https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Ind ... 27604b47d1

Very worthwhile defence select committee hearing here. Francis Tusa, in particular, was scathing on the last few decades of Army AFV procurement.

"Furthermore, there remains some outstanding characterisation issues with aspects of the CT40 cannon performance." I read the GD submission a couple of times and noticed that it remained very shy on the exact question of so few (no?) turreted Ajax variants have been accepted into service (...

1. Ajax. (3.5 billion + VAT) 2. Boxer. (£2.8 billion) 3. Warrior CSP. (£800 million at least, maybe more like £1 billion in reality) 4. Challenger 2 LEP. (£1.3 billion) As we will have two bdes of each kind, that will be - 6.3 bn for the two strike (+ some for arty) - 2.3 bn for the two of AI (+ ju...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/922969/20200930_-_Introducing_the_Integrated_Operating_Concept.pdf It is clearly not possible to immediately abandon the current force structure and create a bespoke one from scratch. Important operation...

They're much more likely to get the turrets if Warrior CSP does not go forward, though....which I would have thought is quite an attractive option at this point. You're getting a wheeled, modern, well-protected IFV, and even if the integration costs are a crazy £400 million, you're still saving £40...

They're much more likely to get the turrets if Warrior CSP does not go forward, though....which I would have thought is quite an attractive option at this point. You're getting a wheeled, modern, well-protected IFV, and even if the integration costs are a crazy £400 million, you're still saving £400...

It's also worth noting that the British Army has the biggest deployability problem of any European Army in any kind of Russia scenario, simply because it's starting furthest away from the fight. The ability of Boxer to drive itself there is genuinely valuable, especially since we don't have many HET...

jedibeeftrix wrote:Surely the real purpose of the rivers is to train up future comnanders?

“one does not simply mint a fresh dreadnought captain!”

Which seems fair enough, but the Batch 2s are rather big & expensive for this....

the problem with just consigning the Rivers to the role of "maritime policing work", "maintaining a presence", "reassuring the locals" and so on is that this is the sort of thing you arguably shouldn't be doing at all when your budget is extremely tight. If this is all ...

New piece on why the US (especially Marines) are backing away from JLTV.

https://mwi.usma.edu/stuck-in-the-sand- ... ttlefield/

Ajax was acquired to fill two roles: reconnaissance and medium armor. It will perform role 1 with the heavy armor and role 2 with Strike. Yes, the mess is partly of the Army's making but much more due to the government starving it of upgrade funds over the last decades. Some of the decisions you li...

Not really .. A medium brigade of Boxer with additional firepower is the current planned beginning: Boxers plus Ajax. Over time that will undoubtedly change and Boxers will get additional variants, but the UK has to start somewhere. Can't buy everything at once. Nothing weird about mixing tracks an...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-m ... -76wb7kwx8

This, incidentally, confirms that the problem with Ajax was/is turret-related, and is apparently fixable/fixed/in the process of being fixed.

In a way it would be nice if they had a squadron of them permanently assigned to the UK but that would be fantasy time I guess. :shock: I am grateful to the yanks for their support with building up the carriers (and in general) but I would rather we had enough to do it on our own, permanently assig...

Completely agreed with the above re the Army doing regular snap brigade-level deployment exercises. The Russians regularly move brigades thousands of miles at short notice, and they've taken that sort of thing really seriously over the last 10 years or so. Not doing this kind of thing also doesn't h...

Strike seems to be primarily envisaged as the opening play in a war vs Russia, with Strike deployed super-rapidly over 2000km to snarl up the initial Russian assault while NATO's armoured brigades gather for the counter-attack. I wonder how realistic this is. Rather sounds like sending a bunch of g...

Surely Afghanistan isn't comparable at all to the range of missions that Strike is really envisaged for? Srsly? Everything is a compromise, but the Army simply does not have the money to do Strike properly while also recapitalizing the traditional Armoured Brigades, so it's one or the other. If it'...

How is it that in the year 2020 when huge technological advances have been made and wealth of nations has multiplied exponentially, it is so hard to fund, mobilise and move a single division at distance whilst 30, 40 years ago that was run of the mill? The planet has not become infinitely smaller a...

If the Army cancels Warrior CSP, switches Boxer to the IFV role, and uses Ajax for recce + firepower (alongside MBTs), you have a fairly decent start on a solid conventional armoured brigade, especially if you rebuild your railway capability and buy a couple hundred extra HETs to make the whole thi...

If the Army cancels Warrior CSP, switches Boxer to the IFV role, and uses Ajax for recce + firepower (alongside MBTs), you have a fairly decent start on a solid conventional armoured brigade... I'm struggling to see the advantage of that vs keeping the Warrior CSP and leaving Boxer and its wheels f...

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/29cf9003-fcc5-4c72-af61-e7a41a7aa603 Unless the unknown problems (with the turret?) alluded to in the linked piece are completely insoluble, I think Ajax is too far gone to cancel. And, in its originally intended recce role in the Armoured Brigades, it'...

https://nsc.nasa.gov/resources/case-stu ... stonehenge

NASA's case study on Watchkeeper as a prime example of How Not To Do Things!

My take is something like this The British Army needs MBTs to be competitive vs Russia (in other scenarios we can mostly live without). However, vs Russia it has so many howling qualitative deficits in all sorts of fields (artillery, GBAD, SHORAD, EW, the list goes on....) that it's far from obvious...

] The Australians have moved Abrams on C17, obviously with a degree of teardown, and I doubt it was anything but a prestine runway to land on. But, given the right efforts, what would prevent Chally 2 being C17 transported? Probably won't roll-off and straight into the fight, but it could be in the...

Jealous girlfriend meme, with distracted boyfriend looking at sexy Challenger 2 (now with added missile!), and jealous girlfriend being "deployability". Until the Army comes up with the coherent plan to be able to move its assets from A to B in an operationally relevant timeframe, those as...