Ron5 wrote:14 June 2021
As preparation activity for the Capability Drop 1 vehicles at the end of 2019, some soldiers were invited to do pre-trials training on prototype variants. Whilst the on-board sensors did not register any issues subsequently there were anecdotal reports of vibration.
A small number of soldiers engaged in Entry Qualification Trials reported noise and vibration characteristics in July 2020 and in September 2020 a medical staff report raised possibility of noise injuries. As a result, the Authority commissioned in-ear assessments through the Army environmental health team. Evidence from this led to the immediate stop of all dynamic vehicle training on 6 November 2020.
The Authority has subsequently commissioned independent trials with Millbrook Proving Ground to provide an independent assessment of the vibration data provided by General Dynamics which we expect to report in late July 2021.
There's some questions concerning the above ministerial answer that need answering. Tusa's story is confirmed by Jon Hawkes from Jane's.
What shall we speak about today? Shall we have another run on Ajax..? Why not! Well, take this PQ: it says that the Army Ajax trials team first reported vibration/noise issues in 2019, possibly late-2019...
Ok, maybe... However, after series a long chats with close to a dozen defence hacks, we have compared notebooks from over the past decade and come to a commonly agreed position/understanding: the first evidence of noise'/vibration came to light at...
...or just after the 2017 DSEI defence show. Now, we have "opened our kimonos here with each other (stop sniggering in the cheap seats!), and compared sources, to make sure that we have not been told the same thing by the same person.
No: we have sources from GD (yes: they leaked...), Lockheed Martin Ampthill, several independent engineering contractors involved in both devt and testing, members of ATDU, Land Command, DE&S, and MoD Main Building.
The story is pretty standard: there is serious vibration, so bad that electronics were being shaken to bits, and so bad that the stabilisation system couldn't work while firing on the move. And the vibration as accompanied by high levels of noise.
One involved in the trials told me that his head tended to ring after he had been driving the vehicle, substantially more than if he was driving, say CR2 or Warrior. Another said that you could hear Ajax from miles away, more tan other AFVs.
OK, so what? Well, why would a large part of the Ajax community have been reporting vibration/noise issues over Ajax 2-2 1/2yrs before the MoD say that they actually knew about this?
There is absolutely no evidence that the noise/vibration issue "appeared" from nowhere in 2019 - far from it. Indeed, the IPA report, as well as Jeremy Quin either state, or suggest that these issues were there long before - but somehow had been not noticed/revealed.
So, why were they not ID'd, queried, and then addressed? To "be fair", GD was trying to address them, as was LM, who make the turret - with a degree of squabbling between the two. But it is the seeming lack of inquisitiveness from the Army/DE&S/MoD that interests me.
What, don't major programmes such as Ajax have quarterly, or bi-annual reviews? Isn't there an actual DE&S project manager? Isn't there an Army PM? Isn't there a Senior Responsible Officer? How can a slack handful of specialist defence hacks get to know about this, years before?
Which leads one to several conclusions. Either there was mismanagement of the programme, with no-one managing it actively - the IPA report points at several possible examples of this, so it cannot be entirely ruled out...
Or data/evidence didn't reach the relevant authorities. Again, the IPA report notes that GD's "understanding" of the noise/vibration issue seems pretty different from that of the MoD/DE&S, and the MinDP also referenced this difference of "understanding".
Or what if the data was supplied, but simply was not read? Or what if the data was read, but was regarded as being "unhelpful" to the programme, and so was buried?
To summarise: there were known issues about noise/vibration with Ajax which were reported to defence hacks in September 2017. These issues were regarded as being severe, and causing significant issues to the programme, not last to turret/gun stabilisation.
At this time, noise was mentioned, but not as causing "life changing" injuries, as now seems to be the case. But it was seen as an issue.
So how does it now seem to be the case that these were only "recognised" in 2019?
Here endeth the lesson...