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A UK government minister has said he is “angry” he was not kept fully informed about issues which resulted in the British Army’s Ajax armoured vehicle programme being paused.
The Ministry of Defence said it had paused its decision-making on the future of the programme while further investigations took place, after 35 service personnel across 23 vehicles became ill with reports of some vomiting and shaking following training last year.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard said he had initially been told the vehicle was “demonstrably safe”.
He said he had already taken a number of steps, including replacing the senior team leader responsible for the troubled project.
Some of the soldiers emerging from the vehicles were said to have been sick due to the vehicle noise and vibration while others were shaking after the military exercise on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, in November, according to The Times.
At the time, an MoD spokesperson said: “This weekend, a small number of soldiers reported symptoms of noise and vibration, having taken part in an exercise involving the Ajax armoured fighting vehicle.”
Most of those service personnel affected have now returned to duty, but Pollard told MPs on Thursday he was angry he had not been given all the information, and said the programme had been put on pause while further investigations took place.
In a written ministerial statement issued earlier, Pollard said: “To say that I am angry about the findings of the ministerial review is an understatement.
“It demonstrates that people were raising issues with this programme, but they were not being elevated to an appropriate level.”
In November, Pollard, announced that Ajax had reached its “initial operating capability” – a significant milestone.
The multi-million pound vehicles, made in Merthyr Tydfil by General Dynamics, were originally due to enter service in 2019.
But the £6.3bn project has been criticised for being poorly managed by the Ministry of Defence and was paused in June 2021 due to concerns over vibration and noise causing hearing loss to those training.
In December, Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens told the BBC the most important thing was to “make sure that equipment that’s being supplied is safe”.
Trials on Ajax are set to resume soon, before a final decision is made on its future.
The British Army has ordered 589 Ajax armoured vehicles at a cost of more than £5bn.
The programme is already eight years behind schedule.
Conservative shadow defence minister Mark Francois said that “as the safety of our soldiers remains paramount, ministers must now, finally, absolutely, fix Ajax or fail it – once and for all”.
He said Pollard’s ministerial statement was “one of the most extraordinary” he had ever seen.
“In it, Luke Pollard, rightfully admits his anger that submissions did not reflect the full breadth of the known aggregated safety risk.”
He said it also appeared the Ajax senior responsible officer “has now, effectively, been sacked from his up to £160k a year job and that trials will now tentatively restart”.
