11 Mar 22. NAO Issues Ajax Armoured Vehicle Report.
The Ajax programme.
This report assesses the problems that the Ajax programme has encountered and the challenges the MoD faces in delivering it.
Background to the report
Ajax is an armoured fighting vehicle which should provide the Army with its first fully digitised platform. The Ministry of Defence (the Department) has a £5.522bn firm-priced contract with General Dynamics Land Systems UK (GDLS-UK) for the design, manufacture and initial in-service support of 589 vehicles. At December 2021, the Department had paid GDLS-UK £3.167bn and, at this point, GDLS-UK had designed the vehicles, built 324 hulls and assembled and completed factory acceptance testing of 143 vehicles. The Department had received 26 Ajax vehicles, as well as associated training systems and support.
The programme has encountered significant problems. In 2014, the Department extended its expected in-service date by three years when it set an initial operating capability (IOC) of July 2020. The programme subsequently missed a revised target date of June 2021. In 2021, the Department publicly acknowledged concerns about excessive levels of noise and vibration on the Ajax vehicles, leading the minister for defence procurement to make regular statements to Parliament on the programme’s progress and the possible impact on the health of its crews who had been testing the vehicles. These issues remain unresolved, and the Department has not yet set a new target date for IOC.
Scope of the report
This report assesses the causes of the problems that the Ajax programme has encountered since 2011 and considers the challenges that the Department now faces in delivering the intended capability. We set out:
- an overview of the Ajax programme, including the Army’s vision and objectives (Part One);
- our assessment of the underlying causes of difficulties on the Ajax programme (Part Two); and
- the challenges that the Department faces in delivering the programme (Part Three).
Report conclusions
The Department expects Ajax to improve its armoured vehicle capability significantly. So far, it has insisted that GDLS-UK will deliver 589 Ajax vehicles for the agreed contract price of £5.522bn. But the in-service date has already increased by four years and the Department does not know when it will be able to start using the vehicles. The programme continues to face significant problems and there is not yet agreement on the causes of critical safety issues or how these will be resolved. There are other technical issues which still need to be addressed and wider problems in developing the enabling capabilities that will allow Ajax to achieve full capability. These problems mean that the Department has not demonstrated value for money on the £3.167bn it has spent so far through this contract.
The Department’s and GDLS-UK’s approach was flawed from the start as they did not fully understand the scale or complexity of the programme. A series of programme management failures have since led to missed programme milestones and unresolved safety and technical issues. The two parties remain in dispute over unresolved contractual, safety and technical issues. The Department faces a significant challenge and difficult decisions if it is to deliver the programme, with a risk that the problems might prove insurmountable. To deliver value for money from the programme, the Department must introduce the capability that it set out to achieve, without costs escalating or further delays in introducing the capabilities. We have seen similar problems on other defence programmes, and the Department must ensure that it learns lessons to prevent a reoccurrence of failings across its £238bn equipment programme.
Publication details:
ISBN: 9781786044198 [Buy a hard copy of this report]
HC: 1142, 2021-22
Published date: March 11, 2022
BATTLESPACE Comment: This is a damning indictment on a major UK Defence Programme and demonstrates how a programme can lose its way when there are people on both sides of the programme who do not possess an in-depth expertise in Tracked Vehicle Programmes. The closure of the MoD’s Fort Halstead and MVEE Chertsey facilities caused a huge drain in capability for armoured vehicle programmes, armour and ballistics. Sources told BATTLESPACE that the ATDU Team at Bovington sent a list of at least 21 changes in the first Capability Drop and it appears that all of these were ignored by GDUK who pressed on with the Programme. The other issue sis the disparate teams at GD where the vehicle was produced at the GDELS Santa Barbara Spanish facility and supplied to the GDUK in wales often in differing dimensions due to build issues. At the time of the bid, GDUK promised that the vehicle would be ‘British to its bootstraps,’ creating 10,000 jobs. In the event it was a UK version of the Spanish vehicle using those components for a 23 tone vehicle with little growth to the eventual 41 tonne vehicle. GDUK’s Welsh facility was corrigibly established as a facility for the Bowman Project. GDUK it is suggested, found it hard to retain key personnel who had armoured vehicle expertise.
The main issue appears to be the weight of the turret which was placed in a turret ring designed to accommodate a 120mm canon, which was considered a future requirement. The weight of the turret, the ISTAR package is reputed to weigh 3 tonnes, along with the 5 tonne turret, put stress on the running gear which was designed for a 23 tonne, not 41 tonne vehicle. To alleviate the vibrations caused by this, GDUK is believed to have instituted a weight loss programme to cut the weight of the chassis by a new honeycomb system which was not fitted with shock absorbers to mitigate the harmonics which rush round the hull causing hearing and health problems for the crew. Another issue appears to be the lack of EMC shielding of the systems which caused interference when the radios were used. Finally, when the 40mm canon was fired, in static basis and on the move, the vibration caused by the 20,000lb recoil caused the fire control computer to shut down and thus the second round could not hit the target. In addition, that recoil spread right through the whole vehicle which caused further vibration issues with all the electronic servers on the turret fighting to keep the system stable. Our readers know the Editor’s view of the CT40 canon which has costs millions to the taxpayer and still does not perform to the Requirements. A tale of woes which, if it can be fixed would see the vehicle ISD in 2032 earliest. However once problems are identified and fixed, it often raises new issues which could lead to outright cancellation. One fix could be the removal of the current turret and retrofit a new lighter turret such as the Moog RIwP turret.
At the time we wrote an article, ‘Did The MoD Cancel The Wrong Armoured Vehicle Programme?’
Did The UK MoD Cancel The Wrong Armoured Vehicle Programme? By Julian Nettlefold
It looks like we may have been right, and this may see the resurrection of a Warrior Life Extension programme with a new hull and turret, particularly given the Ukraine situation.