Britain’s new Ajax armoured vehicle is back on track. “We have turned a corner,” UK’s Minister of State for Defence Procurement at the Ministry of Defence, Alex Chalk, told the Commons Defence Committee. “A great deal of work has taken place and it has successfully completed its trials.”
As recently as the end of December, British Ministry of Defence already reported: “User Validation Trials for Ajax armoured vehicles have successfully completed, and the vehicle testing programme will now progress to the Reliability Growth Trials. Vehicles have been tested across 1,530 km at speeds up to 60 kmph.”
“Ajax is the British Army’s new multi-role, fully-digitised armoured fighting vehicle delivering a step-change in versatility and agility, being delivered by DE&S through the biggest single order of armoured vehicles in a generation,” describes the Ministry of Defence. “The Ajax family is a complex, fully-digitised, land vehicle project delivering transformational change to the Army’s armoured fleet; providing a step-change in capability to the British Army. It consists of five other variants, named Ares, Athena, Atlas, Apollo and Argus which are designed to cover roles ranging from troop carrying to recovery and command and control.”
The programme is on a quite advanced stage. Chalk pointed out: “In fact, already we have 143 that have been completed in the six variants. By completed, I mean about 80% ready to go. Yes, you need to do some software upgrades and you need to have replaced some of the armour, but you have got those 143. There are over 400 hulls that are ready.” In future British Army will consist of a “blended fleet of Boxer, Warrior, Ajax, Challenger, Apache.”
Dorothee Frank, Head of editorial team
