Why ‘troubled’ Ajax tanks are making a comeback

Trials of the British Army’s Ajax armoured vehicles are set to resume, despite major delays amid concern for soldiers’ safety. Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard announced in Parliament that “strict new controls” for the vehicles, long thought to be the future of Britain’s combat strategy, will be put in place.

The Ajax fleet is “expensive, noisy and eight years late”, said Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor at Sky News. Costing nearly £10 million each, and weighing more than 40 tonnes, they are “as heavy as a Russian tank and potentially vulnerable to cheap Russian drones”.

How did we get here?

In 2014, defence firm General Dynamics received a contract to produce 589 armoured vehicles, comprising 245 Ajax (for intelligence and reconnaissance), 93 Ares (armoured personnel carriers), 50 Apollo (repair vehicles), 112 Athena (command and control variants), 51 Argus (engineer reconnaissance variants) and 38 Atlas (recovery vehicles). The vehicles are assembled in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, and had created jobs for around 700 people.

At one stage, it was suggested that the Ajax could be introduced into service by 2017, though requests to include 1,318 additional requirements set that date back. Ajax trials during 2019-20 were temporarily halted after soldiers complained that excessive vibrations were causing hearing loss. The Ajax has also been the subject of three significant and several smaller reviews since 2021.

What caused the most recent delay?

The trial was paused last year, after around 30 soldiers fell ill during exercise Titan Storm on Salisbury Plain in November last year. The soldiers reportedly emerged from the vehicles “vomiting”, with “weakness in their legs”, or “shaking so violently that they could not control their bodies”, sources told The Times. All affected soldiers have since returned to service. This exercise occurred just three weeks after Pollard had declared the vehicle had reached initial operating capability.

There was “no single causal mechanism” which resulted in the symptoms experienced by the soldiers during Titan Storm, said Pollard in Parliament this week. The report conducted by the Army Safety Investigation Team found that they were caused by “technical issues” such as “incorrect track tension and loose or missing engine deck bolts”. Exposure to cold was also thought to have played a part.

What changes will be made?

Though Pollard agreed that “the experience for our soldiers using Ajax has not been good enough”, he announced a “phased” approach to restarting the acceptance of the vehicles. None of the 23 vehicles used during Titan Storm will take part in the next trial phase.

The “troubled” tanks will feature improved air filtration, crew compartment heating and the electrical power generation systems in the second phase of the operation, said Larisa Brown, defence editor at The Times. Some officers will also be given “separate responsibilities for operating and maintaining the vehicles”.

What has the reaction been?

“I for one applaud the decision of the MoD ministers to move forward with Ajax”, said Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former assistant director of Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance for the British Army and commander of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, in The Telegraph. “Frankly, much of what has been written has been ill-informed, outdated, or simply wide of the mark”. What we should have learned from the Ukraine war is that armoured shock action, provided by the presence of Ajax, “remains decisive”.

Pollard and the government “have done the unforgivable in any military doctrine – they have reinforced failure”, said Sam Kiley in The Independent. They “did not seize the moment” after Titan Storm last year to “dump” the project entirely. If the vehicles’ crew “needs special earphones and head protection to get in it”, what hope is there that infantry on deployment will want to “get into a roaring target that will scramble their brains as badly as a near miss from a mortar?” The answer is “nil.”

“There’s nothing obviously wrong” with the Ajax vehicles; , said Urban in The Times. “It was a smoother ride than my Chieftain tank back in the 1980s”. But, of course, “you’d expect a Tesla to be more impressive than a 50-year-old Ford Cortina, particularly given the money spent”.