurrecting the WCSP programme to upgrade the Warrios pro tem, certainly miles cheaper then Boxer and miles more useful on the European battlefield.
2. Protected Combat Vehicles (Wheeled) [PCV(W)], comprising Boxer, the 15 tonne replacement for Mastiff, Wolfhound and Ridgeback and the eventual replacement of the lighter Foxhoumd. Boxer. if properly armed, gives us a useful medium armoured capability for any sandbox and out-of-area conflicts and could have a support role in the European theatre, such as Corps mobile reserve brigade.
Time for the army staffs to put their heads above the parapet on this one and not be muzzled by the MOD civvy big cheeses.
Both programmes above could and should stretch 20 years into the future, with a continuous drumbeat of orders and deliveries, not the haphazard, whim-based decison-making of the past 20 years.
:Rheinmetall’s … 1st British-made Boxer is a historic moment for UK defence manufacturing”
Sure is!
Why so many ‘command and control variants? Totally disproportionate!
Ask the Army!!
Bill, it is baffling. To take the average Warrior battalion, that this Boxer will be fielded into… this currently has 2 armoured vehs in BHQ in a C2 role, 2 x C2 role vehs apiece in 3 CHQs (ie 6) and 9 in a C2 role for the Platoon Commanders Total – 17 C2 vehs as against 27 section (Infantry carrier) vehs. That is a very different ratio to that for Boxer order.
Obviously there are other Boxers in a battalion – mortar carrier, ambualnce…and Boxers with other types of units. But I was just comparing C2 vehs to Infantry Carrier Vehicles.
Graham also remember that Boxer is going to the CS and CSS units. You have 17 C2 vehicles in a Battalion (well… probably a few more because of the Support Coy’s, and possibly a few in the HQ coy if they are replacing Land Rover FFR’s) let’s call it 22 per battalion as a conservative estimate. That’s already 88 C2 vehicles across 4 battalions.
Well if the Med Regiments are being mounted on Boxer their THQ’s and SHQ’s probably will be mounted on Boxer as well, so there’s maybe 10 per Regiment there. Maybe a few for Brigade HQ’s, and REME battalions. Suddenly that 158 number isn’t actually that far off.
Thanks Dern. Also we now have only 4 Boxer Inf Bns rather than the 5 shown in FS, due to a ‘clerical error’ in FS. So need more than 146 section carrier vehicles, when vehicles for Repair Pool, Training Org and Attrition Reserve are considered. Perhaps Tranche 3 will be announced when SDR is published.