Ajax is the British Army’s new multi-role, fully-digitised armoured fighting vehicle delivering a step-change in versatility and agility. The AJAX platform will be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the British Army on the battlefields of the future. Ajax promises dramatically greater firepower, manoeuvrability and survivability than its predecessor — CVR (T), providing a step-change in the Armoured Fighting Vehicle capability being delivered to the British Army.
AJAX will be a fully digitised, tracked, medium-weight core of the British Army’s deployable ISTAR capability and will providing a full suite of medium-armoured vehicles and capabilities.
The range of AJAX variants will allow the British Army to conduct sustained, expeditionary, full-spectrum and network-enabled operations with a reduced logistics footprint. It can operate in combined-arms and multinational situations across a wide-range of future operating environments. The first British Army squadron will be equipped by mid-2019 to allow conversion to begin with a brigade ready to deploy from the end of 2020.
AJAX is intended to support the British Army’s new Strike Brigades, Armoured Cavalry Regiments, Armoured and Armoured Infantry battlegroups and Combat Suppport elements.
Development of the Ajax vehicles is part of a $5.9bn contract awarded to General Dynamics Land Systems UK in September 2014. In July 2015, it was awarded a further £390 million contract to provide in-service support for the AJAX fleet until 2024.
The British Army has ordered a total of 589 vehicles as part of a £4.5 billion deal. across six variants. 245 will be of the turreted Ajax variant. The first Ajax family vehicles were delivered in 2019 and deliveries are expected to continue through 2025. As of the end of May 2021, General Dynamics had completed the production of 263 hulls, 58 turrets under a sub-contract with Lockheed Martin and a total of 107 finished vehicles.
However, one former defence official reportedly questioned the utility of the fleet of lightly armoured vehicles in a fight with a rival power such as Russia because of their vulnerability to heavy artillery. “It is fine if you are operating against incompetent enemies, but if you are up against a peer enemy this thing is useless, it’s a death trap,” one former defence official said.
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