British army’s new armoured vehicle veers off track

Britain’s new Ajax armoured vehicles were meant to give the army a weapon for an era of high-tech warfare. They were to be fast — a top speed of 70km/h — and lethal, with a powerful 40mm cannon. They would be equipped with the latest digital sensors and stealthy enough to evade detection by the enemy.

Yet more than a decade after the Ministry of Defence signed a contract with US defence contractor General Dynamics for a family of 589 vehicles, worth £5.5bn in total, the procurement minister has admitted that the programme may be in doubt.

Delivery of the vehicles to the army should have started four years ago and, of the 26 that have now been handed over, none have entered service. Instead, trials of the vehicles have been halted twice after concerns that noise and excessive vibration are causing hearing damage to their crew. There have been reports the vehicles cannot fire their cannon while on the move — a claim that General Dynamics denies.

The company adds that all six variants are in full production and that 116 vehicles have been built and either delivered or in the process of being handed over.

On Wednesday, defence procurement minister Jeremy Quin told MPs on parliament’s defence committee that getting back on track would require “a lot of work from ourselves and our industry partners”. “We can’t be 100 per cent certain that can be achieved,” he added.

Earlier this month, Mark Francois, a Conservative MP on the defence committee, gave a blunt appraisal of Ajax’s deficiencies.

“It’s heavier than a Sherman tank. It’s too small. And it’s as stealthy as a Ford Transit full of spanners,” he said.

A leaked report by the Infrastructure Project Authority, which reports to the Cabinet Office, warned that “successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality appears to be unachievable”. Quin revealed on Wednesday that a health and safety investigation, which is due to report at the end of July, has already come back with some concerning findings.

Major General Tim Hodgetts, surgeon-general, told the defence committee that eight out of 307 personnel involved in testing Ajax reported temporary vibration injuries including “back and joint pains”, and tingling in the hands and feet. Of 110 troops checked so far for hearing damage, 23 need remedial steroid treatment.

According to Carew Wilks, a former director of land equipment at the MoD who became vice-president for land systems at General Dynamics UK, the company is “very much concerned by the recent issues around noise and vibration” and is “working very closely” with the army to identify the causes.

Identifying who is to blame for the delays and design problems is not easy: Britain’s recent history of military procurement is littered with similar examples of projects that have been late and wildly over budget. Some defence experts have drawn comparisons between Ajax and Nimrod, the refurbished maritime patrol aircraft scrapped in 2010 at a cost of £4bn without a single aircraft becoming operational.

Ajax has its roots in the army’s search to replace and modernise its armoured fighting vehicle fleet, which began in the 1990s. That search went through several changes before Ajax was eventually commissioned, fuelling long-running concerns that the MoD lacked a coherent armoured vehicle strategy.

The first contract was awarded in March 2010 when General Dynamics was chosen to make seven pilot vehicles. A production contract to build 589 vehicles was then awarded to the US contractor in September 2014, taking the total value of the programme to £5.5bn — the UK’s biggest armoured vehicle deal for three decades.

General Dynamics’ then UK management promised it would “safeguard or create” more than 10,000 jobs in Britain. That initial pledge has fallen significantly short — Ajax currently supports 4,100 direct jobs, according to the company. 

There were problems from the start. An early challenge, according to people familiar with the programme, was the MoD’s insistence that the vehicles use a separately designed 40mm cannon, which resulted in delays.

Anecdotal reports about complications with the hull, including noise and vibration, began to surface as early as 2019, the people said. Defence experts said additional armour protection was added on the original hull, leading to significant increases in weight.

Throughout, the programme has been undermined by repeated modifications demanded by the army, defence experts said.

Quin revealed in June that talks with General Dynamics to “recast the contract” were held between December 2018 and May 2019. A defence official said the army’s specifications had remained stable since then.

Army crews reported health issues from excessive noise and vibration last year once testing got under way at Millbrook, Bedfordshire.

Even though concerns were growing within the teams testing Ajax, their worries appear to have been suppressed. Army personnel were under particular pressure ahead of the government’s landmark defence review, published earlier this year. Senior figures thought a planned upgrade to its Warrior infantry fighting vehicle was likely to be retired in an effort to save money, and were anxious that Ajax might also be slashed if its deficiencies were publicised.

As a result, information about the vehicle’s weaknesses were not shared with ministers, according to two people with knowledge of the programme.

“It’s a combination of secrecy and incompetence,” Tobias Ellwood, chair of the defence committee, said. “For [personnel] to be not reporting the faults with the vehicle in order to survive the cull . . . that’s very worrying indeed.”

The MoD declined to comment on the claim that worries about the programme had been suppressed.

The crisis has also led to concerns that a “revolving door” culture between the MoD and the defence industry have contributed to poor decision-making around the Ajax programme. MoD regulations dictate that former personnel cannot work in industry for two years after their departure from government. But given that some procurement projects last for up to a decade, some have argued a longer cooling-off period is needed to avoid a conflict of interest.

Critics of Ajax pointed out that General Sir Peter Wall, who was Chief of the General Staff from 2010 to 2014, became a board member at General Dynamics in the US exactly two years after leaving the armed forces. Wilks, who has been at GD since 2018, was also formerly head of land equipment at the MoD between 2011 and 2013.

“The MoD has normalised the idea of having prominent contractors employ senior staff [from MoD headquarters],” said Martin Docherty-Hughes, a Scottish National party MP on the defence committee.

General Dynamics declined to comment on this issue. A defence official said that all departing personnel were dealt with on a case-by-case basis and had to adhere to clearance protocols.

Inside the MoD, the army and General Dynamics, the focus is now on salvaging the programme, which could cost more than £500m, according to some estimates. The MoD has said it is working hard to resolve problems and that the safety of its personnel “will always come first”.

Ellwood said overall, Ajax had been let down by a litany of errors and cost-overruns that were never gripped because nobody had full command of the entire project. 

However, the crisis has reignited debate about systemic challenges in Britain’s procurement of defence equipment. A recent review of 20 military programmes by the National Audit Office found that 13, including Ajax, showed cumulative net delays of 254 months in achieving entry into service since being signed.

Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis, said Ajax had become the “poster child” for what is wrong with UK defence procurement.

“The evidence as produced by the IPA report is that things are getting worse and at a very fast pace,” he said. “It is not a good place to be in.”