Ajax, a Sorry Tale of Incompetence, Weak Thinking and Self-Deception

Ajax, a sorry tale of incompetence, weak thinking and self-deception

PATRICK BENHAM-CROSSWELL

THE armed forces are brazenly seeking yet more taxpayer money even as evidence of their incompetence returns to the newspapers. The Ajax reconnaissance vehicle’s noise and vibration problems are on the front pages again. Despite the Army declaring an ‘initial operating capability’ in November, merely eight years behind schedule, a recent exercise ended abruptly when 30 soldiers became ill. There are rumours of ambulances being called, although none of the soldiers required hospitalisation. One third of the vehicles involved had problems.

The Army is being tight-lipped (as it always is when reality intrudes on its delusions). Leaked videos have triggered inquisitions. Generals are lecturing Colonels. There is talk of the £6billion contract being cancelled. Some, including those who should know better such as ex-tank soldier Hamish de Bretton Gordon, think that Ajax’s problems can be fixed. Their reasoning is that the turret is functioning well; the only issue lies with the hull. They’re wrong.

The reality is far, far worse. The Ajax debacle reveals all that is wrong with the Ministry of Defence, the armed forces, and probably every other government department. Ajax is an ill-conceived disaster that should never have been ordered, let alone purchased. Until they can buy wisely it’s better the Generals don’t spend at all. As we shall see, the sorry tale of Ajax is one of egregious incompetence, weak thinking and self-deception. Those who should have led became apparatchiks, more interested in defending the indefensible than defending The Realm.

I write as one who spent the last years of the Cold War in an armoured reconnaissance regiment, sitting on the Inner German Border, waiting for the Soviet 3rd Shock Army to trundle west. I was intimately involved in the requirements definition for the replacement of the ageing CVR(T) Scimitar reconnaissance vehicle. I went on to do a lot of the computer simulation and wargames in the operational analysis phase. I later returned as a subject matter expert supporting yet more operational analysis. On this narrow subject I know more than most. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Recce 101

An armoured reconnaissance regiment’s purpose is to find the enemy, keep them under observation and enable a general to deliver a battle-winning heavy armoured strike. Finding the enemy means getting into their line of sight, the tricky bit being to see without being seen (on a modern battlefield to be seen is to be killed).

Staying alive, therefore, requires a stealthy, agile, manoeuvrable and small vehicle with decent communications. Squeezing between closely spaced buildings or trees and crossing soft ground all help. So does being low enough to exploit small folds in the ground for cover. Decent sensors are vital.

Generally stealthy reconnaissance doesn’t involve shooting at the enemy, as that ends badly (the reconnaissance troops are always outnumbered and always outclassed in a firefight). Far better to cue other weapons, such as artillery or rocket launchers some 30 to 50 kilometres away, than to trade shots with an enemy position.

Occasionally, there will be an opportunity to kill high-value enemy targets, such as headquarters and air defence vehicles. These engagements are more assassination than combat; shooting them in the rear is de rigueur. (All’s fair and all that.) A gun also provides an amount of self-defence capability, even if it’s more of a last gesture of defiance. (Popping smoke and reversing are better solutions).

Reconnaissance forces perform many other tasks, such as proving routes, checking bridges, detecting nuclear and chemical contamination and traffic control. As they’re not going to fight, reconnaissance vehicles don’t need much in the way of armour plate or powerful weaponry. That makes them lighter, needing smaller engines and less fuel.

The British developed the CVR(T) range of vehicles that weighed about eight tonnes, had lower ground pressure than a human foot and were a platform for some decent (at the time) or better sensors. It had a small, capable 30mm cannon and could reverse as fast as it could advance. The German and American reconnaissance soldiers I met envied CVR(T)’s small size and capability, particularly compared to their Luchs (a large amphibious, wheeled armoured car) and M3 Bradley Scout (a large, amphibious, tracked infantry fighting vehicle).

The road to Ajax

Towards the end of the 1980s the CVR(T) needed an upgrade or replacement. Thermal imagers had been invented and the emerging generations of Soviet equipment were more capable. The British Army launched a series of exercises to analyse what reconnaissance did. The two standout requirements were an elevating sensor (that is, one that could look over trees and buildings) and thermal imaging sights (the thermal imagers we had at the time were operated from outside the vehicle).

Meanwhile, the British had joined a programme called Tracer, an Anglo-American attempt to produce a new reconnaissance vehicle. Tracer fell apart in 2001 when it became clear that there were huge differences in philosophy and that the costs were going to be astronomical. (How was anyone surprised by that?)

The Americans soldiered on with the M3 Bradley, which has had at least five major upgrades and remains in service today. The British decided against upgrading CVR(T) and started the search for a full replacement. As it transpires, it would have been easier to find the Holy Grail.

They were also seeking a new self-propelled artillery gun, an upgrade to the Challenger 1 tank and an upgrade to the Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle. As ever, there was little money, so the CVR(T) replacement got kicked down the road, although it did receive diesel engines.

The next project (1990s) was the Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle, MRAV. This was supposed to replace everything other than Challenger, Warrior and the new artillery vehicle. The hope was that the chassis could be used for all other vehicles (ambulances, command vehicles, some logistic vehicles and the like). It soon became clear that the same chassis can’t serve as both a small as possible recce vehicle and as large as possible logistics vehicle. The British left MRAV in 2003 as the proposed design was too big and heavy to fit in a C-130 Hercules. (In 2018 the British Army ordered MRAV, now known as the Boxer armoured personnel carrier.)

Then came the Future Command and Liaison Vehicle (FCLV), which mutated into the Future Family of Light Armoured Vehicles (FFLAV). Like all products, the more units made, the lower the unit cost, so both FCLV and FFLAV mooted a recce variant. Note that by now the aim was to procure a widely useable vehicle with a recce version, not a specialist recce vehicle. The original CVR(T) started as a recce vehicle, but variants evolved across the Army as CVR(T) was reliable, effective and cheap. Lack of funds and internal inconsistencies destroyed FFLAV and FCLV. But the Army realised it desperately needed a replacement CVR(T).

So in 2004 along came FRES, the Future Rapid Effects System. The name itself is a warning! This, it was decided, would be a development of the reasonably successful ASCOD, already in service with the Spanish and Austrian armies. ASCOD evolved to ASCOD 2, first demonstrated in 2004 and now in service with Spain and on order for Latvia. A further evolution of ASCOD 2 (which works fine) was imposed before it became Ajax, and that was to change its gun.

An Anglo-French project had yielded a clever cannon called the CTA 40mm. More capable than the usual 20mm to 30mm cannons (as fitted to M3, CVR(T) and ASCOD 2) due to the larger calibre, cunning design means that CTA can fit smaller turrets. Like the smaller rounds, CTA 40mm can’t kill a tank.

Swapping to 40 mm is expensive as the purchaser would need to buy an awful lot of ammunition to build war stocks and check that their firing ranges were safe. Only the British and French armies use CTA, which was mandated for Ajax. That meant a new turret to be developed by Lockheed Martin, a competitor of General Dynamics, who make ASCOD and Ajax. CTA is half owned by BAE Systems, a competitor of both General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin.

The first Ajax order was placed in 2014, a quarter of a century (and, importantly, almost an entire military career) after the requirement definition exercises. Mindful of experiences in Afghanistan, where casualties were suffered in vehicles driving over improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the British became obsessed with mine protection and armour plate. ASCOD weighs about 29 tonnes; Ajax comes in at around 40 tonnes. The Ajax frontal arc is armoured to protect from a 30mm cannon; ASCOD is armoured to protect against 14.5mm. Eleven tonnes is a heck of a weight penalty for a marginal protection gain. There are many other common anti-armour weapons that can penetrate far more than a 30mm round.

Recce vehicles don’t fight, so why equip Ajax with a powerful gun and upgraded armour? These capability uplifts must be at the root of the Ajax problems, because ASCOD 2 works fine. They were completely unjustifiable, as they fly in the face of all the evidence of how to do reconnaissance. Yet no one challenged them. Or no one was allowed to.

The mistakes

The Army’s most obvious mistake was failing to emulate the United States by upgrading CVR(T) and continuing to upgrade it. Incremental development is cheaper and far less risky. Indeed, the CVR(T) range was extended in the 1990s to include Stormer, which is a bit longer and wider. Its manufacturer even proposed a reconnaissance version; the British Army ignored it. Later the Army produced the botched and top-heavy Scimitar 2 with improved protection against the IEDs and mines that were prevalent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The post-Cold War ‘Options for Change’ inflicted massive cuts on the armoured part of the Army, including most of the people who knew much about reconnaissance. The further cuts did nothing for the Army’s institutional expertise. The trauma of defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan left it obsessed with surviving driving over mines. Far better to avoid them, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone.

The Army doesn’t understand engineering risk. The damning National Audit Office report on Ajax is clear that the Army didn’t understand the complexity of the modifications of ASCOD that it was asking for. For example, at the time the Army specified the 40mm CTA cannon while it was still in development and therefore carried substantial, unidentifiable risks of its own. Specifying immature systems is very risky; unknown risks can’t be managed, let alone mitigated. Yet this is what the Army did.

The modifications imposed on ASCOD 2 to produce Ajax were and remain completely unnecessary, technically risky and have caused all the problems. Whoever decided that a vehicle required to avoid combat needs a gun and more armour has much to answer for. (I’m labouring this point because it’s fundamental and it cost us billions of pounds).

The delusions

Post Cold War, despite the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the upper echelons of the Army embarked upon collective amnesia. Forgetting (or ignoring) the reality that in combat unprotected foot soldiers die like flies, senior officers decided that armoured warfare was a thing of the past and impossible to deploy overseas. This ignores the historical fact that, courtesy of the English Channel and the Royal Navy, the British Army always fights abroad. It must, therefore, always be and always have been expeditionary. The Army must be furnished with the necessary logistics to enable it to operate far from the British Isles.

Heavy metal (armoured) warfare is expensive, consuming vast amounts of fuel, ammunition and spare parts. In the straitened times the Army found itself, rather than press for the necessary logistics, it cravenly developed the (cheaper) ‘strike’ concept. Infantry would be moved in the wheeled Boxer and there might be some vehicle with a smallish gun. Along with the Ranger Infantry, this would enable the British to compete against the likes of the Wagner Group wherever they might be found. A strike brigade was even created, in name at least. Artillery support came from just six 105mm light guns. This was deemed sufficient, despite a brigade usually having ten times as much artillery firepower. The assumption must have been that an obliging enemy would flee rather than fight.

The Strike vehicle with the smallish gun could have been Ajax, which the then head of the Army once referred to as a ‘medium tank’. No one had the guts to tell the general he was an ignoramus, so he got promoted and the British Army forgot the basics. A subsequent head of the Army noted that one ‘can’t cyber one’s way across a river’ and started addressing the problems he had inherited. He was rewarded with early retirement.

The concurrent emergence of the internet and mobile internet transformed military communications during the lifetime of the Ajax procurement. This led to the touting of phrases like ‘any sensor, any shooter’ and ‘network-centric warfare’. These soundbites were never accurately defined and weren’t new ideas. They were foreshadowed in the Air Land 2000 concept document, produced by the Americans in the 1980s. These capabilities were already being looked at in the early 2000s as part of another programme.

The rude awakening

The Russians invaded Ukraine with 100 armoured battalion tactical groups, a force about 30 times the size of anything that the British Army could deploy. Heavy armour was back doing what it does best and the UK’s near exit from armoured warfare was exposed as lunacy.

The Russian invasion was stopped by a combination of initial massive Russian overconfidence, Ukrainian heroism, and imported firepower – mostly NLAW and Bayraktar. The war was fought to a standstill, with the massive materiel losses and collateral damage that are the inevitable corollary of high intensity warfare.

As stalemate set in and ammunition stocks were depleted, the Ukrainians became inventive and progressive users of drones, particularly first-person view ones. They now lead the world in designing and producing them. Many in the British Army now believe that the future lies in drones, especially with the (alleged) AI revolution and the widespread use of Starlink. They believe manned reconnaissance should be replaced by sophisticated drones. Images will be passed to headquarters, where AI will analyse it all and provide decision support to the commander. These drones, it is alleged, will be operated from Ajax, which will sit back and stay out of contact, which means that its enormous size is no longer a problem. (The drones for Ajax have not yet been ordered, although many vendors have suggestions.)

When challenged about the concept, the technical maturity or vulnerability to electronic warfare the enthusiasts answer, ‘It’s proven in Ukraine.’ This latest slogan ignores the facts that the Ukrainian war is now one of static attrition and the Russians are winning it. Ironically, one of the Western vehicles that Ukrainians value is the CVR(T), whose stealth and agility they exploit for reconnaissance. They don’t seem much interested in Ajax.

The British Army has found itself a new delusion, fed by misinterpretation of the yet to be won war in Ukraine. It is both instructive and alarming that it declined an invitation to the Israeli Army’s exposition of how it won the war in Gaza – an outcome thought impossible by many when they started their operations.

Stopping the rot

The Army’s deranged procurement decisions continue. It is rightly buying many more MLRS artillery systems, whose rockets now travel 80 kilometres or so. A further MLRS projectile, the ATACMS, can reach 300 kilometres. Its replacement, PSM, will reach 1,000 km. So the system the Army is already buying can deliver death and destruction on His Majesty’s enemies from 10 to 1,000 kilometres away. Awesome stuff.

The British Army has just launched Project Nightfall, to procure a missile with a range of 600 km and a warhead of 300 kg, some three times that of PSM. Why does the British Army want that big a warhead? If they need that much explosive on the target, then fire three PSM at it. Who signed off on Nightfall? Why? At best it will be an expensive solution to a problem that can already be solved with existing weaponry. More likely it will morph into another procurement mess, converting taxpayer funds into arms company profits without adding to the security of the Realm.

The evidence is stark; the Army’s procurement system is sclerotic, dogmatic and disastrous. It is failing to provide the necessary weaponry for the Army and consistently missing both budget and deadline targets. This is not a Civil Service problem; this is a structural, cultural and training problem within the uninformed uniformed. The procurement processes and decision-making in the Army have demonstrably failed. Why? Every NAO report, every inquiry, says that lessons will be learnt. They never are. The Army is not fit for purpose.

Before they receive another penny of taxpayers’ money to buy equipment, the Generals must explain what military force they’re trying to build, how it will fight and why they know that this is correct. Until they can do that credibly, all new procurement should be put on hold and the Ajax suspended. Throwing money the country doesn’t have after money the generals have already wasted is madness.

To get more funding they must also explain how the Army made such a mess of the CVR(T) replacement programme. That explanation will no doubt be painful for them and some reputations might be damaged. So what? I would rather make a general blush than send Tommy Atkins off with rotten kit and flawed organisations to lose another war.

John Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, is running a department that is failing to defend the Realm while splurging funds on ill-considered and badly administered projects. The recent Strategic Defence Review showed the armed forces lack clear political direction. Healey was made Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in 2020. Surely by now he understands what his job is and where the problems are. Were he competent he would also have an inkling of what solutions might look like. Unfortunately, like so many in Westminster, he’s a career politician.

Rather than demand that the Secretary of State does his job, the careerist heads of the armed forces do what they always do – get out their begging bowl. Wasting taxpayers’ money and hoping for a peerage is always easier that confronting and solving problems. It’s more accurately described as moral cowardice.

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This article (Ajax, a sorry tale of incompetence, weak thinking and self-deception) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Patrick Bentham-Crosswell

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