Fresh halt to Ajax training after 30 troops unwell

A better summary of the state of Britain’s conventional deterrent today would be hard to find.

From what I’ve read, the vibration has also been causing a form of motion sickness, causing some crew members to throw up.

I’ve mentioned many times before that using Soucy tracks could be the answer. Soucy tracks can be 50% or more lighter than the equivalent steel track. The Norwegian CV90s had a number of vehicles using the Soucy tracks in Afghan. Where they said not only did they cut down on noise, but also significantly reduced vibration. The downside is that they do generate more heat, as rubber being an insulator, does not give up heat very well.

From the Soucy website: “The results of a 2017 trial by the British Army’s Armoured Trials and Development Unit (ATDU). During the tests, a ATDU drove a Warrior IFV equipped with Soucy Composite Rubber Tracks (CRTs) over a 5,000 km distance using a single set of tracks, in a variety of terrain types. ATDU’s results showed that compared to a Warrior equipped with conventional steel tracks, the CRT-equipped Warrior’s lower fuel consumption increased range by 19% on roads and 31.9% off-road.” I know my cousin who was REME, said Warrior steel tracks would barely last have the distance before needing major work doing to them. Where it was easier to replace the tracks and send the old ones back to the depot.

The now cancelled Booker (infantry support vehicle/medium tank/assault gun) based on the ASCOD 2. Has used both the steel tracks from the Bradley IFV, as well as Soucy CRTs. But also includes hydropneumatic suspension, rather than torsion bar suspension. I believe there is a bit of a weight saving over torsion bar, but it has superior damping control and provides better traction. The Booker could weigh from 38t in basic form and going up to 42t with applique add on armour. According to reports, even with the steel tracks fitted, it didn’t suffer from significant vibration issues. The trials crew really appreciated the CRTs when fitted, as it made the vehicle significantly quieter.

It’s probably too late to redesign the vehicle with hydropneumatic suspension in place of the torsion bars. But replacing the stell tracks with Soucy’s CRTs, would go a very long to solve some of the issues.

Current track is steel with rubber pads made by Cooks TR40 spec.

Years ago the rumour was, HM Treasury told the Army it could only have one new armoured vehicle. So they put everything they could think of on to their shiny new toy. So an OK 27 ton vehicle became a 42 ton porker. It is amazing how public sector projects fail from one dumb choice.

Who could have anticipated seriously 😦 overloading the suspension would cause these problems. I guess we haven’t even got to longer term reliability issues as yet that’s just a heads in sand complication, however as these vehicles age the parameters on both fronts are only going to become worse, they won’t get less noisy, shaky or more reliable that’s for sure.

GD stated during the bid phase that the ASCOD vehicle had been ‘verified’ to 38/40 Tonnes – so how is the vehicle overweight? I would start by asking GD for proof of that verification ie test results trials data etc

I don’t know how suspension works, tbh. But I guess it may not only be a problem of dampling. It is rumored that the suspension of Ajax does not allow climbing 20cm obstacles in back drive, which for a combat vehicle is far from optimal. But well, I just read comments, it is not my area of knowledge and I can be totally wrong. And who cares of driving back anyway 😉 I’m French, so I guess we do, hehehe.
Issues happens in programs. I guess the payer may have imposed too much on the designer. It may more be a case of bad responsibility handling than anything else.

At best we have a Pollaŕd believing whatever he’s told. Unfortunately for him he signed it off so the buck stops with him.

Anglo-German engineering came up with the Boxer CRV instead. Ukraine has caused the world to move on. Ajax is too late & too slow.

Quentin, maybe that Anglo-German re-engineering if adopted might solve some Welsh-American engineering issues!

Open Engine compartment which the crew sat next to. At least they were not cold in the winter!!

Morning Ian, was waiting for you to comment here.
I assume as well that there are still plenty of experienced personnel in the Cavalry Regiments who worked with CVRT. How did that differ, were they not also required to operate closed down?
It would be interesting to see data on how many personnel were involved in the exercise and how many % were unaffected. And why they were unaffected.
Also, as a layman, surely, crews are exposed to all this in phase 2 at ArmourCentre and either develop experience with it or if vulnerable are weened off elsewhere as unsuitable. Just like RAF pilot trainees are not all suited to fast jets and get streamed onto rotary or multi engine.
Doesn’t add up for me.
I still as always believe in the vehicle.

I have no idea of the state of these Cavalry units training hours on armoured vehickes . But i think you maybe onto something. The units personel are just not used to being in Armoured vehicles as the training and vehicles has been a it sparse . My mum used to drive a Honda Civic. On long motorway journeys it often made me sick . Any other car model was fine .

Ian, you have aways been a staunch defender of Ajax and GDUK. However I don’t think you are right in assuming that noise and vibration issues that are (we are now told) still so bad that many soldiers have to report sick and some are being medically discharged, are down to them being unused to operating closed down? How does that work? I could understand if the issues were a bit of dizziness, disorientation, nausea or a bit of a headache, that soon clears. But 10% or more of these crews are hospitalised and some have to leave the army.
We operated closed down for quite long periods on BAOR exercises (and probably in the Gulf Wars?) on other tracked vehicles of all weight categories and no-one was kicked out of the army for medical problems.

🙂

Should have bought the CV90 when we had the chance. Still could but too simple for our politicians I suppose, never mind the money we haven’t got.

Were broke

I agree, whatever happens with Ajax now it will be political over military decisions in the lead. Sounding increasingly like the old BL syndrome spend to keep people in jobs over actual usable products. Except in this case there aren’t that many jobs even if location is sensitive to Labour. In the end this is part of a very naive presumption from politicians over many Govt’s that involving American companies would professionalise and cheapen the military sector and increase competition. Anyone who has studied the US Defence structure would, if they ever dug below the bells and whistles and flashy pr, know it’s no better than what we have (and now greatly lost in this sector certainly) just covered up by once enormous budgets, influence and political affiliations. Not sure why, when in this case it was even further complicated by the take over of what was formally an Austrian/Spanish joint programme even if originally successful in that far simpler form, by an American company desperate to make money from European defence over any real knowledge of it, was going to work out better than say a British Company exploiting renowned Swedish competence was going to end up producing. Or South Korean or other European suppliers for that matter.

I think it was exemplified (though hardly exclusively) by Thatcher effectively belittling Britain and Europe by claiming derisively how could Airbus possibly ever compete with Boeing (didn’t age well), or how pointless competing with the US in Space was, with no vision about how that sector would change to the point a New Zealand company could become one of its great successes and very possibly a Spanish one in the future. We far too often, despite our technological and research genius at times have a total lack of faith in exploiting it, or see it as merely a way financier led opportunity for making a quick profit by selling out to foreign companies. The myth of American exceptionalism has been far too concreted into the British psyche sadly, the progress of China only confusing us even further now.

Same reasons as Ajax! Not air deployable, too everything! Expensive, noisy, viby, noisy, heavy, late, complex etc

The General Dynamics electric submarine project in the US is between 12 -16 months behind and is running over budget, its estimated it might cost 5 x the price the US Navy was expecting.

Laughable that naive bigwigs (haven’t used that for a while) ever saw Americans as in any way a competent or reliable partner, even if there have been exceptions. Post war we seem to have become besotted with US technological and industrial superiority, despite the underlying post war US hegemony being built on being the only Country who profited from the war, was untouched by the appalling weaponry of that war, reclaimed the massive British investment in the US economy as part of lend lease (destroying Britain as a competitor) built an international money system that profited it over all others and used mostly British and German technology it had acquired effectively for nothing to fuel that post war boom that for twenty years had little competition. It didn’t actually have to be that efficient or competent to flourish it was fuelled on easy pickings and increasingly sustained by political corruption. This is only further illustrated by the fact that some prominent US aircraft manufacturers of today were so struggling back then that they only survived in the late thirties up to US war entry by sales (of often inadequate products) to Britain and France desperately preparing for war. We have far too often been dragged along by what we saw as their magic carpet of unbeatable progress, that they have culturally tried and for a long time succeeded in enforcing on the World. The language and belief in often mythical historical links made us especially susceptible.

Trouble is we still have Farage totally tied to this naive faith in American exceptionalism in almost everything when almost every indicator shows the smoke and mirrors of any inherent superiority for what it is. Britain has always been able in numerous sectors and in research and technology generally performed well above its weight, we simply can’t compete on risk and investment and market size. But in the end it’s the competency of the design that is the vital factor in the military sector especially when conflict threatens and simply presuming sales success and actual product competency while its a factor, are one and the same thing is a dangerous assumption to make and has led us far too often think you don’t lose your job with the American solution.

I suspect number 7. But USN just cancelled Constellation class, so perhaps it might be catching. Boxer CRV exists. Boxer is already in production. Forget the vey expensive CTA cannon that nobody can afford to feed & go with proven 30/40mm designs that everyone else is using.

Send the Bradley’s to Ukraine. Boxer is already in production. The design work has already been done by others. It’s too late to start again. It’s either CV90 or Boxer (as I see it). Want a tracked IFV? There are multiple quality options out there. Lynx, Redback, CV90, tracked Boxer etc. Ajax is Constellation class on land. If Ajax is want the MOD wanted, don’t start with ASCOD.

BAE are in the process of upgrading another batch of Bradleys to A4 for the US Army

it’s not a crazy high price (if it works) for an order of approx 600 vehicles in 6 versions. that is less than £9million per vehicle, and it’s got a lot of high tech equipmement.
I find spending £11million for a boxer rch155mm much more ourageous when a Archer costs less than £8mllion and Caesar costs less than £4million

That would have been around 2010 for the demonstrator and the FRES SRO at the time would have been Brig Mike Riddell-Webster. He became SRO MCC. The FRES work had been going for a decade so there would have been military involvement. Ultimately though, I don’t know who made the decision. In 2010, after they’d lost to GD, BAE offered to manufacture CV90 in Newcastle, so they obviously thought the prime deciders were the politicians. Too little too late. The final purchase contract was around 2014, which would have been well post-Levene (2011), so again that points towards an Army decision, but lets face it, if the Cameron government didn’t get mixed up in this multi-billion pound decision in the mid 2010s, it would be the only one they didn’t. The cancellation of the third block has George Osborne’s fingerprints all over it.

Daniele, Back in the day, several companies would bid for an AFV contract, a shortlist would be drawn up, companies would be invited to deliver a number of vehicles (prototypes or production vehs if they were already in service elsewhere) which would be evaluated by ATDU to see if they met the Staff Requirement (SR) – ATDU would grade the submitted vehicles as either a Pass, or a Pass with provisos (ie rework required) or a Fail.
The Minister for Defence Procurement would then make a political selection based on a list of those that had clearly met the SR – he would consider VfM, domestic jobs created etc. The Army would not always get their preferred preference (which is why Stuart Crawford still moans that the Minister picked the BAE CR2 over the Leopard 2 all those years ago).

I simplify somewhat. But what happened with Specialist Vehicle (Scout) ie Ajax …was not the above!

BTW I have just read that General Dynamics Europe unit has secured a contract for about 3 billion euros ($3.50 billion) to deliver the next-generation reconnaissance vehicle for the German Army Reconnaissance Corps. Not sure if this will also be a much modified ASCOD2.

I think at the time that Jon has highlighted below, there was a general anti-BAE feeling within the MoD and Government. Based on BAe taking the p**s on escalating contract costs. If I remember right, the consensus was it could be anything but BAE for a quite a few years. I don’t remember seeing a trial reports, when the ASCOD and CV90 went head to head.

General Dynamics UK is a limited company, the only asset is the factory in Wales, there will be no money left to fine them, much would have gone to USA in licencing etc.

Horstman could supply these as a U.K. company to the benefit of the project but also local defence manufacturing. Hard to see why they didn’t get the contract to begin with.

I don’t understand why a turret defines a recce vehicle, Graham (almost any vehicle can be a recce vehicle – thinking of LRDG Fords and Chevrolets, the Dingo, Luxembourg recce units equipped with Jeeps during the Cold War, some versions of the Ferret, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards’s recce role using Jackal – not one turret there). From what we’re told, Ajax is packed with all sorts of electronics, etc., that facilitate its recce role so it’s not just a turret on a metal box plus, if Ares has a RWS and room for 2 crew and 9 dismounts, I’m sure there’s plenty of room within that hull to accommodate a RWS and only 4 crew and the rest of Ajax’s bells and whistles. However, I did say keep the good platforms but look at composite tracks to reduce noise, weight and hopefully vibration. As for the problematic hulls, to clarify, I was simply trying to think of ways of re-purposing so that these would at least be useful in some other way and not a total write-off. Finally, perhaps the Army should review its recce doctrine. I know I’m not alone in wondering how relevant such a heavy and noisy vehicle as Ajax is now to today’s evolving battlefield.