Warrior Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

[RunningStrong]

Aren’t WCSP, Ajax, Challenger 2 and Boxer all being fitted with GVA?

GVA is just agreed interface standards, like USB, HDMI etc It's not actual products.

[SW1]

Interesting thread

[SW1]

Interesting thread

[Ron5]

Always two sides to any story. Always an opportunity to swing handbags.

But does very nicely highlight why the Type 31 folks were originally very insistent on little or no GFX. And why they were extremely reluctant to accept more. I personally suspect the increase in GFX to maintain the 1.25 billion contract ceiling was inspired by their political lords and masters. Just stinks of their two faced BS. Sorry Scimitar

[RunningStrong]

If we start with the false statement that the introductor isn't part of the CTAI cannon (it very much is), and finish with the fact BAE have never marketed their own CT40 weapon in any bids, I think it's fair to say this is another very poor piece of journalism.

[ArmChairCivvy]

another very poor piece of journalism

Seems to abound, but why can't they skip defence?
- because it takes some understanding to write about it (without putting the cart first, and the horse then )

[military]

Here is an article by Harry Lye on the gun with a different take than the Twitter thread / Janes article mentioned above.

https://www.army-technology.com/feature ... of-delays/

I do think the export potential of the CTA gun is limited.

[ArmChairCivvy]

A good article (the above linked).

This confirmation
"Development of Warrior CSP was also delayed, as a result of the government supplying Lockheed Martin with Warrior hulls for the demonstration programme that were not up to standard. "
raises the question whether the targeted 265-290 can actually be sourced.

“By leveraging this successful investment and technology lead, within which UK is already part, KNDS can offer UK ARMY the opportunity to equip their BOXER MIV with the JAGUAR CT40 turret technology as a solution for STRIKE Direct Fire (BOXER T40) and/or a cost effective alternative to WCSP.”
- nah, put Toutas on Warriors and solve the squad size problem in the same go
- use the contracted turrets on Boxers (oozing with space),as that production will not stop at the five and a half hundred... then you'll get to the one in four having a fire support capability to be reckoned with
- and carry on with Ajax as planned; "157 hulls, 45 turrets, and the first 60 vehicles have been built as of August 2020"

[bobp]

the first 60 vehicles have been built as of August 2020

But not accepted into service yet? AJAX models.

[mr.fred]

Here is an article by Harry Lye on the gun with a different take than the Twitter thread / Janes article mentioned above.

https://www.army-technology.com/feature ... of-delays/

I do think the export potential of the CTA gun is limited.

The MoD says:
“The CT40 design was fixed for cannon production in March 2015 and the interface has not changed; in 2015 CT40 was sufficiently characterised for integration.”

But, from here:

https://battle-updates.com/warrior-bala ... ettlefold/

“ In September 2015 the [Warrior] Programme took a major step forward with the completion of a Critical Design Review (CDR).”

So the weapon design was fixed six months before the Critical Design Review, more than three years into the programme?

[Lord Jim]

So it seems both companies have identified the CTA40 as the problem even though the cannon itself is not at fault. It works fine when installed as the manufacturer intended, but the way the UK decided to integrated into both Warrior and Ajax, not specifying the use of the whole system as designed has been the major issue with blame resting on both the MoD and the contractors.

The WCSP does appear to be on shaky ground here, with its drive train and running gear being pushed to the limit by the additional weight imposed by the upgrade and given the hulls are not in the best of condition to start with much of the reasoning form pursuing an upgrade of the Warrior rather then buying a new platform seems to be defunct. Remember the main reason for going down the WCSP was that it was going to be cheaper, far cheaper, with less risk than adapting a new platform. If the Integrated Review dictates that the Army must transition into a more deployable force, able to be moved to areas outside of NATO's central european theatre then the crosshairs are going to be firmly fixed on the planned two Armoured Infantry Brigades and how they are organised and Equipped. Also if the operating and support costs for the Warrior are seen to have risen to much, pressure will be brought to bear on the Army to find a cheaper solution other wise it may have to reduce the funding available to other key platforms and capabilities given how tight things are already.

You can tell Lockheed are worried about this senario as they are now strongly pushing the benefits that the WCSP will bring to the UK economy rather than what it will bring to the Army, and avoiding any mention of increased through life costs or other issues besides that of integrating the CTA40.

The idea of adopting the NEXTER turret as used on the Jaguar could be tempting, initially on a variant of the Boxer in the Mechanised Infantry Battalions to provide integral direct fire support and long range anti-tank capability of the MMP were switched our of a weapon system like the Spike-LR2. If a lighter 6x6 platform can operate this turret there should be little or no issues installing it in a Boxer Module as NEXTER have appeared to already have done. Should we follow the French Army and replace the Warrior with a Boxer IFV using the same turret?

If we increased the number of Infantry Battalions in each Mechanised Brigade (Hvy) to three whilst retaining the Armoured Regiment with Challenger 3s, we would have formations with the mass to be effectively deployed with or without the latter, depending on the threat level expected. This would, if the aspiration to also have two "Strike" Brigades, give the Army four formations that would be far more readily deployable, meeting one of the possible dictates that could be issued by the ongoing review.

Ideally the MoD would have to speed up the delivery of the Boxer, returning it to its original timetable, equipping the first "Strike" Brigade followed by the first Mechanised Brigade (Hvy), all the time learning how to use these new platforms and what works, what doesn't and what capabilities are needed. Over a ten year period this should be deliverable. Savings from cancelling the WCSP and reducing the Ajax programme would provide should cover the recapitalisation of the first two Brigades, and the savings in operating and support costs would contribute to the follow on two, especially if saving can also be made in reducing the number of less relevant Light Role Infantry Battalions within the Army.

Will we lose any serious capabilities by no longer having a tracked IFV? Personally I can see none. Yes other nations are introducing new tracked IFVs, but is that a case of replacing like for like because that is they way that seems the most familiar as those nations have not operated anything but tracked IFVs. France operates its Army over as broad a selection of terrain as anyone and seems to be quite happy to have replaced its old tracked AMX-10P IFV with the wheeled VBCI. For extreme terrain it, like the UK used the BVS10 and BV206A. Have they got it all wrong?

Rather than worry about moving from a tracked to a wheeled IFV I think we should concentrate our energies on identifying what other key capabilities the Army is lacking, especially in the four Brigades that will hopefully make up 3rd (UK) Division. 6th Division also needs to be properly resourced to carry out the multitude of vital roles it has been tasked with and last but by no means least the Army's Precision Fires Capability needs a step change in capability to be viable.

[military]

Lord Jim:

1. As a minor point, there are two Nexter turrets for the CT40 gun: the one on Jaguar and a second one that has been photographed or at least photoshopped onto a Boxer hull.

2. I don't know whether these Nexter turrets support the Generic Vehicle Architecture, which actually formed the basis for a newer NATO / STANAG standard. GVA support would be critical to UK adoption.

3. The Boxer FOC is not until 2032, which is when the real strike brigades come on line. This is ridiculous for a perhaps minor UK modification of a vehicle that has been in service for ten or more years and that the UK actually helped developed more than twenty years ago. The bottom line: there is no money for new Boxer variants right now.

[Dahedd]

Time perhaps to look again at the Warrior upgrade.

Should we just scrap the idea in favour of more Boxers, these fitted with turrets with the CTA & perhaps a buy of the Ascod 2 apc variant. Bin the warrior completely or convert them to replace the old Bulldogs (FV 432)

[mr.fred]

The current estimate for the Warrior project is £3-4m each going forwards. The cost of a new Boxer is £5m each without a turret. The cost of Ajax is £6m+ each averaged out between equal numbers of turreted and non-turreted versions.
Where does the extra money come from?

[Ron5]

The Defence Committee kept asking: the total cost of all 4 major vehicle programs (Challenger 3, WSCP, Ajax, Boxer) is unaffordable, which one do you think should be canned?

Perhaps I am wrong, but I read Lord Jim as providing the answer to that i.e. cancel WSCP and redeploy Boxers in the IFV role.

His wrinkle, that may upset the applecart, is that he would increase the cost of the Boxer program by installing turrets on some of them. Perhaps overall, despite cancelling of WSCP, the extra cost of the Boxer turrets doesn't save enough to make everything affordable but surely it gets total costs down.

Once again, if I understand him correctly, the dedicated Strike formations would not survive but a heavy armored group could have its Challengers left at home and be a decent replacement with the remaining Ajax & Boxers. With some of the Boxers having turrets it sounds better equipped than the current Strike plan. And if they were in danger of being overwhelmed, the Challengers could be shipped out later.

Apologies to LJ if I have it all wrong

[ArmChairCivvy]

And if they were in danger of being overwhelmed, the Challengers could be shipped out later.

Did you add: I am [no] Custer?

[bobp]

If turrets were fitted to some Boxers, ATGM are a must have too.

[Lord Jim]

I kept enough Ajax to form two Recce Regiments, one for each "Strike" Brigade, and to provide each of the two Armoured Regiments with a close Recce Squadron of eight plus replacing the CVR(T) and FV432 variants within these Regiment. That reduced the overall purchase of Ajax to around 180 saving around £2Bn from the current programme. The remaining units in the Strike Brigades would be three Mechanised Infantry Battalions equipped with Boxer, with a number fitted with turrets, with close Recce for these Battalions provided by a variant of the JLTV.

With the cancellation of the WCSP and reduction in the number of "Light" Role Infantry Battalions and the reduced running costs of Boxer and Ajax, there should be £3Bn+ available to at least gets things rolling with the first Mechanised Brigade and the first "Strike" Brigade. Both Formations contain three Infantry Battalions available for deployment beyond NATO with the Armoured and Armoured Recce Regiments available if required.

Initially all Mechanised Battalions would have a Fire Support Company with twelve Boxers with a Turret mounting a CTS40 and Spike-LR2, but once the second "Strike" Brigade begins to form, the next deliveries will be enough Boxer/CTA40 to totally equip three Battalions in the Mechanised Brigade and those in these Battalions will go to the new "Strike" Brigade, or that would be the idea. If funding is not available all Infantry Battalions would be organised as the original six.

[Lord Jim]

Something is not right when the Australian Army is looking to procure almost twice as many state of the art tracked IFVs compared to the British Army! Add to that many eastern european NATO members are seriously looking to procure the Lynx KF41 and it show how far we have fallen.

May be we should leave the heavy metal needed to fight against a peer opponent in Europe, declare to NATO that our commitments are for its flanks and further afield and just bite the bullet. Depressing but we are where we are. Having an Army that has gone from a Corps of four Divisions to struggling to have a viable single Division that doesn't know what its role really is and needed to be totally rebuilt to be viable.

If the Government want a globally deployable military, even though we desire to retain a heavy component, we cannot afford to do both this and develop a Global capability without both being too small to be effective or have any real significance. The next ten year programme needs to concentrate resources either on rebuilding our heavy capability and capacity or transforming the Army into a light global force. Once that is completed we could start to look at newer capabilities and evolving 16 Brigade into a more effective intervention force to support the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy's planned LRGs.

So the ongoing Review should mean we either keep Warrior and proceed with the production phase of the WCSP or the whole project is cancelled to allow the Army to reorganise to meet the Government's Global aspirations for the Army. With Dominic Cummings having oversight on the review I feet the PR gains from the latter may carry more weight with Ministers, that what the Army should really be concentrating on.

Sorry I am in rant mood today.

[Tom8]

I am completely ignorant on this topic, but was curious about a feature regarding installing the jaguar turret on boxer. It made reference that the turret could hold 70 rounds of 40mm cta. Would this be a typical number of rounds carried by Ajax and the upgraded warrior?

I ask as it seems very low compared to the 900 rounds of 25mm that the Bradley IFV carries and the 1500 rounds of 25mm the light cav scout version Of the Bradley.

[Lord Jim]

There are additional rounds held in the main body of the vehicle that can be loaded into the Turrets ready ammo storage. Most larger Autocannon only fire either single shot or up to a three round burst at any time. Light Autocannon were/are often used like large Machine Guns firing larger controlled bursts.

With modern sights and stabilisation there is a good chance of a first round hit with modern large Autocannons, and there increased penetration is their key ability. Many AFVs even those considered light are being armoured up to 23/25mm, at least on the front of the vehicle these days.

[Tom8]

Thanks for the reply.

The scimitar carried 165 rounds of 30mm. Considering that 40mm CTA is a similar size to traditional 30mm rounds (see attached image), I assume The much larger upgraded warrior/Ajax should carry Significantly more than 165 rounds of 40mm CTA.

[ArmChairCivvy]

cubic, not just height, will determine how much of the internal space will need to be allocated

[Lord Jim]

The CTA40 at one stage was nick named the "Coke Can Gun".

Saying that the whole gun etc. is extremely compact and besides its unique layout, should easily be able to fit in may existing multi calibre turrets. If you look at the upside down Bofors L70 in the CV2040 in comparison this will emphasis the point. Yet the performance is basically the same if not better as the Bofors still requires clips of ammo to be manually fed into the ammo shoot, though like the CTA40 it primarily fires either single shot of a burst of a few rounds.

[Tom8]

cubic

That image of mine hides the true diameter of the 40mm cta cartridge, which is 60mm.

30x173mm Cartridge volume =450cm2
40x255 mm cta Cartridge volume= 720cm2

Coke can indeed