Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Contains threads on British Army equipment of the past, present and future.
seaspear
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by seaspear »

The point is I can't find any identification for vibration risk for the Ajax and mitigation strategies to follow, vibration and noise often get addressed in the same assessment some years ago I identified under Australian vibration legislation a deficiency in my companies national vehicle fleet that required many of the vehicles to have modifications.
Certainly, if the noise were a result of the cause of vibration ppe is at the bottom of the hierarchy of control

seaspear
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by seaspear »

To get back to when noise and vibration were first considered an issue this article claims 2010
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/07/ ... ks-issues/

RunningStrong
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by RunningStrong »

seaspear wrote:To get back to when noise and vibration were first considered an issue this article claims 2010
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/07/ ... ks-issues/
Yes, they would have been considered as part of the Hazard ID from day 1. Because as I and others have already said, they're inherent in any tracked AFV.

Carew Wilks phrased his response terribly, but fundamentally it is a simple statement of fact and not the "gotcha" moment the MPs considered it to be.

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Tempest414
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Tempest414 »

there is a bigger problem here if Ajax is killed off where do the army go next as it is a core part of the heavy BCT's. And that leaves us with needing to buy off the self due to time but who will pay I can't see HMT saying here's another 3 billion have another go chaps. what options are out there at what cost.

SW1
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by SW1 »

Tempest414 wrote:there is a bigger problem here if Ajax is killed off where do the army go next as it is a core part of the heavy BCT's. And that leaves us with needing to buy off the self due to time but who will pay I can't see HMT saying here's another 3 billion have another go chaps. what options are out there at what cost.
It’s a huge problem, only thing I can see is to have the two heavy brigades operate as “heavy stryker” type construct in the medium term where by they organise on boxer with a long term plan to develop a tracked driver module to accept boxer modules to give an option for different terrain conditions should it required. With issues in surface to air and long range artillery there will be a lot of pain.

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Tempest414
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Tempest414 »

Options are

Boxer CRV ( Boxer to enter service with the army is a plus but it costs 4 million per unit)
CV-90 ( The latest offering is little more than drawing so is not off the self )
Jaguar EBRC ( Is a cheap option at say 300 units for 600 million with spears and support)

Ron5
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Ron5 »

Tempest414 wrote:CV-90 ( The latest offering is little more than drawing so is not off the self )
The real thing will be at DSEI so you can go give it a kick or two. Also being trialed for the Czech program.

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mr.fred
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by mr.fred »

Tempest414 wrote:Jaguar EBRC ( Is a cheap option at say 300 units for 600 million with spears and support)
Try 100 units for 600m, unit cost, per the DGA.
Tempest414 wrote:Boxer CRV ( Boxer to enter service with the army is a plus but it costs 4 million per unit)
The Aussies are paying £14m each for their turreted versions as a contract cost.

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Tempest414
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Tempest414 »

mr.fred wrote:The Aussies are paying £14m each for their turreted versions as a contract cost.
the UK has paid 2.3 Billion for 528 boxers = about 4.2 million per unit so we think it would cost 10 million per turret just as it goes Ajax will / would be 6.2 million per unit

SW1
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by SW1 »

And Lithuania 88 boxer for 386m euros with an Israeli turret. Hard to know what it would cost and what they’d want.

Lord Jim
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Lord Jim »

RunningStrong wrote:So perhaps best not comment on aspects you're not aware of.
Please do not assume what I am and am not aware of. :roll:

I know quite a lot about the HS exemptions the Armed Forces have got, given that I had to deal with aircraft engines that still contained asbestos, mainly in the seals. In the case of Ajax, unless you believe that the soldiers involved in the tests were snowflakes, the level of noise required for them to complain in all likelihood exceeded what they would have expected from driving around in an AFV.

The exemption have limits, but we seem to still have rather more relaxed ones then say the US. On of the reasons their version of the RO 81mm Mortar has that addition to the muzzle is that it deflects a portion of the blast and noise away from the crew, at least that is what appears in my copy of Jane's Infantry Weapons. Though this has been in use with the US Army for years we have not adopted it, though are mortar crews do appear to now wear ear defenders.

Also suggestion someone should not comment on something is out of order. This is a forum not a service manual. People are allowed to comment on any subject they like without fear of being that they should not for any reason except by a Moderator who is pointing out an infraction of the Forums rules. I have never done so so please be civilised and reign your bloody neck in! :evil:

mr.fred
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by mr.fred »

seaspear wrote:The point is I can't find any identification for vibration risk for the Ajax and mitigation strategies to follow, vibration and noise often get addressed in the same assessment some years ago I identified under Australian vibration legislation a deficiency in my companies national vehicle fleet that required many of the vehicles to have modifications.
Certainly, if the noise were a result of the cause of vibration ppe is at the bottom of the hierarchy of control
Going from the recent defence committee reports(1), the Army PPE was the cause of the noise problems. A further report(2) suggests that this is not unprecedented.
seaspear wrote:To get back to when noise and vibration were first considered an issue this article claims 2010
That’s a misinterpretation of what was actually said in the hearing. Check the transcript at (1). The statement mentioning 2010 was intended to show that GD were considering noise and vibration inherent with tracked AFVs from the start. I was listening live and thought it particularly rash phrasing as soon as he said it since it was bound to be taken out of context for alarmist headlines.

(1) https://committees.parliament.uk/work/1 ... elopments/
(2) https://publications.ergonomics.org.uk/ ... nction.pdf

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whitelancer
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by whitelancer »

RunningStrong wrote:Confusing noise and vibration is a bit, well, stupid.
Noise is simply vibrations we can hear, which depends on their frequencies. To imply they are not connected is false.

seaspear
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by seaspear »

This article suggests approaches to be used in considering risk mitigation certainly rubber tracks, legislation in Australia on O.H.S requires following a hierarchy of control Elimination,Substitution , Engineering controls, Administrative controls followed by P.P.E in that order and not be able to go straight to p.p.e to control risk .
https://www.dsta.gov.sg/docs/default-so ... f?sfvrsn=2

RunningStrong
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by RunningStrong »

Lord Jim wrote:
RunningStrong wrote:So perhaps best not comment on aspects you're not aware of.
Please do not assume what I am and am not aware of. :roll:


Also suggestion someone should not comment on something is out of order. This is a forum not a service manual. People are allowed to comment on any subject they like without fear of being that they should not for any reason except by a Moderator who is pointing out an infraction of the Forums rules. I have never done so so please be civilised and reign your bloody neck in! :evil:
Then simply do not make absurd comments like "perfectly fine" when there are widely known and public issues that acknowledge the hearing protection situation is very much not "perfectly fine", and anyone that has experience in the design or operation of an AFV will tell you that.

I always have fully supported discussion on this forum, but posts that are deliberately misleading aren't constructive to the discussion and will be called out.

RunningStrong
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by RunningStrong »

whitelancer wrote:
RunningStrong wrote:Confusing noise and vibration is a bit, well, stupid.
Noise is simply vibrations we can hear, which depends on their frequencies. To imply they are not connected is false.
No, it's really, really not in the mechanical aspect that we are all knowingly discussing in this thread.

mr.fred
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by mr.fred »

seaspear wrote:This article suggests approaches to be used in considering risk mitigation certainly rubber tracks, legislation in Australia on O.H.S requires following a hierarchy of control Elimination,Substitution , Engineering controls, Administrative controls followed by P.P.E in that order and not be able to go straight to p.p.e to control risk .
https://www.dsta.gov.sg/docs/default-so ... f?sfvrsn=2
I believe that process is current in the UK as well, but I don’t think that there is anything to suggest that GD went straight to PPE. Tracked AFV are noisy things.
It seems that the PPE was the cause of the problem and changing it fixes the problem.

topman
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by topman »

I wonder if Land has anyone that deals specifically with noise and vibration,as in they are in house?

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Tempest414
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Tempest414 »

SW1 wrote:And Lithuania 88 boxer for 386m euros with an Israeli turret. Hard to know what it would cost and what they’d want.
So their 386 boxer's with a turret = 4.4 million per unit but as said if Ajax fails will HMG give the army another 2 or 3 billion to make good for me I can't see how they can not

SW1
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by SW1 »

Tempest414 wrote:
SW1 wrote:And Lithuania 88 boxer for 386m euros with an Israeli turret. Hard to know what it would cost and what they’d want.
So their 386 boxer's with a turret = 4.4 million per unit but as said if Ajax fails will HMG give the army another 2 or 3 billion to make good for me I can't see how they can not
I can. They will say you just had an extensive defence review where we funded what you asked for and you told us Ajax was tickety boo.

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Tempest414
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Tempest414 »

Yes however if Ajax can't be fixed it means the UK has no armoured recce vehicles and no real armoured formation's . How close was the Warrior upgrade program to being fielded and could upgraded warriors fill the gap for the next decade

Lord Jim
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Lord Jim »

RunningStrong wrote:Then simply do not make absurd comments like "perfectly fine" when there are widely known and public issues that acknowledge the hearing protection situation is very much not "perfectly fine", and anyone that has experience in the design or operation of an AFV will tell you that
Well I have been in many AFVs used by the British Army when I was younger and wore the required head gear and had little difficulty with the noise levels when moving from A to B. "Perfectly fine" referred to the fact that soldiers were not getting injured through short term exposure to the noise levels in legacy AFVs. Yes exposure to certain noise levels over longer periods can still cause an injury which is why in training ear defender are worn when on the range, and so on, to mitigate this situation. I myself always wear ear protection when I go shooting. That is totally different from what is being said regarding Ajax. So using the phrase "Perfectly fine", was neither absurd nor misleading, but rather used to emphasis how the situation with Ajax is so serious.

Yes in an ideal world people would be able to be servicemen, Rugby players, boxers, heavy metal band members without the fear that their health could or would suffer later in life. Efforts are being made to reduce such risks, but at present the level of risk to service personnel through noise whilst conducting day to day duties is classed as being acceptable if the recognised hearing protection is used. The level of noise in Ajax exceeded these levels and cause injury to the personnel taking part in the trials, and that is unacceptable.

If GDUK's statement is taken at face value then the noise issue could be resolved by providing all AFV crew the same head gear as the GDUK personnel were using, and ensure the headphones of other personnel such as dismounts, have an adequate noise cancellation capability, to be able to cope with the level of noise made by the vehicle for a limited period of time.

It does make you wonder what the Ajax's noise signature is, is it a case of it being able to be hear from miles away? Not very good for a Recce platform. All tracked vehicles are pretty noisy, wondrously so in peacetime at an event like Tankfest, but is the Ajax an abnormally loud platform?

seaspear
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by seaspear »

mr.fred wrote:
seaspear wrote:This article suggests approaches to be used in considering risk mitigation certainly rubber tracks, legislation in Australia on O.H.S requires following a hierarchy of control Elimination,Substitution , Engineering controls, Administrative controls followed by P.P.E in that order and not be able to go straight to p.p.e to control risk .
https://www.dsta.gov.sg/docs/default-so ... f?sfvrsn=2
I believe that process is current in the UK as well, but I don’t think that there is anything to suggest that GD went straight to PPE. Tracked AFV are noisy things.
It seems that the PPE was the cause of the problem and changing it fixes the problem.
Are you suggesting that a change of ppe was all that was required to address this issue?
The article I attached included suggestions that have shown to reduce vibration significantly, as well as noise, are there any reports that these have been introduced or considered to do such ?

Ron5
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by Ron5 »

I suspect many would agree with this proposal ..



Clicking through and reading the reply thread is interesting. One commentator pointed out that there was a large and experienced armored vehicle production facility in a "levelling up" area which could handle CV90 build.

mr.fred
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Re: Ajax Armoured Vehicles (British Army)

Post by mr.fred »

seaspear wrote:Are you suggesting that a change of ppe was all that was required to address this issue?
No, I’m stating, based on the reports from MoD, dstl and GD, that the noise problem was caused by the Army PPE, was not unprecedented, and that replacing the bad PPE resolves the problem.

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