UK MoD does not know when Ajax will be delivered, according to NAO

Delivering the Ajax programme is “a significant challenge” for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), which does not know when the armoured vehicle will be delivered, the National Audit Office (NAO) said in a statement on 11 March.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said, “The Ministry of Defence and GDLS-UK’s [General Dynamics Land Systems-UK’s] approach was flawed from the start. They did not fully understand the scale or complexity of the Ajax programme, and a series of failures have led to delays and unresolved safety issues that will have a significant impact on the army’s ability to use the vehicles.”

The NAO noted that the MoD’s original capability requirements for Ajax were highly specified, numbering around 1,200, “making Ajax more complex than other armoured vehicles”. Furthermore, the MoD and GDLS-UK did not fully understand some of these requirements, which led to many changes to the design specification, causing disputes, with the time taken to agree to design changes contributing to programme delays, according to the NAO.