If I got to choose...I would have went with a UK modded CV9040 instead. The Royal Navy are equipping the Type 31 Frigates with BAE Mark 4 Bofors 40mm/L70s. The reason I mention this is because the CV9040 uses the same gun and the same ammunition which includes 3P Programmable Anti Aircraft/Missile rounds. This would make sense logistically and would cost less buying ammo for both the Army and the Navy. This would also mean that The Army would get a vehicle that can be used in an air defence role as well
Reading the parliamentary report prior to the integrated review, it's clear that the Army and MoD leadership has their heads up their asses and denying the poor state of the armoured forces in general it's a big circlejerk of passing the buck off to the next person and with this programme it's been a disaster from day 1 and these guys knew that back when this all started.
British armoured vehicle procurement has been a sorry state ever since Thatcher personally took charge of our MBT selection final meeting, overruled the testers, and forced Challenger 2 through ahead of the actual Army recommendations for either Leopard 2, or at least a smoothbore gun. (Yes, this happened, you can look it up). We always insist on making something domestically, even when it's much more expensive, or problematic, or results in huge delays. We left Boxer in the early 2000s to make our own vehicle, wasted billions, then cancelled it and went back to Boxer as a customer, not a partner, resulting in major delay and increased cost. We could have bought CV-90 off the shelf, as BAE systems owns the family now, but we rejected it and said "we can do it better" which resulted in Ajax, twice the weight, non-functional, dangerous, massively late, etc. Challenger 3 was chosen over a German offer of 200x Leopard 2A7Vs at a bargain price of £4 million per tank, offered in 2017. Same gun, better armour and mobility, equally good thermals and fire control, easier access to parts and supply chain, and we rejected it because the MOD called it "not politically palatable" to buy a German tank, even though it was 3x better value for money than the Challenger 3, would have been in service 10 years sooner, and did everything equally well or better. The only thing Challenger 3 offers is 200 jobs, which is not very much in the grand scheme of things. Over the last decade, the UK has spent £5bn on vehicle procurement for the Army and not delivered a single vehicle. It's time to stop acting like "made it Britain" is a good thing whilst we continue to fuck up every vehicle we try to design ourselves. The Army would be in a much better state if we had just bought off the shelf with minor modifications since the 1990s. Everything the MOD has touched has been a shitshow, including Challenger 2 (and 3) despite what propaganda might have you believe.
One of the most annoying things from my perspective is that this has the potential to be world class and it's turned out mediocre. EG 40mm main armament when everyone else is transitioning to 50mm. It's damn heavy which means there is little Boron armour (more resistant to copper jet type HEAT rounds than any form of steel) and that engine could do with another 150kW at least. Another annoyance is that Vickers could have done a much better job. OK slightly more expensive BUT it would have employed people.
@@AllThingsCubey I cant understand whats wrong with licenced production anymore. Buy the design that has already been proven, but you retain control of the maunfacture, and can swap things like thermals and fire control systems easily
Another expensive failure to meet targets its almost like building an aircraft carrier that has noplanes and leaks we don't need an enemy to defeat us we can do it ourselves
@@EP-bb1rm 1) the hull, drive train, suspension and layout of the CV90 is tried and tested for both weight capacity, upgrade potential, crew comfort, ease of training ease of maintenance, ease of repair, adaptability and survivability by multiple, independent nations. It was, after all, designed to be operated, maintained and repaired by 18-20yo conscripts fresh out of school... 2) The company that designed and builds it has been owned by BAE for decades and has already provided the Brittish army with several other long serving vehicles. 3) The CV90 hulls, suspension, tracks and drivetrain could likely be licence built in Brittish factories, ensuring parts availiability in a crisis.
From a friend of a friend in the engineering world: A 3rd party consultation team was contracted by the MoD to conduct a full random sample strip down on several Ajax, none of the dimensions met requirements, they weren't even parallel, on one the left-hand side drifted in towards the front over 2 inches, they suspect that one of the main causes of vibrations on that one was the transmission skipping due to being wound up by one side effectively constantly turning in. They were far over specification weight and were deemed likely not to be able to support a full compliment or any future upgrades. Quality and depth of frame welding was so poor that one chassis was considered unsafe and recommended to be written off. Lab oil sample tests showed far higher levels of wear than expected. The conclusion was that none of the vehicles could be considered fit for purpose or to have met expected criteria. My background is naval, not land, but I'm going to guess the only reason the project hasn't been publicly cancelled is a legal/contract 'discussion' and BoJo not wanting his own Nimrod while the world is such a mess.
You have to ask why Santa Barbra systems still has ISO 9001 accreditation , if their welding and jigging does not meet the standards, its clearly a box ticking paperwork exercise !
It seems strange that these issues didn't present or weren't addressed during the comparison stage of the project. Considering its taken a decade and the supplier still can't solve the issues then it is probably better to look elsewhere. Either way any costs incurred should be the responsibility of the supplier not the M.O.D. as it is the supplier's responsibility to provide the product fit for purpose as per the contract. If they have to spend more money to rectify their production issues that's their issue not the purchasing organisation
First prototypes and such would be hand built by more qualified workers than those on the production line. I agree with your sentiments about making the supplier pay for making corrections etc but that just means they raise the cost to the end user. The taxpayer will still bear the costs at the end of the day. I might suggest moving the production out of Spain but that would still incur costs and time. It’s a shit show that is all too common in these type of projects.
@@alanpayne4841 And this is where the MoD has gone wrong in the past. If you purchase a project you expect it to be to specifications. If GD have to repair this at their cost, and try to somehow come back later with a way to claw that money back, then the bean counters (who are often at the root of a lot of issues) haven't done their job to make sure the contract does not put the cost back on the Army. Anyway to cut back a bit, the MoD used to cover all costs, they now try these fixed contracts, but that effectively means you are buying a commercial product, and if that is the case, you need to be prepared to jump ship when the supplier no longer fits your needs like "upping the servicing charge because they had to fix a safety flaw at no cost". Drop that ship and buy new. Alternatively, something I know the MoD struggled with when I used to work in it. Use the private contractors in each part. Contract for building, separate for maintenance, own the IP/Design of the vehicle. If one provider screws up, they still foot the bill, and you can move onto another if they try to claw the money back. The biggest issues are things like cartels (see Bowman and the Archer consortium), where because suppliers are limited you will end up having to go back to someone who lost money. However, I'm sure the the MoD would prefer fixed costs rather than unknown and possibly escalating costs. Get your program right and you can make good money, don't and you could lose a little money, so make dame sure you get it right. I personally work with contractors and point this out. If they quote, that is the work I expect and no extras to get the design finished. Quote me a little more to cover contingency, if you do good work I'm happy to pay more and come back to you, but if you fail I expect you to put it right a your cost.
It's the fault of the modern defense procurement process where development costs are part of the contract and almost entirely *not* borne by the manufacturer. This makes it in their best interests to drag out the project, since they're literally being paid to produce nothing but a handful of prototypes.
Pentagon Wars was an over dramatized pile of dog shit based on a book that was literally written by a crazy person; Go See Spookston's video on it for more details.
AJAX - a lesson in how not to develop military equipment, it’s like SA80 Mk1 all over again, call in the Germans and rebuild 50% of it and years later we get something fit for purpose ! Now Boxer seems to be a case of getting it right from the start. How the heck did AJAX get to trials with so many faults, cannot reverse over a kerb ! ! ! WTF
I believe we should have just gone with the CV90 from the get-go, a proven design with many variations with lots of expandability which the Army was looking for, used by many western and Scandinavian countries, and they are built by Bofors and Haglund's which are both well-renowned companies owned by BAE which is a British company. Not an upgrade of an existing design by the South Koreans for the Australians, put forward by the Americans and built by the Spanish, now I've got nothing against the countries but I think it's not right for us.
I’ve been on Team CV90 for the future US IFV for quite some time now for the very reasons you have articulated. Awesome modular proven platform we can continue to upgrade and save a ton of money on.
Reading that makes a lot of sense. The Spanish are terrible at making anything. Just look at Seat and the New Cupras, badly built compared to their VW owners
It is not just Spanish "quality control" that is the issue. There are so many problems with this platform, and with the Army, that it is hard to cover in a short amount of time. The turrets don't work, so far none of the AJAX platforms have been able to fire the main gun while moving, some of that is down to the hulls, but some seems to be bad microchips and design. Matt has covered a lot already, but given that Warrior is canceled, the British army is in the strange position of having its armoured infantri formations in wheeled Boxer units, with Tracked Scout SVs as support. Meaning the Scout can't keep up in the tactical deployment. The gun has turned out to be something of a problem, because the British Army is talking about the 40mm gun might have to be a 50mm gun, a gun that has been in development but not included in Ajax so far. It has no anti-tank missiles... A small thing on the face of it, but we are talking a 40+ tons vehicle with a 40mm gun as its main defence, be it against tanks, drones, cars infantri. Ajax might be a fine vehicle when all the issues are solved. But the British army has pissed away so much money in the past 15 years, with zero good results to show for it.
@Jjohnno 87 I can't say if 30 mm or 50 mm or bigger is needed, but I do think that if we are talking a "smaller" caliber automatic cannon, then 35mm is around the sweetspot for conventional ammo. The caseless ammo might change things, but so far the 35mm is good enough. 40mm might be better in some ways, but I cannot help but think that if 50mm is needed, then perhaps a real 76mm gun would be better. The telescoped ammunition that was talked about for Ajax I believe was abandoned due to tecknical issues... But I don't know, it was only on rumor bacis.
So many things wrong with your post it's hard to know where to begin.... Bad chips 🤣 It is a case telescoped cannon The 40mm CTA is used by British and French The vehicle has fired on the move many times The 50mm is not in development Tracks are slower to strategically deploy, not tactical deployment. France has a mixed wheeled and tracked armour teaming and do well America has teamed heavy armour with wheeled Stryker for years. The only thing different about UK is the avoidance of wheeled medium armour for so long.
@@MrBandholm LMAO. "Hitting the zone" 🤣🤣 You clearly don't know the military definition of strategic and tactical. The 50mm CT is not in development for AJAX. You have zero experience of mixed wheeled-tracked combat. Another 🤣🤣 for "bad microchips"
AJAX is a toilet cleaner in my country, this seems appropriate for this vehicles development. Military - "Who cares if the project doesn't work? it's tax payers money, we can just start a new one".
Wiki In Homer's Iliad he is described as of great stature, colossal frame and strongest of all the Achaeans. Known as the "bulwark of the Achaeans",[4] he was trained by the centaur Chiron (who had trained Ajax's father Telamon and Achilles's father Peleus and would later die of an accidental wound inflicted by Heracles, whom he was at the time training) at the same time as Achilles. He was described as fearless, strong and powerful but also with a very high level of combat intelligence.
I think the MoD was stung by the deaths, followed by public criticism of the Snatch Land Rover fiasco. So they went to the other extreme of a 42 ton monster, that will be hard to deploy. Even if you get it to theatre, how many local bridges or narrow mountain roads can take it? The UK needs something light enough to deploy. Off the shelf ,the Korean, 25 ton, K21. If we wanted British, we should have developed the Stormer family, with a V hull, better protection, in the 16-19 ton range.
There isn't any similarity between snatch land rovers and an armoured fighting vehicle. 42 tonnes is not a monster they need to be large enough to do the job. If transportingg them becomes a question then they need to address that as a separate problem. Building a product that is second rate or doesn't meet the specification (but is really easy to transport is like buying a car that fits in your garage but isn't big enough to transport your family i.e. the whole purpose you bought it for in the first place). I believe they purchased a tracked Korean vehicle to replace Viking, but it has been taken out of service although I don't know why.
@@whitesun264 Read my comment. MoD (& public sector in general) tends to lurch from one extreme to another. Snatch was too light & the deaths in it attracted a lot of negative press & rightly so. Hence the pressure to adopt something better protected. But if you go too heavy, the vehicle is hard to transport to theatre & once there, unable to use narrow mountain roads or weak bridges. Unless you rebuild all the roads & bridges in a country under armed conflict (good luck with that), then your 42 ton monster has very limited use. Other countries have managed to build armoured vehicles with reasonable protection in the 16 to 28 ton range. Such vehicles can be transported by A400M, which is still in production. C-17 can lift heavier, but is long out of production.
After Afghanistan the theatre these things have to deploy to won’t have small bridges and narrow mountain passes. We just won’t be doing that anymore so a bigger vehicle is the way to go, but not the Ajax.
@@humptydumpy8029 Well the UK got rid of its last proper carrier in 1978, saying it would not need Phantoms & Buccs, then along came the Falklands in 1982. Then the British Army in the 1980s said it would never fight in the desert again & sold its desert uniforms to Iraq, but in 1991, Desert Storm. Saying the UK will never do something again, has proved to be wrong many, many times.
@@audacity60 You can't draw lessons about deaths in unarmoured land rovers and apply them to armoured fighting. Regarding your reference to monsters from what I remember from the video, the original weight of this vehicle was around the 20 tone mark, which is the weight category which you expressed a preference for. Armour upgrade according to the video took it up to 40 tonne (but it's likely any armoured fighting vehicle which was upgraded with extra armour would also gain a lot of pounds and probably go outside of that range. In respect infrastructure the max weight for heavy goods vehicles in the UK was raised from a max of 37 tonnes a few years back to 44 Tone in order to bring it into line with continental max weight road restrictions of 44 tonne. At the end of the day in my view you design a vehicle that is capable of doing the the job first. If you design a vehicle around logisitical considerations you are always going to have an under-performing vehicle or one that doesn't do what it is tasked to do, no matter what ancillary considerations you may have solved. I have been advocating for some time that we should develop a heavy lift aircraft for exactly this reason so you don't end up with procurement briefs for military vehicles that end up not fit for purpose. Briefly had a look on line it looks like C130 maximum pay load is around 74 tone.
@@alexreynolds4199 The BAE Systems’ CV90 has worked alright here in Sweden, I don’t know why they picked the Ajax before that? Guess they didn’t grease the right hands?
the BAF Trials have absolutely confused me recently, we had upgrade and extensions for our two primary AFVs (The Challenger 2 LEP and the Warrior refit with a 40mm cannon and new running gear) worked everything else, and then dropped them for more expensive and middling designs. (Ajax and Challenger 3)
Wouldnt fix the issue; the british military wants a modern vehicle. And mind, while its easy to forget, the Ajax is mainly supposed to be a reconnaissance/utility/command vehicle, not the replacement for the Warrior. Tbh, maybe Im ignorant of military realities, but the whole thing seems a bit whack. The reconnaissance vehicle is this 40 ton monster with a giant autocannon, while the new IFV is the Boxer, a heavy 8x8?
That wouldn't be great either; the AP ammunition for the CT40 gun is £1000 a pop, a normal round is a quarter the price. Its stabilisation is also poor due to the suspension. The issue with the Ajax is the gun, the suspension, and the noise; the noise can be relatively easily fixed, whilst the gun and suspension can not. If these issues can not be fixed, it would be ideal to adopt the Lynx and refit it for the Recce role meant to originally be fulfilled by the Ajax. This also isn't exactly the fault of the Spaniards, more so General Dynamics.
@@arakami8547 the CT40 isn't Lockheed Martin's. It's CTAi, a joint BAE NEXTER product. That UK MOD mandated for the vehicle. Any gun problems aren't GD/LM.
@@spacefx1340 Yeh, Germany and Australia use the Boxer for Recon as well. That thing was designed from the ground up to be highly modular. For more combat oriented operations (and closer to the Warrior), Germany uses the heavier Puma IFV. Compared to that, the UK has a very heavy recon/command vehicle and a much lighter IFV. Very strange...
On paper, the Ajax looks like an ideal recce vehicle. The fact that the hull forms a basis for a family of vehicles, i.e., APC, engineer, etc., is a plus. However, as a former Canadian Army reserve armoured recce soldier, the biggest concern I have with the Ajax is its size. When I was serving (over 40 years ago) we used jeeps to do our work, and the prevailing doctrine at that time was that the best way to gather information was to obtain it by stealth and not by fighting for it. Ergo, the smaller and faster the recce vehicle was, the harder it would be for the enemy to detect it. Granted, our jeeps had zero armour protection and only a pintle-mounted GPMG on the crew commander's side of the vehicle. As a result, in actual combat conditions, our job would be quite perilous. By comparison, the Ajax is huge; it's almost as big as a main battle tank. And while it has a pretty substantial autocannon and relatively good armour, it's not impervious to attack. If you're going to go with such a large vehicle with the idea of fighting for information, why not just use a main battle tank instead? In fact, during the days of the Cold War, the Germans used their older Leopard I tanks as heavy recce vehicles to handle the task of fighting for information, while allocating the Leopard 2's to the main combat role. Mind you, in the late 1970s the Germans did have wheeled recce vehicle that was quite large, namely the Luchs, but it seems that it was used largely for flank and rear echelon area recce taskings. I think the Germans and the Dutch had the right idea with their jointly-produced Fennek wheeled recce vehicle. It's fast, quiet, small and quite stealthy. Too bad it went out of production and its major flaw is that it can't withstand IED's or RPG-7 fire very well.
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Shite quality control at this point in the game, they should drop them. 2010 ffs, plenty of time to get it together.
Ajax is a proven platform based on ASCOD, designed in the 90s by Steyr-Daimler-Puch and Santa Barbara, now GD. The platform is sound, just the manufacturing doesn't work. And they probably put to much weight on it.
@@v4skunk739 CV-90 is getting new turrets, 50mm, improved optics, hard-kill rocket defence, Atgms for eliminating any threats encountered while out on recce. Currently ajax can’t shoot while driving, so no covering fire if it needs to retreat, and 40mm will do fuck all against heavily armoured targets, it can’t reverse over anything more than 30 cm so it can’t even retreat cause if there’s various obstacles behind it can’t drive over them. All in all a shit show, no promising product to show after BILLIONS of money put into the program, personally General Dynamics and GD UK should never be considered for any army vehicle contract in the future.
You're video reports that some of the hulls are so poorly made its doubtful they will fix them to the standard required and they will always have issues with parts not fitting. The easier solution here would be cheaper to just scrap them and start anew. right out of the manufatures pocket.However I doubt any provision in the contract between the MOD and GD exists. This all assumes that it is something as simple as poor QA and not a fundimental design flaws with the platform. That would be a different kettle of fish Regardsless, a full investigation needs to happen to get to the bottom of this and remember, your kit is not made by the best, but by the cheapest and they will always, always cut corners to improve the margins at the users expense
This is a Spanish vehicle why not check out one of theirs to see if this has always been a problem or is it because of all the extra armour and equipment?
I think like most things if you keep playing about with something, keep adding stuff, and changing your ideas, for years and years, you just end up with a mess. The British Army procurement team keep doing this, and those subcontracted just love being paid for the changes. Should be easy. What gun? What protection, with an option to bolt on upgrades? What electronics and communication? How many people to carry? Give us a box, with an engine and running gear that can carry all that. Please can it last 30 years in peace and 72 hours in real combat?
Your comment reminds me of the Bobcat armoured personnel carrier development programme in Canada. The Bobcat was designed and developed in Canada in the late 1950s with the idea of providing the Canadian Army with an effective APC, which it didn't have at the time. It had a lot of potential as an APC, but too many cooks in the kitchen spoiled the broth, so to speak, and the programme ended up collapsing under its own weight. The Bobcat was a classic example of design and features constantly being changed on a whim, and extraneous stuff being added in when all that army really needed was a simple armoured box on tracks with a small machine gun turret. In the end, Canada ended up buying the US-made M113 APC.
@@stevestruthers6180 M113 APC, couldn't be more "box". It really shouldn't be that difficult. Especially now armour is bolt on as it tries to keep up with munitions. I would say the turret needs two armanents now: Main, and anti missile something. Just ensure the ring is as big as it can take. The rest is a bigger engine than you think is needed. And a running gear that can take it, and keep taking it. Didn't the engineers play with Lego?
Australia feels the pain with the fustercluck that was our french sub program. Maybe we can return the favour to the UK with our findings in land 400 for an alternative replacement. Sharing hulls across the commonwealth would always be a bonus anyway.
Hi Matt also heard that its speed is well down too canny keep up with challenger but that maybe the weight keep the excellent content All the best from Scotland
Philippines is waiting for 20 ASCOD with 105mm turrets including lone command vehicle and recovery. Must be interesting with British current problems with its AJAX platform as it's shares similar for ASCOD.
This is a big concern for the Philippine Army too.. if general dynamics won't fix the issues w/ the vibration & noise on ASCOD 2 platforms.. the fate of the Ajax Program will also be inherent by the incoming Sabrah medium/light tank.. but it is configured, designed and assembled in Israel, so, i think/hopefully they'll improvise & mitigate the problems..
Both the Thais and Philippines are buying the light tank version of ASCOD, from what little information is available they're using an Israeli made turret along with a 105mm gun.
Hmm... to improve upon the Warrior is a hard thing to do. New technology can take you only so far. Up to now the CV90 series seem to be vehicle of choice - perhaps not as advanced as the Ajax; but it is there. The other problem is: Where is the enemy? The russians are struggeling to keep their antiques in service - not to mention man them. The weight growth must have something to do with it, but the weight growth does decrease the mobility. The trend is - as far as I can see - that to restore mobility you have the plenthora of 8*8 that except where tracks are absolutely necessary are a lot more mobile. With a reasonably functioning road system the 8*8 will just drive around the heavy armour - armour so expensive that the numbers to be procured have to be fewer an further between. When racing down the Autobahn - or country road with an 8*8 and outpace the heavy tracked vehicles? Well they will not punch the enemy on the nose, but kick in the butt so the nasties fall on their very protuding noses. How is the Ajax going to get to the fight? Heavy equipment like that is supposed to be transported by sea - the so called ferries....... But then again oceans are very uncommon on mountain tops.
If this is anything like how procurements go in the U.S. I'd check the employment rolls of General Dynamics UK for any new executive V.P.s that just happened to have retired from the MOD or recently retired general officers. Just be wary of this getting to the point of being "too big" to fail.
you getting too smart...keep it down. I think US is procurement is even worse, bigger and longer in time before a hundred congressional hearings and unfavorable reporting finally forces out the generals who supported the decision on the weapon systems, and then we are back to the same problem, except this time, the fired generals are working at the contractors pushing even more expensive solutions to problems that do not exist. We will end up having carriers with laser guns launching sixth gen fighters, when near peer is still trying to get their few 5th gen operational.
after all that money US spent on F22 and F35 (alot of our allies money too), we are still going back to updated versions of the F16 and F15, designs that created more than forty years ago. Even the richest ally can only operate a dozen F35s while they still rely on hundreds of old as shit F16s at the end of their life cycle and airframe. Japan and Korea would have been better just upgrading their existing legacy fighter fleet or buying the newest versions. Bur contractors don''t want to forgo that golden phase where the government will subsidize the research and development of the product they will be pressured to buy after sinking so much into development phase. Insanity.
It was reported in 1985 ( LA Times ) that GD had overcharged the US Government $244 million dollars through improper billing, think an executive was rumoured to be hiding in Greece lol
I think if you check the MOD Procurement director for armoured vehicles had to step down and joined GD as general manger MAJOR GENERAL CAREW LOVELL WILKS since departed - It appears that senior British officers need to place contract to major foreign defence contractors to ensure that when they take enhanced early retirement from their forces role there is a second lucrative career. I am not saying this influences their contract placement of course
I was always surprised at the choice of the ASCOD platform when there are better ones available, with all the problems maybe it should just be cancelled and a more suitable platform like CV90, as21, lynx or even a boxer variant.
I knew 2 guys who had inside knowledge of the general dynamics land systems factory in Spain. I cant explain how, not wanting anyone to get doxxed. Thing is years ago when GDLS bought the plant they retired many of the most expert factory workers and engineers, either by laying them off or putting them behind a desk doing nothing until they agreed to retire. Add that to a corporate view late stage capitalism style, and you have people in practice from vocacional schools or just graduated from them assembling military grade vehicles. And to top it all off.. now you have to work in inches and feet! That was a real issue too. Dont go for the cheap shot ( Matt to his credit did not do it ) of calling Spanish manufacturers incapable, some parts of any Eurofigther and Airbus plane are Spanish made, and never had quality issues. When you lay off the expert part of your workforce to make moar billions for your shareholders, shit happens.
As much as I feel you regarding fixing the issues, it sounds just like a sunk cost fallacy. And since it's UK we are talking about, costs are something they need to monitor extremely closely.
I never quite understood why the Army chose this platform over the CV90 family for example, which is - after all - a BAE-Systems product so economic value for money assured. The CV90 is combat proven, reliable and with a developmental path (mk.4 increment for the IFV) that shows even more future potential (50mm supershot, Adaptiv optical camo, non emitting range finding, etc.). It seems the Royal Army is always hellbent on doing everything differently than most NATO allies and hardly ever use knowhow and experience that's already there. Instead it had to take two systems (40mm gun with telescopic ammo and the Ascod platform) that weren't exactly the benchmark for excellence to begin with (the Nexter gun posing quite a lot of trouble on the French Jaguar CRV and the Ascod being known for being unreliable). What was the reasoning behind that? And somehow I can't escape the notion that the UK is being used as a test ground for a future US Army Bradley M2/M3 replacement candidate. Make the Brits pay for the development and the solving of teething problems so that General Dynamics can present the US Army a proven vehicle in use already with a trusted ally. It has all the characteristics of what went wrong with the F-35 programme as well: concurrent production and testing - a business model that's great for the manufacturer (LM's stock being among the highest dividend yielding on the NYSE), not so much for the customer. Unless the US Army was to choose this vehicle and subsystems were to be manufactured in the UK (jobs), but that should have been of secondary concern. At this point I'd take my loss and look around for a vehicle that will deliver on time, within budget and within specifications, deliver British jobs and have enough export potential to be beneficial to the British treasury.
I'm afraid this is a gigantic mistake. Reconnaissance in the 21 Century must be done by cheap drones. Thousands of them! The modern dinamic battlefield will be too dangerous for those heavy, expensive and slow vehicles. Nagorno-Karabakh anybody?
If it is the Headset. Then It is really Embarrassing for GD as they had the exact same issue when installing the Bowman in Current Fighting vehicles. The Raden Cannon was having the same effect and deafening soldiers. The same team was moved form Bowman to Ajax so is likely containing the same engineers. It just shows the incumbency that is currently rampant in the Military and Defence Industry where shit engineers are just kept about. There is also the issue that the parts are being made by sub contracters at a cheaper cost than orignally planned, with GD pocketing the Difference. This is actually really common in the Industry but often causes the quality problems that you see here. As for the vehicle Itself keeping it is now the only option if the army wants to keep the capability. Warrior was retired due to the inability to keep effective moving forward. CVR(T) is well past its end of life. CV-90 lost the Bid because it was quite frankly not suitable for the specs. (Not without a massive overhaul). So the MOD needs to bite the Bullet and just fix it. Successive governments are at fault for this prediciment. With budgets being wasted on overseas conflicts UORs and Penny pinching.
Just buy the hull, the Ajax would be no more than a testing platform for new technologies to be added into the CV90 based vehicle later such as the turret.
@@Marinealver that's still something of the future. Russia and China have caught up to the west in technological developments but are still a little bit behind, as for example Russia has to import high tech optics etc and China produces lower quality domestic optics. But nato can't just sit on their butts and think that they have the absolute technological edge anymore
Whether or not if a system (ie the Warrior) needs to be replaced, the system replacing it needs to be an improvement over the previous entry. Listening to the alleged faults of the Ajax, it sounds less than what the MOD wanted. Being an old-school cavalry trooper, I remember the horrors of the M551 Sheridan. Even in 1978 they still hadn't fixed many of the issues the Sheridan had, leaving us cav troops with machines that were more dangerous to the user than the enemy. (Yes, I am from the US, and served in E trp 2d Sqdn 2d ACR from 1978-1980)
Thanks for this video. You have obviously searched and corelated all the available data in the press and on the rumour grapevine. I find it amazing that contracts were awarded BEFORE a finished vehicle was fully evaluated. Complete with ALL the upgrades and specific options ordered by the MoD. Yes the manufacturers are to blame for poor quality control. However, MoD procurements must shoulder some or all of responsibility because part of their role is assessing if the manufacturers are capable of providing what they have promised. They also responsible for the inclusion of penalty clauses for quality and punctuality of the delivered goods As things stand, the BAE CV90 looks even better than it did before. There should be a head to head competition of completed vehicles. Winner takes all.
It's the modern procurement model. Just like how the F-35 was accepted into service without a working gun, because they planned to do that later. Manufacturers make massive amounts of money from this "continuous development" process.
@@jarink1 Therein lies the problem or at least one of them. I appreciate that very expensive and technically challenging projects such as the F35, need to be heavily funded. Working finished airframes for final evaluation are for the most part, impossible to produce in advance of orders. But we are talking recce AFV. Tracked metal box, engine drive train, suspension and stabilised turret. GDLS should be up to the task and much more. Even some shifting requirement changes mid process, cannot explain the AJAX debacle. Someone is accountable for this monumental cockup.
People always rag on the Military Industrial Complex and the Forever Wars but you have to admire General Dynamics' engineering. Hope we get some good boresight videos of unmentionables getting shredded by caseless telescoped ammo even if all ends up being futile.
Hi Mat, excellent presentation that unfortunately feels like “been there done that SNAFU”. I had hoped for better from the Brits but it seems all armies and even civilian comes have the same problem. Fit for Purpose is something they all aspire to without actually knowing how to go about it. You know from your own experience that any original specs laid out for any new project are never, ever the final. Look at the final costs of refurbishing Big Ben in London! I just hope that the cost to future soldiers serving in those vehicles will not be impacted by today’s decisions. Cheers mate. Harera
Love all the flag waving patriots as you leave for war, then the teary eyed citizens as you return in a box. Seem to have no problem in between, bending you over and foregoing the Vaseline. Some slimy folks just don't deserve a place as cozy as hell.
Extra weight issue happens a lot with British vehicles. Threat of IED’s meant extra armour weight into the many tons were added to vehicles, often with updating the running gear as an after though. The warthog in Afghanistan was a great ‘go anywhere’ vehicle but the running gear and suspension was never updated enough. Mods were continually rolled out but still didn’t stop the constant maintenance and parts swapping of the running gear to keep them running. All the weight in a flat road would shake the thing to bits, wheels and springs would literally fly off 😂
Well, the ajax platform is working very well in the Austrian and Spanish army for years and I think all this problems are just propaganda. I really think the British government are trying to have a British vehicle instead of an European vehicle. That's all.
There are "some small" differences to ASCOD - originally planned as a 20t M113 replacement (Spain) came to 26t Pizarro than to 42t Ajax, from 600HP up to a 800HP engine. However I agree, the turret probably should have been manufactured in Germany ..
The vibration is said to be very serious indeed. In particular, it increases crew fatigue normally. But in the Ajax, it is actually debilitating the soldiers. Also there is a speculation, the accuracy of the mounted guns decreases dramatically when shot while the vehicle is moving. It is clear the program is going to be delayed and cost overrun is expected. It might be easier and cheaper to buy newer models like RedBack and customise it to the UK specification. Another benefit of it will be, this can force the developer (Hanhwa, the developer of K9A2, possible replacement of AS90) to build manufacturing base for pan Europe supply chain. There are 100s of K9 variants in service in Europe already, having the commer power train as K9, RedBack requires a home in Europe for European sales and servicing. UK, can buy one of the best systems and get the manufacturing partnership with the developer as well.
The 40,000 lbs of recoil through short springs causes the turret to wobble, think the turret ring was beefed up but if you look at videos you can see barrel waving up and down, this would make accuracy of bursts a problem!
I left a warrior company/Army in 2010 and this was being spoken about well before then. Aswell as the warrior upgrade, Ie 40mm cannon new engine transmission upgrade and new suspension package was ment to happen before I left. It amazes me that a decade late neither of these have happened. I don't believe anything the government/MOD say anymore with regards to it's military. The army are so far behind the rest of the world it's embarrassing. Wars are won with boots on the ground not planes in the sky or ships in the sea.
Producing hulls that are not even... that seems like a huge oversite. One thing i like about the Ajax though, is that the platform is going to fill so many roles. Kind of how Norway now has the CV90 MultiC for mechanized troops etc. - I wish Denmark had bought the turretless CV90 over the Piranha 5. I mean.. wheeled APCs can be nice in the sense that they are quick to deploy. But when our IFVs are CV90'ies i just feel that having the mechanized troops in a turretless cv90 would at least allow them to drive the same places :)
What I do not understand is why they have not simply bought the ASCOD as other nations have done ... RHEITENHALL is developing an improvement of the 30mm cannon ... or they could have bought the CV 90 (but the British Army wanted to save money and time) And this is what happens when things are done wrong….
I'm no expert, but if making a new hull would be more reliable and cheaper in the long term, they should go with that. I do hope they can salvage this beast though, mainly for the weapon systems that I could see in War Thunder ;)
If they're adding the Puma, I want to see a Boxer and Ajax in the near future. The boxer can be Aussie if Gaijin wants, I just want to play one of these newer IFVs.
I served on CVR(t), namely Scorpion and I found it very simple to work on. It was tried, tested and effective! It would have been cheaper and more effective to design a new vehicle using the CVR(t) design, AJAX is far too big for a Recce vehicle for a start! It's the size of a bloody APC! The whole armament/firing issue should be a moot point. The idea of Recce is not to be seen or heard. You only fire as a last resort, it's not design to engage enemy vehicles unless you are in the deep shit! A lot of Recce involved dismounted OP's, Foot Recces for mine field gaps, bridge crossings etc.
@John Cliff 7 forward, 7 reverse using a transfer lever. Weirdly you pulled it back to go forward and pushed it forward to go in reverse. It has to be said doing any great speed in reverse took balls and an incredible amount of trust in your commander not to cock up and tell you to pull the wrong stick! I was clocked doing 67mph on a range road in Hohne. No way did I ever get close to that in reverse lol!
You mean like never buy C-17, C-130, KC-135, P-8/MRA1, Ch-47, AH-64, F-35, M-Q9, RC-135, Shadow R1, or Texan. There is even a C-47 in the Battle of Britain memorial flight. Not to mention the Phantom. Or GMLRS. Or the 7.62 DMR(L129A1), or the .50 Cal (L111A1), or the M6 (M4), or the SASR (L135A1), or the LAW, or the Javelin, or the Claymore.
I wonder if this is the reason the Griffin family went from being described as sharing the Ajax's chassis to being a new chassis with common parts to Ajax.
Unfortunatly it reminds me of TSR2. The spec for what it was expected to do just kept getting longer and the weight went up, the cost went up, the program went up!
In light of this debacle I think it’s time to revisit the Warrior upgrade using the same turret and create battlefield system integration with Boxer and Challenger 3 and then look at Brimstone launchers for all three platforms and a Boxer module for land ceptor
high unit costs, higher repair/support/upgrade costs for the life of the vehicle, restrictions on exports or modified versions from foreign suppliers, and possibly the loss of manufacturing jobs domestically. these are reasons.
I have to agree that Ajax looks like a true beast. The thought of caseless ammunition is interesting. I do like the fact that no one tried to stuff an antitank missile system on it. I
@Matthius I would think that multi modular boxer could do some of those utility roles and challenger 2 hulls with a good cannon and spike turret (possibly basicly a terminator style turret) could carry armoured infantry with the tanks.. leaving boxer or whatever (and if boxer cannot be configured to do almost any recon medical etc role then it's not as advertised) and that's sorted.. I was factoring in that we had already paid for the boxer project and it works and can do this and that.. and is tested out (mostly) and big and new etc.... Personally I prefer smaller vehicles for recon and less of a target.. but I noticed that the ausies are going big for recon units... (comfort) Obviously one could just make a modern ferret with a cannon turret.. missile launcher radios optics etc.. but I suppose crew comfort is required for err.. reasons... But anyway yes.. challenger 3 with challenger 2s as heavy apc and bridge layers.. etc.. will allow them to be very hard targets (would definitely like to see some roof era or whatever vs drones and bomblets).. And boxer doing (as advertised) a very very expensive Samson Sultan whatever bit... though I would like to see how much of a command vehicle you could build on a challenger 2 hull..
? To fleece the taxpayer ? Procurement of boxer and UK build of challenger 3 dash 2 would be better and still fleece the taxpayer s little. . If that's what your statement covered
Looks like a mean machine that could really do some damage deployed in a war zone. Also, with that gun it might even cause some damage to the enemy too!
Imo, the issue with the Ajax is the base vehicle. It was never designed for the amount of additional weight the British Army want on it. Never understood why it was selected. I'd would have preferred CV90 with CTA cannon replace the Warrior and the French EBRC Jaguar to replace the CVRT family, a cheaper and better alternative.
Matt's talking like a guy who's football team has been sold a dummy. As for Bowman, didn't that become an acronym? Better Off With a Map And a Nokia.. The MoD needs to spit this dummy out..
I wish to disagree but can't. For this kinda a money it SHOULD be part of the UK military? Yea why my love for assymetrical warfare is so great. Easy and cheap way to blow up stuff run by 'soldiers' who think waving their credit card on the battlefield ... works? Well? It doesn't. Alot of these issues stem from the known MIC tactics where you end up paying more. Or go from a 19 ton vehicle to double that even.
@@Del_S Yes the good stuff that actually works doesn't show up on YT videos but on my bankaccount. Indirectly at least. One man's death is another man's bread after all. That is business not anything personal. Simple. UK was all in on the Boxxer program then spitted the wrong dummy out instead. 523 Boxer MIVS across four variants for the UK military for? Yes the full price cos we did all the hard work and investing. UK MoD report on the Type 45 aka the Hms failure? Yea we ate the last politician for such failure. But with the 2018-2019 overhauls after over 5000+ breakdowns on just 4 ships? Yes that is all our classified tech and hardware that actually works. The even worse Astute program leading to deaths? I got no words for that even. I wouldn't want to make money off that at all. But the rest is fair game. UK goverment is never going to pay back anything cos they don't make money they take the money and call it tax? Now the people have to pay double or tripple. Just like I really love fighterjets as long as i dont have to be in one? But the whole UK Tempest program is just ... a dummy in the making.
Particuarly that the headsets make the noise worse, not better. I thought the point of those things was to protect peoples hearing? How hard can it be to make a headphone not play sounds so loud they injure your hearing?
@@termitreter6545 Dude if it was that easy you wouldn't be talking. Not like there are YT videos of DIY circuits small kids could weld together with cheap chips that would limit and block and signal of reaching the earpiece if it is over the decibel limit? Whats the UK MoD going to do? Buy noise cancelling headsets at Wallmart? Nope this is a completely impossible fix.
@@MrFlatage No way, gotta spend 5 billion pound to develope a special variant of the headset with the standard adjustable volume setting being 5 points lower!
@@termitreter6545 You can always edit those UK MoD reports? Which means you become a liar who's words cannot be trusted. Like when the entire world watch that type 45 turn tail and run at the sight of the mighty Russian fleet! Well ... one coast guard cutter really. Entire CSG near Crimea for peacefull purposes right that is the truth? Yes untill someone leaves the top secret plans of the real goal at a UK busstation. Love the content in the media but why a busstation??? Where did 007 go?? He was a lie by the Brits too?? Whats next it wasn't the real Queen basejumping out of a helo during the Olympics? Dunno about that but yes 5 billion is what you owe me before the year is over. And I didn't even vote for any Brexit. Nice payoff though. Shame they're all someone's taxdollars. The deaths of UK soldiers is something you cannot pay off though. It's not just hearing damages.
If they work like my noise cancelling headset, all it does is make noise below the cutoff threshold clearer. When I try using them with my 2-stroke garden equipment, it means I can hear the driveshaft rattle and the motor as separate noises. Throw multiple axles in and yes, it would be hell.
Hmm, I wonder if someone miscalculated the conversion table between the imperial and metric numbers. Just a couple of mm +/- against specification tolerances could cause the said vibrations 🤔
ok, ok, ok... oh, wow... yeah, you don't "overcome" injuries from faulty suspension systems design in development. Your vehicle is literally a suspension/power train with stuff added to it when dealing with armor. Its fucked.
@@stevenbreach2561 Fair point. Hail Britannia. I am, specifically, from Toronto so you can understand my conflagration. One does not equate the other. That said, for the Queen.
This vehicle doesn't seemed to be designed as a tank destroyer. It's not built to fight off MBTs. The 40mm is already big for an IFV type based vehicle. Do you want a 76mm like the one on the Rooikat?
This sounds like a company trying to make the largest profit margin possible at the expense of the taxpayer, and (worst of all) with an intentional callousness towards the humans being affected. In America, we've had a HUGE problem with this, as politicians willing hand over more and more power to a smaller and smaller group of money obsessed individuals in exchange for campaign support, and then plead ignorant when their constituents come crying to them about the blatant disregard for the most basic of human decency. And you can't punish the corporations, because the only people that will actually be affected are the lowest level employees; because those in charge will either retire with golden parachutes, or just gut the company and sell off its assets! It happens so often it is just stupid. And the 1 percent will continue to do this because there are no repercussions for doing so... so why wouldn't they? I mean, other than simple empathy and compassion. But who cares, right? I mean, they're just poor people. That's why they send us off to war with inadequate body armor, few translators, and no respect for local customs and traditions. These kind of uber-powerful business tycoons are the worst type of people, because they know EXACTLY what they are doing, and the affect their business practices have, but they continue to do it... Time and time and time and again. And the worst part is that there is nothing I can do about it, because I am poor.
Why do you have the Spartacus (tv show) thing as your intro? Isn't that what that is? Could never pint point what it was and it just hit me tonight, hahah. Enjoyed the video as always.
Allegedly at the time it was anyone but BAE who manufacture the CV90. After BAE cooked up the Nimrod MRA4 program so badly the UK govt were determined not to give them this contract.
Having watched the design and deployment fiascos that are the Littoral Combat Ship, F-35 and Ford-class super carrier, this story is sadly familiar. Technologically advanced, networked combat vehicles are great in theory, but the higher complexity presents some singular challenges that rapidly outpace most projected budgets. I hope the MOD can find a solution for their needs, but no amount of money can recover the time wasted on sub-standard efforts ...
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.83[2/2] ประสบการณ์ขนหัวลุกจากตำนานวงการผี!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/T_kFecQw7Ds/mqdefault.jpg)
If I got to choose...I would have went with a UK modded CV9040 instead. The Royal Navy are equipping the Type 31 Frigates with BAE Mark 4 Bofors 40mm/L70s. The reason I mention this is because the CV9040 uses the same gun and the same ammunition which includes 3P Programmable Anti Aircraft/Missile rounds. This would make sense logistically and would cost less buying ammo for both the Army and the Navy. This would also mean that The Army would get a vehicle that can be used in an air defence role as well
Reading the parliamentary report prior to the integrated review, it's clear that the Army and MoD leadership has their heads up their asses and denying the poor state of the armoured forces in general it's a big circlejerk of passing the buck off to the next person and with this programme it's been a disaster from day 1 and these guys knew that back when this all started.
British armoured vehicle procurement has been a sorry state ever since Thatcher personally took charge of our MBT selection final meeting, overruled the testers, and forced Challenger 2 through ahead of the actual Army recommendations for either Leopard 2, or at least a smoothbore gun. (Yes, this happened, you can look it up).
We always insist on making something domestically, even when it's much more expensive, or problematic, or results in huge delays. We left Boxer in the early 2000s to make our own vehicle, wasted billions, then cancelled it and went back to Boxer as a customer, not a partner, resulting in major delay and increased cost.
We could have bought CV-90 off the shelf, as BAE systems owns the family now, but we rejected it and said "we can do it better" which resulted in Ajax, twice the weight, non-functional, dangerous, massively late, etc.
Challenger 3 was chosen over a German offer of 200x Leopard 2A7Vs at a bargain price of £4 million per tank, offered in 2017. Same gun, better armour and mobility, equally good thermals and fire control, easier access to parts and supply chain, and we rejected it because the MOD called it "not politically palatable" to buy a German tank, even though it was 3x better value for money than the Challenger 3, would have been in service 10 years sooner, and did everything equally well or better. The only thing Challenger 3 offers is 200 jobs, which is not very much in the grand scheme of things.
Over the last decade, the UK has spent £5bn on vehicle procurement for the Army and not delivered a single vehicle. It's time to stop acting like "made it Britain" is a good thing whilst we continue to fuck up every vehicle we try to design ourselves. The Army would be in a much better state if we had just bought off the shelf with minor modifications since the 1990s. Everything the MOD has touched has been a shitshow, including Challenger 2 (and 3) despite what propaganda might have you believe.
One of the most annoying things from my perspective is that this has the potential to be world class and it's turned out mediocre. EG 40mm main armament when everyone else is transitioning to 50mm. It's damn heavy which means there is little Boron armour (more resistant to copper jet type HEAT rounds than any form of steel) and that engine could do with another 150kW at least. Another annoyance is that Vickers could have done a much better job. OK slightly more expensive BUT it would have employed people.
@@AllThingsCubey I cant understand whats wrong with licenced production anymore. Buy the design that has already been proven, but you retain control of the maunfacture, and can swap things like thermals and fire control systems easily
Another expensive failure to meet targets its almost like building an aircraft carrier that has noplanes and leaks we don't need an enemy to defeat us we can do it ourselves
@@georgebodley8068 The carriers do have planes and they work fine.
First the Warrior upgrade programme and now AJAX. You gotta hand it the UK MOD, they can really F-Up equipment procurement like few others.
Oh they’ve been f**king up procurement for decades…..shameful.
How the fuck are the MoD officials still in their positions!
Its pretty with all of those plate facets. It looks like CGI texturing in real life. I'd like mine in candy red with flames...lets go retro!
I will never understand why they didn't just buy custom versions of the CV90.
Because they bought a custom version of the ASCOD instead. Not sure how CV90 would have been any different.
@@EP-bb1rm because the CV90 is a superior platform. And the company that produces the CV90 is owned by BAE systems (a British company)
@@EP-bb1rm
1) the hull, drive train, suspension and layout of the CV90 is tried and tested for both weight capacity, upgrade potential, crew comfort, ease of training ease of maintenance, ease of repair, adaptability and survivability by multiple, independent nations.
It was, after all, designed to be operated, maintained and repaired by 18-20yo conscripts fresh out of school...
2) The company that designed and builds it has been owned by BAE for decades and has already provided the Brittish army with several other long serving vehicles.
3) The CV90 hulls, suspension, tracks and drivetrain could likely be licence built in Brittish factories, ensuring parts availiability in a crisis.
@@charliechuck1341 The company that make CV90, aren't British...
@@SonsOfLorgar Legacy CV90 platforms were 24 tons. You're talking nonsense 🤣🤣
From a friend of a friend in the engineering world: A 3rd party consultation team was contracted by the MoD to conduct a full random sample strip down on several Ajax, none of the dimensions met requirements, they weren't even parallel, on one the left-hand side drifted in towards the front over 2 inches, they suspect that one of the main causes of vibrations on that one was the transmission skipping due to being wound up by one side effectively constantly turning in. They were far over specification weight and were deemed likely not to be able to support a full compliment or any future upgrades. Quality and depth of frame welding was so poor that one chassis was considered unsafe and recommended to be written off. Lab oil sample tests showed far higher levels of wear than expected.
The conclusion was that none of the vehicles could be considered fit for purpose or to have met expected criteria.
My background is naval, not land, but I'm going to guess the only reason the project hasn't been publicly cancelled is a legal/contract 'discussion' and BoJo not wanting his own Nimrod while the world is such a mess.
You have to ask why Santa Barbra systems still has ISO 9001 accreditation , if their welding and jigging does not meet the standards, its clearly a box ticking paperwork exercise !
@@peterwait641Santa Barbara Blindados have built hundreds of Pizarros for the Spanish army, and they do not present a single welding issue.
@@1guitarlover Who was on the ajax line apprentices ?
It seems strange that these issues didn't present or weren't addressed during the comparison stage of the project. Considering its taken a decade and the supplier still can't solve the issues then it is probably better to look elsewhere. Either way any costs incurred should be the responsibility of the supplier not the M.O.D. as it is the supplier's responsibility to provide the product fit for purpose as per the contract. If they have to spend more money to rectify their production issues that's their issue not the purchasing organisation
... it kind of makes me think of...
th-cam.com/video/IKQlQlQ6_pk/w-d-xo.html
First prototypes and such would be hand built by more qualified workers than those on the production line. I agree with your sentiments about making the supplier pay for making corrections etc but that just means they raise the cost to the end user. The taxpayer will still bear the costs at the end of the day. I might suggest moving the production out of Spain but that would still incur costs and time. It’s a shit show that is all too common in these type of projects.
At least it's not a sub.🇦🇺 from France.
@@alanpayne4841 And this is where the MoD has gone wrong in the past. If you purchase a project you expect it to be to specifications. If GD have to repair this at their cost, and try to somehow come back later with a way to claw that money back, then the bean counters (who are often at the root of a lot of issues) haven't done their job to make sure the contract does not put the cost back on the Army.
Anyway to cut back a bit, the MoD used to cover all costs, they now try these fixed contracts, but that effectively means you are buying a commercial product, and if that is the case, you need to be prepared to jump ship when the supplier no longer fits your needs like "upping the servicing charge because they had to fix a safety flaw at no cost". Drop that ship and buy new.
Alternatively, something I know the MoD struggled with when I used to work in it. Use the private contractors in each part. Contract for building, separate for maintenance, own the IP/Design of the vehicle. If one provider screws up, they still foot the bill, and you can move onto another if they try to claw the money back. The biggest issues are things like cartels (see Bowman and the Archer consortium), where because suppliers are limited you will end up having to go back to someone who lost money. However, I'm sure the the MoD would prefer fixed costs rather than unknown and possibly escalating costs. Get your program right and you can make good money, don't and you could lose a little money, so make dame sure you get it right.
I personally work with contractors and point this out. If they quote, that is the work I expect and no extras to get the design finished. Quote me a little more to cover contingency, if you do good work I'm happy to pay more and come back to you, but if you fail I expect you to put it right a your cost.
It's the fault of the modern defense procurement process where development costs are part of the contract and almost entirely *not* borne by the manufacturer. This makes it in their best interests to drag out the project, since they're literally being paid to produce nothing but a handful of prototypes.
Pentagon Wars may be more applicable to this than the Bradley
Pentagon Wars was an over dramatized pile of dog shit based on a book that was literally written by a crazy person; Go See Spookston's video on it for more details.
Pentagon wars was 98% bullshit based on a book that's 100% bullshit.
@@stroganoffbob7627 yeah, the vehicle was not designed to stop HEAT rounds in the first place but was tested nonetheless.
@@cnlbenmc I’m moreso stating the RnD of this. I’m well aware of it being an over exaggeration *of the Bradley*
I remember the Bradley being touted as a really cool AFV for the future...what was it, 25 years in development? Blimey.
AJAX - a lesson in how not to develop military equipment, it’s like SA80 Mk1 all over again, call in the Germans and rebuild 50% of it and years later we get something fit for purpose !
Now Boxer seems to be a case of getting it right from the start.
How the heck did AJAX get to trials with so many faults, cannot reverse over a kerb ! ! ! WTF
The turret that cannot fire is German.
The UK put in a huge amount of knowledge and expertise into BoXer before pulling out of the program twice as it didn't meet requirements....
I believe we should have just gone with the CV90 from the get-go, a proven design with many variations with lots of expandability which the Army was looking for, used by many western and Scandinavian countries, and they are built by Bofors and Haglund's which are both well-renowned companies owned by BAE which is a British company. Not an upgrade of an existing design by the South Koreans for the Australians, put forward by the Americans and built by the Spanish, now I've got nothing against the countries but I think it's not right for us.
I’ve been on Team CV90 for the future US IFV for quite some time now for the very reasons you have articulated. Awesome modular proven platform we can continue to upgrade and save a ton of money on.
Reading that makes a lot of sense. The Spanish are terrible at making anything. Just look at Seat and the New Cupras, badly built compared to their VW owners
The thing about that is that your own military sector will suffer from it.
@@bobdidit55
Its made in the uk
@@paladinee Fabrication is supplied by Spain. All part of the bullshit EU project!!...
It's remarkably difficult to fight effectively when you're busy trying to puke up your toenails. Hope they get that fixed.
Read this, specifically "Project Progress": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_Ajax
It is not just Spanish "quality control" that is the issue.
There are so many problems with this platform, and with the Army, that it is hard to cover in a short amount of time.
The turrets don't work, so far none of the AJAX platforms have been able to fire the main gun while moving, some of that is down to the hulls, but some seems to be bad microchips and design.
Matt has covered a lot already, but given that Warrior is canceled, the British army is in the strange position of having its armoured infantri formations in wheeled Boxer units, with Tracked Scout SVs as support. Meaning the Scout can't keep up in the tactical deployment.
The gun has turned out to be something of a problem, because the British Army is talking about the 40mm gun might have to be a 50mm gun, a gun that has been in development but not included in Ajax so far.
It has no anti-tank missiles... A small thing on the face of it, but we are talking a 40+ tons vehicle with a 40mm gun as its main defence, be it against tanks, drones, cars infantri.
Ajax might be a fine vehicle when all the issues are solved. But the British army has pissed away so much money in the past 15 years, with zero good results to show for it.
So they are following the American model of defense projects!
@Jjohnno 87 I can't say if 30 mm or 50 mm or bigger is needed, but I do think that if we are talking a "smaller" caliber automatic cannon, then 35mm is around the sweetspot for conventional ammo. The caseless ammo might change things, but so far the 35mm is good enough. 40mm might be better in some ways, but I cannot help but think that if 50mm is needed, then perhaps a real 76mm gun would be better.
The telescoped ammunition that was talked about for Ajax I believe was abandoned due to tecknical issues... But I don't know, it was only on rumor bacis.
So many things wrong with your post it's hard to know where to begin....
Bad chips 🤣
It is a case telescoped cannon
The 40mm CTA is used by British and French
The vehicle has fired on the move many times
The 50mm is not in development
Tracks are slower to strategically deploy, not tactical deployment.
France has a mixed wheeled and tracked armour teaming and do well
America has teamed heavy armour with wheeled Stryker for years. The only thing different about UK is the avoidance of wheeled medium armour for so long.
@@MrBandholm LMAO. "Hitting the zone" 🤣🤣
You clearly don't know the military definition of strategic and tactical.
The 50mm CT is not in development for AJAX.
You have zero experience of mixed wheeled-tracked combat.
Another 🤣🤣 for "bad microchips"
@@MrBandholm the CTAS 40 have been developed by Nexter (fr) and BEA (gb). The ammunitions are caseless and the APFSDS can penetrate 140 mm at 1500 m
Nausea from vibration's due to your inner ear being rattled. Think car sickness but worse.
Vibration is the symptom not the cause, the platform is grossly overweight at this point with so many additional requirements - that’s the issue
AJAX is a toilet cleaner in my country, this seems appropriate for this vehicles development.
Military - "Who cares if the project doesn't work? it's tax payers money, we can just start a new one".
Wiki
In Homer's Iliad he is described as of great stature, colossal frame and strongest of all the Achaeans. Known as the "bulwark of the Achaeans",[4] he was trained by the centaur Chiron (who had trained Ajax's father Telamon and Achilles's father Peleus and would later die of an accidental wound inflicted by Heracles, whom he was at the time training) at the same time as Achilles. He was described as fearless, strong and powerful but also with a very high level of combat intelligence.
@@EP-bb1rm But did he clean limescale under the rim twice as fast as the nearest competitor?
I think the MoD was stung by the deaths, followed by public criticism of the Snatch Land Rover fiasco. So they went to the other extreme of a 42 ton monster, that will be hard to deploy. Even if you get it to theatre, how many local bridges or narrow mountain roads can take it? The UK needs something light enough to deploy. Off the shelf ,the Korean, 25 ton, K21. If we wanted British, we should have developed the Stormer family, with a V hull, better protection, in the 16-19 ton range.
There isn't any similarity between snatch land rovers and an armoured fighting vehicle. 42 tonnes is not a monster they need to be large enough to do the job. If transportingg them becomes a question then they need to address that as a separate problem. Building a product that is second rate or doesn't meet the specification (but is really easy to transport is like buying a car that fits in your garage but isn't big enough to transport your family i.e. the whole purpose you bought it for in the first place). I believe they purchased a tracked Korean vehicle to replace Viking, but it has been taken out of service although I don't know why.
@@whitesun264 Read my comment. MoD (& public sector in general) tends to lurch from one extreme to another. Snatch was too light & the deaths in it attracted a lot of negative press & rightly so. Hence the pressure to adopt something better protected. But if you go too heavy, the vehicle is hard to transport to theatre & once there, unable to use narrow mountain roads or weak bridges. Unless you rebuild all the roads & bridges in a country under armed conflict (good luck with that), then your 42 ton monster has very limited use. Other countries have managed to build armoured vehicles with reasonable protection in the 16 to 28 ton range. Such vehicles can be transported by A400M, which is still in production. C-17 can lift heavier, but is long out of production.
After Afghanistan the theatre these things have to deploy to won’t have small bridges and narrow mountain passes. We just won’t be doing that anymore so a bigger vehicle is the way to go, but not the Ajax.
@@humptydumpy8029 Well the UK got rid of its last proper carrier in 1978, saying it would not need Phantoms & Buccs, then along came the Falklands in 1982. Then the British Army in the 1980s said it would never fight in the desert again & sold its desert uniforms to Iraq, but in 1991, Desert Storm. Saying the UK will never do something again, has proved to be wrong many, many times.
@@audacity60 You can't draw lessons about deaths in unarmoured land rovers and apply them to armoured fighting. Regarding your reference to monsters from what I remember from the video, the original weight of this vehicle was around the 20 tone mark, which is the weight category which you expressed a preference for. Armour upgrade according to the video took it up to 40 tonne (but it's likely any armoured fighting vehicle which was upgraded with extra armour would also gain a lot of pounds and probably go outside of that range. In respect infrastructure the max weight for heavy goods vehicles in the UK was raised from a max of 37 tonnes a few years back to 44 Tone in order to bring it into line with continental max weight road restrictions of 44 tonne. At the end of the day in my view you design a vehicle that is capable of doing the the job first. If you design a vehicle around logisitical considerations you are always going to have an under-performing vehicle or one that doesn't do what it is tasked to do, no matter what ancillary considerations you may have solved. I have been advocating for some time that we should develop a heavy lift aircraft for exactly this reason so you don't end up with procurement briefs for military vehicles that end up not fit for purpose. Briefly had a look on line it looks like C130 maximum pay load is around 74 tone.
Bring back production of this and future armoured vehicles to the UK.
What, resurrect British Leyland…
@@alanpayne4841 bae?
@@alexreynolds4199 The BAE Systems’ CV90 has worked alright here in Sweden, I don’t know why they picked the Ajax before that? Guess they didn’t grease the right hands?
@@alexreynolds4199 I’m not 100% sure but I think it’s bae that own the Bradley program now!
It's already brought back, and that's a cause of the problems
Not to make light of this too much but it sounds like the MoD needs to send some heavies round to General Dynamics and get them to sort it out.
the BAF Trials have absolutely confused me recently, we had upgrade and extensions for our two primary AFVs (The Challenger 2 LEP and the Warrior refit with a 40mm cannon and new running gear) worked everything else, and then dropped them for more expensive and middling designs. (Ajax and Challenger 3)
Remember that if AJAX fails, you always have the nice CV90 family as a great replacement :)
Yeah just wasted 4 billion pounds on this trash😑
With 40 tons it has become a medium tank with a bee bee gun.
Not everything heavy needs a gun. Imagine having tank protection as infantry, with a lot of rounda for cover and moving.
Never trust Spanish quality control on anything that isn't vegetables or fruits...
Just put the Ajax turrets on Warrior or CV90 hulls?
Wouldnt fix the issue; the british military wants a modern vehicle. And mind, while its easy to forget, the Ajax is mainly supposed to be a reconnaissance/utility/command vehicle, not the replacement for the Warrior.
Tbh, maybe Im ignorant of military realities, but the whole thing seems a bit whack. The reconnaissance vehicle is this 40 ton monster with a giant autocannon, while the new IFV is the Boxer, a heavy 8x8?
That wouldn't be great either; the AP ammunition for the CT40 gun is £1000 a pop, a normal round is a quarter the price. Its stabilisation is also poor due to the suspension.
The issue with the Ajax is the gun, the suspension, and the noise; the noise can be relatively easily fixed, whilst the gun and suspension can not. If these issues can not be fixed, it would be ideal to adopt the Lynx and refit it for the Recce role meant to originally be fulfilled by the Ajax. This also isn't exactly the fault of the Spaniards, more so General Dynamics.
@@termitreter6545 the boxer should have a recon module with drones..
@@arakami8547 the CT40 isn't Lockheed Martin's. It's CTAi, a joint BAE NEXTER product. That UK MOD mandated for the vehicle. Any gun problems aren't GD/LM.
@@spacefx1340 Yeh, Germany and Australia use the Boxer for Recon as well. That thing was designed from the ground up to be highly modular.
For more combat oriented operations (and closer to the Warrior), Germany uses the heavier Puma IFV.
Compared to that, the UK has a very heavy recon/command vehicle and a much lighter IFV. Very strange...
CV90 seemed like a good idea.
YES, CV90 hull with Ajax turret.
Brilliant! Job done!
Or, just go Lynx…and Boxer.
Marder II
Ajax turret not proven CV90 is
On paper, the Ajax looks like an ideal recce vehicle. The fact that the hull forms a basis for a family of vehicles, i.e., APC, engineer, etc., is a plus. However, as a former Canadian Army reserve armoured recce soldier, the biggest concern I have with the Ajax is its size. When I was serving (over 40 years ago) we used jeeps to do our work, and the prevailing doctrine at that time was that the best way to gather information was to obtain it by stealth and not by fighting for it. Ergo, the smaller and faster the recce vehicle was, the harder it would be for the enemy to detect it. Granted, our jeeps had zero armour protection and only a pintle-mounted GPMG on the crew commander's side of the vehicle. As a result, in actual combat conditions, our job would be quite perilous.
By comparison, the Ajax is huge; it's almost as big as a main battle tank. And while it has a pretty substantial autocannon and relatively good armour, it's not impervious to attack. If you're going to go with such a large vehicle with the idea of fighting for information, why not just use a main battle tank instead? In fact, during the days of the Cold War, the Germans used their older Leopard I tanks as heavy recce vehicles to handle the task of fighting for information, while allocating the Leopard 2's to the main combat role.
Mind you, in the late 1970s the Germans did have wheeled recce vehicle that was quite large, namely the Luchs, but it seems that it was used largely for flank and rear echelon area recce taskings.
I think the Germans and the Dutch had the right idea with their jointly-produced Fennek wheeled recce vehicle. It's fast, quiet, small and quite stealthy. Too bad it went out of production and its major flaw is that it can't withstand IED's or RPG-7 fire very well.
Shite quality control at this point in the game, they should drop them. 2010 ffs, plenty of time to get it together.
I like the look of the Ajax but I think the British army should go for the CV90 armed vehicles
Why didn't they just use the CV90, proven platform with some great upgrades basically would have just needed some modifications
Because the AJAX has much more room to upgrade the vehicle later in life compared to CV90.
CV90 is a modern platform:
th-cam.com/video/lUyZIqH2XQE/w-d-xo.html
@@v4skunk739 for a mature platform the MK4 come out recently easily stands up to the AJAX with 2 tons of expansion still on it.
Ajax is a proven platform based on ASCOD, designed in the 90s by Steyr-Daimler-Puch and Santa Barbara, now GD. The platform is sound, just the manufacturing doesn't work. And they probably put to much weight on it.
@@v4skunk739 CV-90 is getting new turrets, 50mm, improved optics, hard-kill rocket defence, Atgms for eliminating any threats encountered while out on recce. Currently ajax can’t shoot while driving, so no covering fire if it needs to retreat, and 40mm will do fuck all against heavily armoured targets, it can’t reverse over anything more than 30 cm so it can’t even retreat cause if there’s various obstacles behind it can’t drive over them. All in all a shit show, no promising product to show after BILLIONS of money put into the program, personally General Dynamics and GD UK should never be considered for any army vehicle contract in the future.
You're video reports that some of the hulls are so poorly made its doubtful they will fix them to the standard required and they will always have issues with parts not fitting. The easier solution here would be cheaper to just scrap them and start anew. right out of the manufatures pocket.However I doubt any provision in the contract between the MOD and GD exists.
This all assumes that it is something as simple as poor QA and not a fundimental design flaws with the platform. That would be a different kettle of fish
Regardsless, a full investigation needs to happen to get to the bottom of this and remember, your kit is not made by the best, but by the cheapest and they will always, always cut corners to improve the margins at the users expense
This is a Spanish vehicle why not check out one of theirs to see if this has always been a problem or is it because of all the extra armour and equipment?
@@paulstone9667 The people who built ASCOD would have retired and torsion bar suspension was out of date by 1980's
I think like most things if you keep playing about with something, keep adding stuff, and changing your ideas, for years and years, you just end up with a mess.
The British Army procurement team keep doing this, and those subcontracted just love being paid for the changes.
Should be easy. What gun? What protection, with an option to bolt on upgrades? What electronics and communication? How many people to carry? Give us a box, with an engine and running gear that can carry all that. Please can it last 30 years in peace and 72 hours in real combat?
It's the entire UK armed forces. Take a look at the Type 26 Frigate project as detailed on Think Defence website archives.
The next Mr. Potato Head. Ear there, nose here, etc.
Your comment reminds me of the Bobcat armoured personnel carrier development programme in Canada. The Bobcat was designed and developed in Canada in the late 1950s with the idea of providing the Canadian Army with an effective APC, which it didn't have at the time.
It had a lot of potential as an APC, but too many cooks in the kitchen spoiled the broth, so to speak, and the programme ended up collapsing under its own weight. The Bobcat was a classic example of design and features constantly being changed on a whim, and extraneous stuff being added in when all that army really needed was a simple armoured box on tracks with a small machine gun turret.
In the end, Canada ended up buying the US-made M113 APC.
@@stevestruthers6180 M113 APC, couldn't be more "box".
It really shouldn't be that difficult.
Especially now armour is bolt on as it tries to keep up with munitions.
I would say the turret needs two armanents now: Main, and anti missile something. Just ensure the ring is as big as it can take.
The rest is a bigger engine than you think is needed. And a running gear that can take it, and keep taking it.
Didn't the engineers play with Lego?
Australia feels the pain with the fustercluck that was our french sub program. Maybe we can return the favour to the UK with our findings in land 400 for an alternative replacement. Sharing hulls across the commonwealth would always be a bonus anyway.
Hi Matt also heard that its speed is well down too canny keep up with challenger but that maybe the weight keep the excellent content
All the best from Scotland
If that's true that's worrying lol Challenger was never the fastest tank
Also that on top of the fact it's almost as wide and is taller than a chally but is meant to be used for reconnaissance
Philippines is waiting for 20 ASCOD with 105mm turrets including lone command vehicle and recovery. Must be interesting with British current problems with its AJAX platform as it's shares similar for ASCOD.
where do you get your news from? I am interested in learning more about this development. Also, is the vehicle to be manufactured in the country?
Yeah, what happened to that project? I have quit FB a few months ago and I haven't check Ph defense pages in a long while.
This is a big concern for the Philippine Army too.. if general dynamics won't fix the issues w/ the vibration & noise on ASCOD 2 platforms.. the fate of the Ajax Program will also be inherent by the incoming Sabrah medium/light tank.. but it is configured, designed and assembled in Israel, so, i think/hopefully they'll improvise & mitigate the problems..
Both the Thais and Philippines are buying the light tank version of ASCOD, from what little information is available they're using an Israeli made turret along with a 105mm gun.
AJAX problems are surely also quite interesting for my country considering ASCOD in the big armour tender we are having right now.
Hmm... to improve upon the Warrior is a hard thing to do. New technology can take you only so far. Up to now the CV90 series seem to be vehicle of choice - perhaps not as advanced as the Ajax; but it is there.
The other problem is: Where is the enemy? The russians are struggeling to keep their antiques in service - not to mention man them.
The weight growth must have something to do with it, but the weight growth does decrease the mobility.
The trend is - as far as I can see - that to restore mobility you have the plenthora of 8*8 that except where tracks are absolutely necessary are a lot more mobile. With a reasonably functioning road system the 8*8 will just drive around the heavy armour - armour so expensive that the numbers to be procured have to be fewer an further between. When racing down the Autobahn - or country road with an 8*8 and outpace the heavy tracked vehicles?
Well they will not punch the enemy on the nose, but kick in the butt so the nasties fall on their very protuding noses.
How is the Ajax going to get to the fight? Heavy equipment like that is supposed to be transported by sea - the so called ferries....... But then again oceans are very uncommon on mountain tops.
If this is anything like how procurements go in the U.S. I'd check the employment rolls of General Dynamics UK for any new executive V.P.s that just happened to have retired from the MOD or recently retired general officers. Just be wary of this getting to the point of being "too big" to fail.
you getting too smart...keep it down. I think US is procurement is even worse, bigger and longer in time before a hundred congressional hearings and unfavorable reporting finally forces out the generals who supported the decision on the weapon systems, and then we are back to the same problem, except this time, the fired generals are working at the contractors pushing even more expensive solutions to problems that do not exist. We will end up having carriers with laser guns launching sixth gen fighters, when near peer is still trying to get their few 5th gen operational.
after all that money US spent on F22 and F35 (alot of our allies money too), we are still going back to updated versions of the F16 and F15, designs that created more than forty years ago. Even the richest ally can only operate a dozen F35s while they still rely on hundreds of old as shit F16s at the end of their life cycle and airframe. Japan and Korea would have been better just upgrading their existing legacy fighter fleet or buying the newest versions. Bur contractors don''t want to forgo that golden phase where the government will subsidize the research and development of the product they will be pressured to buy after sinking so much into development phase. Insanity.
It was reported in 1985 ( LA Times ) that GD had overcharged the US Government $244 million dollars through improper billing, think an executive was rumoured to be hiding in Greece lol
I think if you check the MOD Procurement director for armoured vehicles had to step down and joined GD as general manger MAJOR GENERAL CAREW LOVELL WILKS since departed - It appears that senior British officers need to place contract to major foreign defence contractors to ensure that when they take enhanced early retirement from their forces role there is a second lucrative career. I am not saying this influences their contract placement of course
I was always surprised at the choice of the ASCOD platform when there are better ones available, with all the problems maybe it should just be cancelled and a more suitable platform like CV90, as21, lynx or even a boxer variant.
Deeply shocked is more like it!
I knew 2 guys who had inside knowledge of the general dynamics land systems factory in Spain. I cant explain how, not wanting anyone to get doxxed. Thing is years ago when GDLS bought the plant they retired many of the most expert factory workers and engineers, either by laying them off or putting them behind a desk doing nothing until they agreed to retire. Add that to a corporate view late stage capitalism style, and you have people in practice from vocacional schools or just graduated from them assembling military grade vehicles. And to top it all off.. now you have to work in inches and feet! That was a real issue too. Dont go for the cheap shot ( Matt to his credit did not do it ) of calling Spanish manufacturers incapable, some parts of any Eurofigther and Airbus plane are Spanish made, and never had quality issues. When you lay off the expert part of your workforce to make moar billions for your shareholders, shit happens.
So, like Boeing?
Like Babcock with DSG !
I do not understand why they do not buy CV90 from Sweden.
8:20 A MLC of "50" for a Reconnaissance vehicle is really getting up there.
As much as I feel you regarding fixing the issues, it sounds just like a sunk cost fallacy. And since it's UK we are talking about, costs are something they need to monitor extremely closely.
It sucks not having the monetary resources of a vast global empire…
@@tyvernoverlord5363 sucks that politicians are ready to pick the military budget clean.
@@BigPapaKaiser Yep
I never quite understood why the Army chose this platform over the CV90 family for example, which is - after all - a BAE-Systems product so economic value for money assured. The CV90 is combat proven, reliable and with a developmental path (mk.4 increment for the IFV) that shows even more future potential (50mm supershot, Adaptiv optical camo, non emitting range finding, etc.).
It seems the Royal Army is always hellbent on doing everything differently than most NATO allies and hardly ever use knowhow and experience that's already there. Instead it had to take two systems (40mm gun with telescopic ammo and the Ascod platform) that weren't exactly the benchmark for excellence to begin with (the Nexter gun posing quite a lot of trouble on the French Jaguar CRV and the Ascod being known for being unreliable). What was the reasoning behind that?
And somehow I can't escape the notion that the UK is being used as a test ground for a future US Army Bradley M2/M3 replacement candidate. Make the Brits pay for the development and the solving of teething problems so that General Dynamics can present the US Army a proven vehicle in use already with a trusted ally. It has all the characteristics of what went wrong with the F-35 programme as well: concurrent production and testing - a business model that's great for the manufacturer (LM's stock being among the highest dividend yielding on the NYSE), not so much for the customer. Unless the US Army was to choose this vehicle and subsystems were to be manufactured in the UK (jobs), but that should have been of secondary concern.
At this point I'd take my loss and look around for a vehicle that will deliver on time, within budget and within specifications, deliver British jobs and have enough export potential to be beneficial to the British treasury.
I'm afraid this is a gigantic mistake. Reconnaissance in the 21 Century must be done by cheap drones. Thousands of them! The modern dinamic battlefield will be too dangerous for those heavy, expensive and slow vehicles. Nagorno-Karabakh anybody?
This is why continuous testing, improving and getting feedback from your users is so important when developing any product/service (in general).
It’s also said you can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear
If it is the Headset. Then It is really Embarrassing for GD as they had the exact same issue when installing the Bowman in Current Fighting vehicles. The Raden Cannon was having the same effect and deafening soldiers. The same team was moved form Bowman to Ajax so is likely containing the same engineers. It just shows the incumbency that is currently rampant in the Military and Defence Industry where shit engineers are just kept about. There is also the issue that the parts are being made by sub contracters at a cheaper cost than orignally planned, with GD pocketing the Difference. This is actually really common in the Industry but often causes the quality problems that you see here. As for the vehicle Itself keeping it is now the only option if the army wants to keep the capability. Warrior was retired due to the inability to keep effective moving forward. CVR(T) is well past its end of life. CV-90 lost the Bid because it was quite frankly not suitable for the specs. (Not without a massive overhaul). So the MOD needs to bite the Bullet and just fix it. Successive governments are at fault for this prediciment. With budgets being wasted on overseas conflicts UORs and Penny pinching.
"... with GD pocketing the difference" ... Five words, the Most probsble cause found
CTA 40 is 180db a bit loud ?
Scrap it, and go with the CV90! You know you want that to happen Mat ;)
And how long to build 500 ?
@@loyalist5736 There's probably a warehouse full already, just waiting for some lucky customer/soldier.
Meh... they should have gone with the CV90 instead.
Superb platform!
Just buy the hull, the Ajax would be no more than a testing platform for new technologies to be added into the CV90 based vehicle later such as the turret.
"Injured due to vibration" now that must've been one hell of a ride
You’ve never ridden in a tracked vehicle have you.
@@alanpayne4841 Nothing like a bone shaker!
1916
Britain makes the first tanks changes warfare
Now
Britain doesn't know how to make an IFV after warrior
and needs german help to fix their guns and tanks
@@zhufortheimpaler4041 If they need the reverse gear to work....
The French will have a hundred great ideas....
Soon enough, China is going to surpass everyone.
@@Marinealver that's still something of the future.
Russia and China have caught up to the west in technological developments but are still a little bit behind, as for example Russia has to import high tech optics etc and China produces lower quality domestic optics.
But nato can't just sit on their butts and think that they have the absolute technological edge anymore
@@zhufortheimpaler4041 And dont mention hypersonic weapons, where Russia is ahead.
Whether or not if a system (ie the Warrior) needs to be replaced, the system replacing it needs to be an improvement over the previous entry. Listening to the alleged faults of the Ajax, it sounds less than what the MOD wanted. Being an old-school cavalry trooper, I remember the horrors of the M551 Sheridan. Even in 1978 they still hadn't fixed many of the issues the Sheridan had, leaving us cav troops with machines that were more dangerous to the user than the enemy. (Yes, I am from the US, and served in E trp 2d Sqdn 2d ACR from 1978-1980)
Thanks for this video. You have obviously searched and corelated all the available data in the press and on the rumour grapevine. I find it amazing that contracts were awarded BEFORE a finished vehicle was fully evaluated. Complete with ALL the upgrades and specific options ordered by the MoD. Yes the manufacturers are to blame for poor quality control. However, MoD procurements must shoulder some or all of responsibility because part of their role is assessing if the manufacturers are capable of providing what they have promised. They also responsible for the inclusion of penalty clauses for quality and punctuality of the delivered goods
As things stand, the BAE CV90 looks even better than it did before. There should be a head to head competition of completed vehicles. Winner takes all.
It's the modern procurement model. Just like how the F-35 was accepted into service without a working gun, because they planned to do that later. Manufacturers make massive amounts of money from this "continuous development" process.
@@jarink1 Therein lies the problem or at least one of them.
I appreciate that very expensive and technically challenging projects such as the F35, need to be heavily funded. Working finished airframes for final evaluation are for the most part, impossible to produce in advance of orders. But we are talking recce AFV. Tracked metal box, engine drive train, suspension and stabilised turret. GDLS should be up to the task and much more.
Even some shifting requirement changes mid process, cannot explain the AJAX debacle. Someone is accountable for this monumental cockup.
People always rag on the Military Industrial Complex and the Forever Wars but you have to admire General Dynamics' engineering. Hope we get some good boresight videos of unmentionables getting shredded by caseless telescoped ammo even if all ends up being futile.
Hi Mat, excellent presentation that unfortunately feels like “been there done that SNAFU”. I had hoped for better from the Brits but it seems all armies and even civilian comes have the same problem. Fit for Purpose is something they all aspire to without actually knowing how to go about it. You know from your own experience that any original specs laid out for any new project are never, ever the final. Look at the final costs of refurbishing Big Ben in London! I just hope that the cost to future soldiers serving in those vehicles will not be impacted by today’s decisions. Cheers mate. Harera
Love all the flag waving patriots as you leave for war, then the teary eyed citizens as you return in a box. Seem to have no problem in between, bending you over and foregoing the Vaseline. Some slimy folks just don't deserve a place as cozy as hell.
Extra weight issue happens a lot with British vehicles. Threat of IED’s meant extra armour weight into the many tons were added to vehicles, often with updating the running gear as an after though. The warthog in Afghanistan was a great ‘go anywhere’ vehicle but the running gear and suspension was never updated enough. Mods were continually rolled out but still didn’t stop the constant maintenance and parts swapping of the running gear to keep them running. All the weight in a flat road would shake the thing to bits, wheels and springs would literally fly off 😂
Vibration also causes high rates of wear and tear.
Yeah it would literally just shake itself apart.
Called Fatigue Stress.
It is the most difficult stress to Guage and has been the culprit for many unexpected failures.
On steel, and bone.
Never let General Dynamics near a contract again. Scrap it, and go with the lynx asap.
Well, the ajax platform is working very well in the Austrian and Spanish army for years and I think all this problems are just propaganda. I really think the British government are trying to have a British vehicle instead of an European vehicle. That's all.
There are "some small" differences to ASCOD - originally planned as a 20t M113 replacement (Spain) came to 26t Pizarro than to 42t Ajax, from 600HP up to a 800HP engine.
However I agree, the turret probably should have been manufactured in Germany ..
People who made the ASCOD in 1998-2010 may have all retired before AJAX and skills depleted !
@@peterwait641 ... or were forced to retire when GD took over Santa Barbara in 2001 as a cost cutting measure ...
The vibration is said to be very serious indeed. In particular, it increases crew fatigue normally. But in the Ajax, it is actually debilitating the soldiers. Also there is a speculation, the accuracy of the mounted guns decreases dramatically when shot while the vehicle is moving. It is clear the program is going to be delayed and cost overrun is expected.
It might be easier and cheaper to buy newer models like RedBack and customise it to the UK specification. Another benefit of it will be, this can force the developer (Hanhwa, the developer of K9A2, possible replacement of AS90) to build manufacturing base for pan Europe supply chain. There are 100s of K9 variants in service in Europe already, having the commer power train as K9, RedBack requires a home in Europe for European sales and servicing. UK, can buy one of the best systems and get the manufacturing partnership with the developer as well.
The 40,000 lbs of recoil through short springs causes the turret to wobble, think the turret ring was beefed up but if you look at videos you can see barrel waving up and down, this would make accuracy of bursts a problem!
Should have stuck with CV90. This thing is junk.
I left a warrior company/Army in 2010 and this was being spoken about well before then. Aswell as the warrior upgrade, Ie 40mm cannon new engine transmission upgrade and new suspension package was ment to happen before I left. It amazes me that a decade late neither of these have happened. I don't believe anything the government/MOD say anymore with regards to it's military. The army are so far behind the rest of the world it's embarrassing. Wars are won with boots on the ground not planes in the sky or ships in the sea.
Maybe they should rename it Achilles. Although Achilles allegedly only had one weakness.
Producing hulls that are not even... that seems like a huge oversite. One thing i like about the Ajax though, is that the platform is going to fill so many roles. Kind of how Norway now has the CV90 MultiC for mechanized troops etc. - I wish Denmark had bought the turretless CV90 over the Piranha 5. I mean.. wheeled APCs can be nice in the sense that they are quick to deploy. But when our IFVs are CV90'ies i just feel that having the mechanized troops in a turretless cv90 would at least allow them to drive the same places :)
19 tons to 40 tons and people are surprised that there are issues.
Yeah . its too heavy for the running gear pure and simple.
What I do not understand is why they have not simply bought the ASCOD as other nations have done ... RHEITENHALL is developing an improvement of the 30mm cannon ... or they could have bought the CV 90 (but the British Army wanted to save money and time) And this is what happens when things are done wrong….
I'm no expert, but if making a new hull would be more reliable and cheaper in the long term, they should go with that. I do hope they can salvage this beast though, mainly for the weapon systems that I could see in War Thunder ;)
If they're adding the Puma, I want to see a Boxer and Ajax in the near future. The boxer can be Aussie if Gaijin wants, I just want to play one of these newer IFVs.
@@arakami8547 Lynx too, but yeah for sure
I served on CVR(t), namely Scorpion and I found it very simple to work on. It was tried, tested and effective! It would have been cheaper and more effective to design a new vehicle using the CVR(t) design, AJAX is far too big for a Recce vehicle for a start! It's the size of a bloody APC! The whole armament/firing issue should be a moot point. The idea of Recce is not to be seen or heard. You only fire as a last resort, it's not design to engage enemy vehicles unless you are in the deep shit! A lot of Recce involved dismounted OP's, Foot Recces for mine field gaps, bridge crossings etc.
@John Cliff 7 forward, 7 reverse using a transfer lever. Weirdly you pulled it back to go forward and pushed it forward to go in reverse. It has to be said doing any great speed in reverse took balls and an incredible amount of trust in your commander not to cock up and tell you to pull the wrong stick! I was clocked doing 67mph on a range road in Hohne. No way did I ever get close to that in reverse lol!
There lots of nice wheeled recce vehicles coming along now, but they're not UK made.
Lessons to be learnt are the same as ever: always build your own kit, and never buy American.
You mean like never buy C-17, C-130, KC-135, P-8/MRA1, Ch-47, AH-64, F-35, M-Q9, RC-135, Shadow R1, or Texan. There is even a C-47 in the Battle of Britain memorial flight. Not to mention the Phantom. Or GMLRS. Or the 7.62 DMR(L129A1), or the .50 Cal (L111A1), or the M6 (M4), or the SASR (L135A1), or the LAW, or the Javelin, or the Claymore.
@@trav9384 or the MRAPS, CIWS, VLS, Computers for everything and bubble gum
I wonder if this is the reason the Griffin family went from being described as sharing the Ajax's chassis to being a new chassis with common parts to Ajax.
I think they will continue with it.
And all this issues remind me of the early days of the puma.
Unfortunatly it reminds me of TSR2. The spec for what it was expected to do just kept getting longer and the weight went up, the cost went up, the program went up!
In light of this debacle I think it’s time to revisit the Warrior upgrade using the same turret and create battlefield system integration with Boxer and Challenger 3 and then look at Brimstone launchers for all three platforms and a Boxer module for land ceptor
What was the point of it when the CV90 and Puma exist? Wouldn't a few modifications to those do the job?
Because neither existed in the required state when the contract was awarded?
Political issues demand a US contractor over an EU one. It’s a special relationship.
@@EP-bb1rm Seems GD's design was only on paper so that's not a valid reason ?
@@EP-bb1rm The cv90 has been around for something like 20 years now in various versions...
high unit costs, higher repair/support/upgrade costs for the life of the vehicle, restrictions on exports or modified versions from foreign suppliers, and possibly the loss of manufacturing jobs domestically. these are reasons.
One word: CV-90!
Awe, man.
This makes me want to play armoured warfare. But it's so dead on PS4...
Rofl... Much Rofl...
I have to agree that Ajax looks like a true beast. The thought of caseless ammunition is interesting. I do like the fact that no one tried to stuff an antitank missile system on it. I
How many backhanders were involved to keep this going?
MoD procurement is an absolute disgrace.
from 19 to 40 tons? wow, that's terrible for completely new design, what were they thinking
Could have just built challenger 3 and then converted challenger 2 into heavy apcs ... sorted end off...
one of the roles Ajax is supposed to fill is replace CVR(T)s, i don't think any converted challenger 2 will be able to do that...
@Matthius I would think that multi modular boxer could do some of those utility roles and challenger 2 hulls with a good cannon and spike turret (possibly basicly a terminator style turret) could carry armoured infantry with the tanks.. leaving boxer or whatever (and if boxer cannot be configured to do almost any recon medical etc role then it's not as advertised) and that's sorted.. I was factoring in that we had already paid for the boxer project and it works and can do this and that.. and is tested out (mostly) and big and new etc....
Personally I prefer smaller vehicles for recon and less of a target.. but I noticed that the ausies are going big for recon units... (comfort)
Obviously one could just make a modern ferret with a cannon turret.. missile launcher radios optics etc.. but I suppose crew comfort is required for err.. reasons...
But anyway yes.. challenger 3 with challenger 2s as heavy apc and bridge layers.. etc.. will allow them to be very hard targets (would definitely like to see some roof era or whatever vs drones and bomblets)..
And boxer doing (as advertised) a very very expensive Samson Sultan whatever bit... though I would like to see how much of a command vehicle you could build on a challenger 2 hull..
Your forgetting the vehicles primary purpose.
? To fleece the taxpayer ?
Procurement of boxer and UK build of challenger 3 dash 2 would be better and still fleece the taxpayer s little. . If that's what your statement covered
@@matthiuskoenig3378 Not good for recon if it makes more noise than a tank , CVRT is much quieter !
Looks like a mean machine that could really do some damage deployed in a war zone. Also, with that gun it might even cause some damage to the enemy too!
Imo, the issue with the Ajax is the base vehicle. It was never designed for the amount of additional weight the British Army want on it. Never understood why it was selected. I'd would have preferred CV90 with CTA cannon replace the Warrior and the French EBRC Jaguar to replace the CVRT family, a cheaper and better alternative.
Nah if you want quality you buy german!
Ditch it and go for the CV90 as it works.
Matt's talking like a guy who's football team has been sold a dummy. As for Bowman, didn't that become an acronym?
Better
Off
With a
Map
And a
Nokia..
The MoD needs to spit this dummy out..
If there's been a successful large scale MoD procurement in recent times, we haven't heard of it because it's probably classified.
I wish to disagree but can't. For this kinda a money it SHOULD be part of the UK military? Yea why my love for assymetrical warfare is so great. Easy and cheap way to blow up stuff run by 'soldiers' who think waving their credit card on the battlefield ... works? Well? It doesn't. Alot of these issues stem from the known MIC tactics where you end up paying more. Or go from a 19 ton vehicle to double that even.
@@Del_S Yes the good stuff that actually works doesn't show up on YT videos but on my bankaccount. Indirectly at least. One man's death is another man's bread after all. That is business not anything personal. Simple. UK was all in on the Boxxer program then spitted the wrong dummy out instead. 523 Boxer MIVS across four variants for the UK military for? Yes the full price cos we did all the hard work and investing. UK MoD report on the Type 45 aka the Hms failure? Yea we ate the last politician for such failure. But with the 2018-2019 overhauls after over 5000+ breakdowns on just 4 ships? Yes that is all our classified tech and hardware that actually works. The even worse Astute program leading to deaths? I got no words for that even. I wouldn't want to make money off that at all. But the rest is fair game. UK goverment is never going to pay back anything cos they don't make money they take the money and call it tax? Now the people have to pay double or tripple. Just like I really love fighterjets as long as i dont have to be in one? But the whole UK Tempest program is just ... a dummy in the making.
Clansman intercom didn't have the engine noise interference as the screening of cables and quality of plugs better!
Send them to Hägglund Sweden, let them test it. It will be cheaper. Best would be to buy CV90 Mk 5.
Considering that I am suffering from tinnitus due to my time in Armor Crew, these updates are disconcerting.
Particuarly that the headsets make the noise worse, not better. I thought the point of those things was to protect peoples hearing? How hard can it be to make a headphone not play sounds so loud they injure your hearing?
@@termitreter6545 Dude if it was that easy you wouldn't be talking. Not like there are YT videos of DIY circuits small kids could weld together with cheap chips that would limit and block and signal of reaching the earpiece if it is over the decibel limit? Whats the UK MoD going to do? Buy noise cancelling headsets at Wallmart? Nope this is a completely impossible fix.
@@MrFlatage No way, gotta spend 5 billion pound to develope a special variant of the headset with the standard adjustable volume setting being 5 points lower!
@@termitreter6545 You can always edit those UK MoD reports? Which means you become a liar who's words cannot be trusted. Like when the entire world watch that type 45 turn tail and run at the sight of the mighty Russian fleet! Well ... one coast guard cutter really. Entire CSG near Crimea for peacefull purposes right that is the truth? Yes untill someone leaves the top secret plans of the real goal at a UK busstation. Love the content in the media but why a busstation??? Where did 007 go?? He was a lie by the Brits too?? Whats next it wasn't the real Queen basejumping out of a helo during the Olympics? Dunno about that but yes 5 billion is what you owe me before the year is over. And I didn't even vote for any Brexit. Nice payoff though. Shame they're all someone's taxdollars. The deaths of UK soldiers is something you cannot pay off though. It's not just hearing damages.
If they work like my noise cancelling headset, all it does is make noise below the cutoff threshold clearer. When I try using them with my 2-stroke garden equipment, it means I can hear the driveshaft rattle and the motor as separate noises. Throw multiple axles in and yes, it would be hell.
It’s developed from an already in use platform, I can’t understand why these problems have come to light now with the UK version.
Hmm, I wonder if someone miscalculated the conversion table between the imperial and metric numbers. Just a couple of mm +/- against specification tolerances could cause the said vibrations 🤔
It went from under 20 tons to nearly 40 without any upgrade to the suspension. It's too heavy. I mean miles too heavy.
Good point, look at how much fun Packard had converting Rolls Royces drawings for US Merlin production.
Don’t know why they don’t just get the CV90 since it’s made by BAE
ok, ok, ok... oh, wow... yeah, you don't "overcome" injuries from faulty suspension systems design in development. Your vehicle is literally a suspension/power train with stuff added to it when dealing with armor. Its fucked.
As a Canadian, I hope they can solve these problems. England is obviously one of the most important allies Canada has.
It's Britain.How would you like it if I referred to Canada as Alberta,or Quebec?
@@stevenbreach2561 Fair point. Hail Britannia. I am, specifically, from Toronto so you can understand my conflagration. One does not equate the other.
That said, for the Queen.
Ohh didn't see this coming
wow, it seemed like a long time since i've seen your videos in the recommended list.
That main gun seems too small for a modern vehicle. Needs to be capable of using programmable munitions. There are better options already out there.
concerned about that pointless mounted 7.62 gun sticking up like a wedding night dick without protection
Well, it can use programmable ammo - but it's not an MBT.
@@YaMomsOyster It's a 40mm cannon, the vehicle's length is 7.62 metres. 40mm will deal with most anything except an MBT - which it's not built for.
This vehicle doesn't seemed to be designed as a tank destroyer. It's not built to fight off MBTs. The 40mm is already big for an IFV type based vehicle. Do you want a 76mm like the one on the Rooikat?
@@Joshua_N-A - It looks more like a 20mm to 25mm gun to me?
This sounds like a company trying to make the largest profit margin possible at the expense of the taxpayer, and (worst of all) with an intentional callousness towards the humans being affected. In America, we've had a HUGE problem with this, as politicians willing hand over more and more power to a smaller and smaller group of money obsessed individuals in exchange for campaign support, and then plead ignorant when their constituents come crying to them about the blatant disregard for the most basic of human decency. And you can't punish the corporations, because the only people that will actually be affected are the lowest level employees; because those in charge will either retire with golden parachutes, or just gut the company and sell off its assets! It happens so often it is just stupid. And the 1 percent will continue to do this because there are no repercussions for doing so... so why wouldn't they? I mean, other than simple empathy and compassion. But who cares, right? I mean, they're just poor people. That's why they send us off to war with inadequate body armor, few translators, and no respect for local customs and traditions. These kind of uber-powerful business tycoons are the worst type of people, because they know EXACTLY what they are doing, and the affect their business practices have, but they continue to do it... Time and time and time and again. And the worst part is that there is nothing I can do about it, because I am poor.
What happened to the lynx platform procurement, seems pretty similar
Why do you have the Spartacus (tv show) thing as your intro? Isn't that what that is? Could never pint point what it was and it just hit me tonight, hahah. Enjoyed the video as always.
They should have chosen the CV90 instead 👍🏻
Now see this: th-cam.com/video/lUyZIqH2XQE/w-d-xo.html
Maybe going for something solid and established like the CV90 or (sorta) the Lynx could have been a better idea. Maybe.
Allegedly at the time it was anyone but BAE who manufacture the CV90. After BAE cooked up the Nimrod MRA4 program so badly the UK govt were determined not to give them this contract.
it's not only flawed it's also not very good at anything even if it worked. not a great scout, not a great IFV
Agreed, good for nothing.
"caseless telescopic ammo" shows cased ammo being loaded and case being ejected XD! 01:42
Let an F1 team and their engineers examine the Ajax.
Drop the tracks and go with wheels.
You do realise Williams F1 team are contracted to provide support? Ajax is using their power and data distribution technology.
@@Draksyl . I didn't know that . Well there goes my brilliant idea.
Having watched the design and deployment fiascos that are the Littoral Combat Ship, F-35 and Ford-class super carrier, this story is sadly familiar. Technologically advanced, networked combat vehicles are great in theory, but the higher complexity presents some singular challenges that rapidly outpace most projected budgets.
I hope the MOD can find a solution for their needs, but no amount of money can recover the time wasted on sub-standard efforts ...
Should have bought the Puma
The Puma, another faultless vehicle. Not to mention it's an IFV, not a calvary scout vehicle.
Why don't they just use the CV90 ? Seems like a good vehicle.