Land Warfare

First round of series production begins for British Army Boxers

7th June 2021 - 16:37 GMT | by The Shephard News Team

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The Boxer armoured transport vehicle is being produced under a bi-national programme. (Photo: Rheinmetall)

The UK Boxer programme starts production on time and according to plan at Rheinmetall’s German facilities.

Series production of Boxer vehicles for the British Army is underway according to schedule, German manufacturer Rheinmetall has announced.

Welding work began on 7 June for the fabrication of prototypes and series production of the Mechanised Infantry Vehicle.

Development of the four British Army configurations of the 8x8 armoured fighting vehicle began at the end of 2019, and the first milestones were already achieved in Q4 2020.

The modular design of the Boxer vehicle already made use of qualified solutions and designs wherever possible. As a result, production of the first parts can already start.

Rheinmetall will develop and fabricate the first prototypes at its plant in Germany using content produced in the UK.

The bulk of manufacturing activity will move to the UK in 2023, principally at facilities run Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land and WFEL.

According to Shephard Defence Insight, the Boxer is an 8x8 vehicle consisting of a common chassis capable of mounting various mission modules.

Numerous variants of the Boxer have been built and proposed. These include: command variants; ambulance variants; an armoured engineer vehicle; a cargo carrier; a battle damage repair vehicle; a driver training vehicle; two IFVs and more.