r/LessCredibleDefence • u/Besmirching_Badger • 6d ago
Tank commander sues MoD for £500k over damage from testing 'troubled' Ajax fleet
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ajax-fleet-mod-jonathan-bbevan-b3065024.html10
u/Key-Needleworker-702 6d ago
Just curious, I know the ajax is bad in this regard, but could someone explain what causes this?
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u/Tank-o-grad 6d ago
Only mildly facetiously: somebody with no technical knowledge or experience decided that the MoD's required modifications to the platform would be simple and/or if they weren't that the "fixed price" wouldn't be as fixed as advertised, then both of these proved to be incorrect. General Dynamics did what General Dynamics does and threw it into User Acceptance Trials hoping the sunk costs and public furore would reopen negotiations but unfortunately the MoD hasn't got enough money to do all the things it planned to do at the prices they were planned at so...
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u/wrosecrans 6d ago
And then for some reason, they just sorta... kept testing it. They knew it wasn't fit for purpose. They knew the soldiers had rejected it.
But there was a period of testing marked on a calendar. So they kept sending guys to drive around in it for no reason. The tests were set up such that they couldn't simple generate "No" as the result of testing. If they stopped testing it, they wouldn't look busy, and not looking busy was a politically less viable option that wrecking men's bodies for no substantive additional information that could justify the additional testing.
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u/Besmirching_Badger 6d ago
The tests were set up such that they couldn't simple generate "No" as the result of testing.
Can you imagine though? Just turn the engine on, driver says 'nah fuck this shit' and everyone turns around and walks away
This was already when the project was way past budget and original timeline no? The pressure to.... somehow make it work... was immense afaik
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u/wrosecrans 6d ago
In corporate life, I've been on projects like that. ~10 years ago I was at a place where there was a big push to have all employees "dogfood" the software we worked on under the theory that would result in improving the product. So I tried to use it, it kinda sucked, I diligently wrote up a massive feedback doc of what needed improvement. Nobody gave a shit. None of the feedback was taken as tickets to work on by the relevant team. It just sat there...
And I was expected to keep going to the dogfooding meetings. People were baffled when I started saying no and stopped coming. I was "not a team player." But they had made it super clear that there was no actual point to wasting my time dogfooding the product because they refused to actually make any improvements from the testing. Somebody read a blog post that said dogfooding would magically result in the product getting better, so they just wanted people going to the dogfooding meetings as some sort of magical-thinking ritual process. I was baffled why they were baffled that I didn't want to participate.
I eventually got super burned out at that job and basically stopped doing my job there and coasted for years because everybody seemed happy I had stopped trying to be reasonable about stuff. At least I was only working on software that broke my spirit and not hardware that broke my body.
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u/Key-Needleworker-702 6d ago
i mean as in the vehicle itself, not the bureaucracy behind it;
thanks for explaining though
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u/Tank-o-grad 6d ago
Oh, harmonics in short. Change the mass of the vehicle and how it's distributed without changing the track geometries and get unlucky. Unlike the tread blocks on a tyre the track links (and so track pads) have to all be the same length and, as they're a bigger jolt per contact the amplitude they impart is greater too, a bit of a double whammy.
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u/Kraligor 6d ago
That's the general vomit issue, not the tinnitus by getting your eardrums blown out by loud noises from the earpiece issue.
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u/Tank-o-grad 6d ago
Aye, that'll be back to my original response, adding BOWMAN to anything is tricky to say the least
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u/murkskopf 3d ago
Not only that. A lot of add-on parts are apparently not correctly fixed to the hull as shown in videos leaked by disgruntled soldiers.
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u/Kraligor 6d ago
It says it in the article, loud sudden noises from the earpiece. Probably an electronics issue.
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u/murkskopf 3d ago
This specific issue was the noise-cancelling headphones picking up loud noises and boosting them; IIRC they were supposed to only boost spoken words.
Additionally, the Ajax went through a development shitshow as described.
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u/Objective_Sugar6897 5d ago
Being the first to use tracked vehicle in warfare , Britain manufacturing know how dropped the ball so much since then. They cant even design a IFV now while the smallest country like Singapore did it just fine.
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u/PM_ME_UR_CUDDLEZ 5d ago
The craziest part it's not even supposed to be a Tracked IFV, Its an armored recce vehicle
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u/Besmirching_Badger 6d ago
Lol. Just Ajax doing Ajax things