Ajax risk to British Army (Analysis)
The Ajax family of vehicles is designed to deliver an essential combat capability to the British Army's future brigade combat teams. (Photo: GDUK)
The leak of parts of a UK government Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) report on the British Army’s Ajax reconnaissance armoured vehicle programme has raised questions about the ability to deliver the family of platforms and what it means for the Army’s future force structure.
Some conclusions from the report released on Twitter by defence analyst Francis Tusa on 2 June indicate that the UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority has graded the Ajax project with a red rating.
This means that it believes the project to be undeliverable in its current form and needs to be re-baselined.
Because of problems with the vehicles, the report states that the project will not deliver the required number of platforms to meet planned operational deployments in 2023-24 and for Ajax to achieve full operational capability (FOC) in 2025.
Whilst this storm was brewing, Jeremy Quin MP, minister for defence procurement
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