Großbritannien: Aufklärungspanzer AJAX

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https://x.com/stakmaskin/status/2013857946438885786

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https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2 ... xProgramme

Was man da liest, ist haarsträubend. Das ganze Programm dürfte hoffnungslos verloren sein.

[theoderich]

International Armoured Vehicle Conference 2026: Chief of the General Staff's speech

On Ajax, I know you'll get more of this later, and you'll know that there is an investigation underway following events on Exercise Titan Storm more than covered in the media, and quite rightly so. But please be in no doubt, we need an armoured, reconnaissance and armoured cavalry programme for the reasons that I've laid out above. So we're going to turn this challenge that we've had over the course of the last few months into an opportunity. It has already bought the Army's tacticians closer to the technicians from our equipment manufacturers, from GD, and many of the subsystems. We know exactly what it is that our soldiers need to see to change, to have confidence that this is a warhorse they can go to war in. And we know with GD that we can get after those. So, I have confidence that the partnership is strong enough to make a virtue out of this necessity.

https://www.army.mod.uk/news/internatio ... ff-speech/

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https://es.linkedin.com/posts/gdels-san ... 44993-Lld_

[theoderich]

Public Accounts Committee

Oral evidence: Ministry of Defence Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25, HC 1798

Monday 23 March 2026

Q44 Chair: I am going to move on—presumably to you, Anna-Lee—and talk about the dreaded subject of Ajax. I gather that the interim in-service delivery has been temporarily frozen. When is the army going to finally decide this matter, one way or another? Either we are going to have Ajax, or we are not, but I think people—particularly those who are worried about their personal health—need to know what the position is on the Ajax programme.

Lieutenant General Reilly: It is worth saying, first of all, that the safety of our soldiers is clearly of the utmost importance. You are clearly tracking Exercise Titan Storm, where 33 soldiers reported symptoms from noise and vibration. Five are still under medical review, and the rest were returned to work with no follow-on conditions. After various safety reports, we are now very clear that Ajax, when maintained and operated as designed, presents no safety concerns. However, we now need to work with General Dynamics and Ministers to make sure that we can get Ajax back into service in a measured way, where we can assure that safety, and assure our position.

Q45 Chair: What is the timetable likely to be for that?

Lieutenant General Reilly: We are working on the timetable at the moment. I know that the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry wants to make an announcement to the House, so it would obviously be wrong of me to pre-empt that. Industry has been working very hard on a number of activities that will enable us to modify this on a growth to Ajax 2, which is very important. That sees us do things like composite rubber tracks and automatic track tensioners, all of which will improve the lived experience of the soldiers in the back of the platform.

If you imagine that you are in the back of a platform, you have no light—clearly, there are no windows—and you are travelling cross-country and looking at screens. Even if there is a tiny bit where your track has not been tensioned to the right amount, you can feel that adversely really quickly. For those of us who have operated in armour, the human dynamic of being in the back of that is hard. Therefore, making that experience as comfortable for the users as possible is part of the plan to get to Ajax 2. Safety is an absolute given; no soldier should come out of that platform and be injured in any way. That is taking us to a new platform that will be much improved from the current Ajax 1.

Q46 Chair: You were very clear in that reply that there are no safety issues with Ajax. How can we be sure that that is really true, when the senior army officers said, in writing to the Minister for Defence Procurement, that it was safe? It was not until he went to the exercise that you referred to that the problems were discovered. How can we be sure that this is safe, or will ever be safe?

Lieutenant General Reilly: When it is operated and maintained correctly within its parameters, we have no safety concerns about it. As you will know, it is one of the most trialled and tested platforms we have ever brought into service for that reason, and that is what the safety reviews have found. Obviously, when it is operated outside those parameters—as is the concern that you are talking about on Exercise Titan Storm—the safety parameters are breached, and there is a consequence to that.

Q47 Lincoln Jopp: Lieutenant General, you are a soldier, so you know. Which was incorrect: the operating parameters, or what they were asked to do in the exercise?

Lieutenant General Reilly: The exercise was part of growth trials, so it was quite a difficult test, and the soldiers had been out for a prolonged period. Clearly, the platform was not operated and maintained within the specification it should have been, and that led to the incident. Because we have done all the research, we know now that if it is operated within those standards and specifications, it is safe. That is what we are being told by the Army safety investigation team, and what has been reported.

We now need to make sure that the platform is always operated within those parameters, and, in the meantime, develop it to get to Ajax 2, so that we can make these improvements and make it a more comfortable ride. It is about going back to safety is sacrosanct, but we can also improve the lived experience of our soldiers in the back of that platform, no doubt.

Q48 Lincoln Jopp: So the commanders on the exercise either were ignorant of or chose to ignore the operating parameters of the vehicle system.

Lieutenant General Reilly: Of course, over time, as you travel cross country, the tension of the track alters; it was a very long exercise, and soldiers were on the platforms for a long time. It was not, as you might suggest, wilful ignorance, but part of operating on armour. Now that we are aware of and are tracking that, we can get to a position whereby we know what instructions to give our soldiers: for example, to do checks every time they stop the vehicle and that sort of thing. Of course, that is leading up to Ajax 2. Getting things like automatic track tensioners takes that out of it, as you create a technical solution, rather than a solution that needs to be done by a soldier.

Q49 Chair: My understanding of the problem was that the original vehicle, which could have been bought off the shelf, with the six variants, increased the weight from 28 to 42 tonnes. That weight on the tracks is basically what caused the problems, noise and vibration. How will you be able to overcome that physical problem technologically?

Lieutenant General Reilly: At the moment, we are working really hard, with General Dynamics, on solving that problem. One thing we looked at mentioned composite rubber track, and at the end of the year, we will start to do trials on that to look at whether it is value for money and makes a sustained difference to the platform. As we mentioned, things like automatic track tensioners would take the edge off.

It is also about what we ask soldiers to do when they are in the back of that platform. Because of our years campaigning in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have not operated like that for a really long time. These are skills. We are keen to get our soldiers back on those platforms as quickly as possible because they could lose that skillset of operating on armour. We need to keep that skillset current, so we need to get them back on the platform as quickly as possible.

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralev ... 7383/html/

[asdf]

Das Ding kannst nur schrotten ...
Gummiketten allein werden das Problem nicht lösen.
Das Projekt ist so verfahren, dass du es eigentlich abbrechen musst. Aber da ist man wohl schon zu weit drin, um noch irgendwie rauszukommen ...

Alternativen gäbe es ja am Markt, die mit hohem Gewicht (40t+) gut umgehen können.