It is a distinct career advantage in Sir Keir Starmer’s government for ambitious ministers to be able to shut unpalatable truths out of their minds and maintain a tone of blind, unwavering optimism. Luke Pollard, the minister for defence readiness and industry, showed those qualities this week on a visit to the General Dynamics UK factory in Merthyr Tydfil.
Pollard was in south Wales to announce the achievement of ‘initial operating capability’ for the Ajax armoured fighting vehicle, one of the British Army’s three principal platforms for the forthcoming decades. ‘Ajax has proved itself in the field to be the most advanced medium-weight armoured fighting vehicle on the planet,’ Pollard declared. ‘We have more than a full squadron ready to fight.’
What that means is that around 50 Ajax vehicles are ready to deploy with front-line units of the 165 so far delivered. Another 424 are still to be received by the army over the next five years. And this is merely the latest – hopefully the last – chapter in a cautionary tale.
Change is rarely so clear-cut
The Ajax programme has so far been little short of disastrous. It is by descent the replacement for the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) family of Scorpion, Scimitar, Sabre and others which were designed in the 1960s, and its concept was first identified when the US and the UK signed a letter of intent in 1996 to develop a common platform dubbed Tactical Reconnaissance Armoured Combat Equipment Requirement (TRACER).
It is an inglorious tale: TRACER was cancelled in 2001 and the UK began its own Future Rapid Effect System (FRES) programme, one part of which would fulfil the reconnaissance role. FRES became bogged down for years as more and more requirements were added, but eventually, in 2010, General Dynamics was awarded a development contract for the Scout SV element. An initial plan for 1,010 vehicles was reduced to the current 589 by 2014, and delivery of the £3.5 billion order was scheduled to begin in 2017, with the last vehicles being handed over in 2026.
Now here we are: Ajax has cost £5.5 billion so far and is nearly a decade behind schedule, nearing the 30th anniversary of its conception. The Ministry of Defence stresses the sophistication and capability of Ajax, and the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Roly Walker, called it the ‘world’s first truly digital armoured fighting vehicle’.
Sceptics point to the rapidity of technological change in modern warfare, and especially to the transformation of tactics and equipment witnessed in the war in Ukraine. Increasing use of drones makes large and expensive armoured vehicles much more vulnerable. Walker himself underlined the limitations of a vehicle like Ajax when he spoke at RUSI’s land warfare conference in June this year:
They take months to produce and years to train competent crews for. They’re also increasingly on the wrong side of the cost curve when it comes to price per kill. A £20 million tank and four experienced crew members lost to a £1,000 drone operated by a kid with only a few days’ training – who probably isn’t even on the same map sheet as the tank.
There is widespread concern that Ajax’s inordinately long procurement process is providing the army with an expensive asset left behind by technology and doctrine. Critics argue we are not equipped for the kind of wars we might have to fight in the future and have failed to learn the lessons of Ukraine.
It is true that the military establishment often learns slowly. In 1919, a senior British general observed of the Great War, ‘The tank was a freak. The circumstances which called it into existence were exceptional and not likely to recur. If they do, they can be dealt with by other means.’ Yet the willingness to learn and adapt must be tempered by caution. Just as damaging as the failure to learn lessons is the assumption that the most recent developments will be the most enduring.
That has been seen in some commentary on the war in Ukraine. The tank is dead, radical thinkers say, and the battlefield of the future will consist of heavily entrenched and static positions on the ground, with cheap, disposable drones ruling the sky.
Change is rarely so clear-cut. Drone technology has advanced hugely in the past few years, but on the Ukrainian side it was initially, in part, driven by force of circumstance: Ukraine lacked conventional artillery on the scale of its Russian opponent and was forced to improvise. It is also a conflict which Russia initiated in the belief it would be a short and decisive victory. Instead, Russian commanders have fallen back on weight of numbers, reluctant recruits and even penal battalions: that is not a kind of war any western nation is likely to wage.
We may not see large-scale clashes of massed armour in the future, though it is worth noting that the Ukrainian armed forces highly prize the main battle tanks supplied by Nato members, while using them differently in terms of doctrine. Equally, as long as we need to deploy soldiers to a battlefield, they will require armoured platforms for protection and mobility.
The fundamental lesson of Ajax is that we cannot afford major projects which stretch over decades. Change will not wait. The Ministry of Defence’s procurement must become radically more agile, more responsive and more efficient. Otherwise we risk bringing the world’s most advanced knife to a gunfight.
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