BAE had already completed testing and certification on a CTA turret, awarding LM a £600m contract to complete trials and testing all over again was a huge risk and enormous waste of time and money the MOD didn't have. There is no defending it. Sorry they delivered a whole 12 vehicles that where imme...

The original contract was to upgrade 380 vehicles, agreed only 245 would have a new turret so why the delay in delivering 140 upgraded vehicles without a turret? LM spent £600m delivering 6 test vehicles that took 9 years to complete testing. They where never delivering 250 vehicles for £800m. Buy c...

Ajax was ordered a decade ago and the army has shrunk considerably since then. And yet how many CVR(T) and FV432 variants are still in use? My comment was in response to complaints about the number of Ajax vehicles ordered not if they where still relevant/capable. Having said that CVRT and FV432 sh...

Ajax was ordered a decade ago and the army has shrunk considerably since then. The contractor likely told the MOD they had to place an order for over 500 to get any kind of economies of scale from such a bespoke order. For all of the commentators that crack up about a scout vehicle being confused wi...

The Japanese frigates will be patrolling much closer to home to may not need as many crew for 3/4 month deployments.
Regarding the build rate, they are full scale arms race to keep pace with the Chinese navy. The Japanese navy could end up the same size as the French and Royal navy combined.

Sound like it is off the chopping block then. Let's hope these fixes property resolved the issues and not a sticking plaster to prevent the embarrassment of cancelling a £5bn contract after the money has been spent.

There are 4 boat bays, so I expect only 2 will be used for ribs with Marines onboard for anti piracy and drug trafficking. The other two I suspect will be used for unmanned surface of submerged vehicles in the future for mine clearance and goodness knows what else. I think the T31's will end up with...

Yeah the proliferation of coastal anti ship missiles puts an end to any thoughts of coastal bombardments especially on larger ships. I'm not sure if a smaller unmanned hull would be an option for coastal bombardment, but assume the hull needs a minimum weight to handle firing each round. The extende...

Gives them an incentive to win some actual export contracts over the next couple of years. New Zealand are bound to need new frigates ordered soon.

The Mistral ships where less than $500m each and represent huge value for money. The Albion's have spent half their life on extended readiness while the Bayclass are used flat out. When it comes to their replacement they would be better ordering 3 LHDs with hospital facilities for disaster relief as...

This question might be very ignorant but when it comes to future ASW capability especially using a toed array sonar unmanned drone ships are bound the be the way to go as the hulls will be significantly quieter and can network into a mothership. Even UAVs for long range patrol and endurance to compl...

I suspect Merlin will remain in service closer to 2040 rather than 2030.

Question for people who know what they are talking about. Given the vulnerability displayed by MBTs to ambush from ATGMs, Drones and IEDs, along with the fact they need supporting infantry for protection. Does it make sense that any future MBT will need to be optionally manned when it comes to urban...

I assume the Clyde isn't deep enough to submerge the barge and the frigate next to the shipyard.

What's the deal with the two 76mm cannons at the bow of the ship. I know the Danes did it too but would it not be better to mount one fore and aft?

Interesting feed back from the crews operating them in a real war environment. I guess if they will be remaining in a fixed position they are easier to conceal inside tree lines and under camo. You cant shoot and scoot 24/7.

How long do the reliability trials last? From memory the Warrior trials took close to two years although Covid may have delayed them. Are we looking at 2024/25 before we get to completion? Was production halted on the tanks or is GDLS completing the remaining hulls in the hope the QC improvements an...

Type 31 is scheduled to be in service by 2027, pretty shocking Type 26 has been delayed by a year considering the extremely slow build rate. I know she is the first if class but come on.

Does anyone in the forum have any first hand experience of Ajax noise versus that of tracked vehicles of a similar weight. I only have videos to go by but it has always sounded extremely loud and put that down to it being a mobile phone upload at a defense exhibition. I just can't see how it could b...

User Validation Trials of Ajax are resumed https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2022-10-20/hcws332 Let's just say best case scenario the noise and vibration is miraculously solved. If they are restarting the reliability trials are we looking at a year of trials to si...

It does look like Ajax is almost certain to be cut but for the legal wrangling as the MOD will effectively lose £4bn they have already paid to GDLS.
It looks like Jeremy has all but scrapped the 3% uplift, if that is the case is the only option to literally use Boxer for everything?

The Royal Marines are moving to the AR too aren't they? Being a lefty I hated the SA80. Maybe that's something to do with it for CQB it was always a compromise which is why the SAS never used it.

[/quote] "2.5 per cent by 2026, 3 per cent by 2030" sounds brilliant. BUT there is a General Election due at latest in 2024 (and relaistically Liz Truss will wnt as long as possible to set the tone of hr premiership to differentiate herself from Boris). My point was that Truss and Wallace ...

If things do go legal I wonder how much further that would delay ordering an alternative. Also would it effectively mean the army has abandoned the CTA Cannon. I think the Jaguar has been in service with the French for two years, I'd be curious to know if they encountered an of the issues with the C...

Yeah with the way China and Russia has been behaving the government really needs to divert money from other departments into defense. No idea what they are going to cut but it's going to require some difficult decisions as our short term economic out look is going to hit a few shocks.