UK resumes payments for army’s troubled Ajax programme

Britain will move ahead with the troubled £5.5bn Ajax armoured vehicle programme and resume payments to the US defence contractor in charge, even as ministers admitted the vehicles would enter service eight years later than planned.

The Ministry of Defence on Monday said it would restart payments to General Dynamics with an initial transfer of £480mn. The MoD had withheld payments since December 2020 as it probed serious noise and vibration problems during trials that caused hearing damage to some crews.

The department said 589 Ajax vehicles, mostly built in Merthyr Tydfil, would be delivered. But the first vehicles will not enter service until 2025 at the earliest — some eight years later than an original date of 2017.

The government said in a statement that “initial operating capability will be achieved between July and December 2025, delivering a trained and deployable squadron that can be sustained on operations for up to six months”. It added “full operating capability” would follow “between October 2028 and September 2029”.

Defence secretary Ben Wallace said progress had been made and “we . . . are now on course to see the delivery of a suite of hundreds of battle-ready vehicles for the British Army”.

The decision brings to an end a period of uncertainty over the programme, which was meant to deliver a family of high-tech armoured vehicles to replace ones still in military service that were designed in the 1960s. 

The MoD signed a “firm price” contract with GD in 2014, aiming for deliveries to start three years later. But the vehicles were beset by noise and vibration issues that caused hearing damage to some crews involved in trials.

After a health and safety review into Ajax identified “serious failings” in the UK’s defence procurement culture, the MoD last year commissioned Clive Sheldon KC to conduct an independent inquiry into what went wrong with the programme.

That report has yet to be published, but the government on Monday said that since the introduction of a number of modifications, the different vehicle variants had successfully completed validation trials. More extensive trials are continuing.

Alex Chalk, defence procurement minister, said “no fundamental design issues have arisen to date”.

The modifications include a redesign of seating mounts and extra cushioning, as well as remodified damping to hand controllers. The excessive noise issues have been addressed through the introduction of an inner ear piece providing communication functions as well as outer ear protectors.

Tobias Ellwood, Tory chair of the House of Commons defence select committee, said the MoD’s announcement was “an encouraging development”. But he added: “Questions remain over the MoD’s handling of this frankly shambolically run programme.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought the importance of readiness and land capabilities to the fore, as well as the need to deliver military capabilities rapidly.”

Even if the first squadron of vehicles was delivered as promised around 2025, “this would come 15 years after General Dynamics won the contract and nearly a decade after it should have entered service in 2017. This is hardly a rate of production to write home about,” he added.