The British Ministry of Defense has confirmed the suspension of the use of new Ajax infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs). Tests and training of the crew are suspended until the problems with vibration and noise of the BMP are eliminated. This is reported by the UK Defense Journal.
The Minister of Defense Procurement of the United Kingdom, Jeremy Queen, published a statement describing the state of the program for replacing the fleet of outdated equipment with armored vehicles on the Ajax platform.
Quinn notes that problems with excessive Ajax vibrations were discovered back in 2019. The UK Ministry of Defense has revealed that 310 people need a hearing test after working with Ajax. For this reason, the training of crews and Ajax tests are suspended.
A special group, including independent experts, officials of the Ministry of Defense, employees of the Millbrook test site and General Dynamics, will search for the causes and ways to eliminate noise and vibrations.
The goal of the group is to find the reasons that cause dangerous Ajax noises. Jeremy Queen stressed that the decision to resume testing of the BMP will be made after eliminating the defects of the machine. Currently, testing of a modified BMP design is continuing, which is designed to solve the problem with noise and vibrations.
Earlier it became known that until the problems with Ajax are fixed, some of their functions will be performed by the Warrior BMP. The problems with Ajax became known in June — noises and vibrations during movement caused problems with hearing and joints in the crew members of the BMP. For this reason, the speed of Ajax was limited to 20 miles per hour.
Daniil Irinin
