The army’s “troubled” Ajax armoured vehicles order is now back on track after remedies were put in place to fix the issues, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Wednesday.
Inspecting Ajax trials near the Bovington Camp, Wallace said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) aims to deploy the vehicles soon after the testing programme is completed in about 16 months’ time.
The Ajax programme, a £5.5 billion ($6.6 billion) MoD contract with General Dynamics Land Systems UK (GDUK) to build 589 of the state-of-the-art reconnaissance vehicles, has prompted severe criticism after running for nearly 13 years without yet providing a single deployable vehicle.
Originally intended to enter service in 2017, Ajax has been repeatedly delayed owing to failures including noise and vibration problems that injured soldiers testing the vehicles….