Financial Times is rátalált az Ajaxra. Paywall mögött van, ezért berakom az egész cikket:
"Defects with UK army’s new tank go back to 2019, minister admits Ajax armoured vehicle’s problems were flagged up 11 months before suspension of trials.
The UK Ministry of Defence was alerted to problems with its Ajax armoured vehicle programme 11 months before it suspended trials over fears the vehicles were causing injuries to troops, a minister has admitted.
Experts say the problems surrounding the Ajax are so serious the government should consider cancelling the £5.5bn deal to buy 589 of the vehicles, which are expected to increase battlefield surveillance using high-tech digital sensors, and replace them with a smaller alternative.
The MoD ordered the vehicles from US contractor General Dynamics in 2014. But the project has been beset by noise and excessive vibration, prompting a four-month suspension of military personnel training with the tank in November last year.
Responding to a parliamentary question, defence procurement minister Jeremy Quin said this week that soldiers had first reported vibration problems during trials on prototypes at the “end of 2019”.
Further noise and vibration issues were reported in July 2020 and in September a report by medical staff “raised the possibility of noise injuries,” Quin said in a statement. As a result, the MoD commissioned “in-ear assessments” and trials on the Ajax programme were suspended on November 6.
The MoD has already spent nearly £3.5bn on the vehicles and 14 have been delivered. Current testing restrictions limit the time spent in them to 90 minutes and mandate a maximum speed of 20mph. A leaked report by the Infrastructure Project Authority, which reports to the Cabinet Office, warned that “successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality appears to be unachievable”.
“There are major issues which, at this stage, do not appear to be manageable or resolvable within the current business case,” the report added.
Ben Wallace, defence secretary, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he had commissioned “more work” into how the programme could be rectified and said he had met army personnel twice in the past two weeks to discuss the issue.
“I think that what’s important . . . is that I satisfy myself that [the project] I’ve inherited is fixable, and that we protect the interests of the men and women we are going to put in the back of this thing,” he said, adding that any costs for solving the problems would be met by the contractor."
https://www.ft.com/content/8be0a6e5-f75c-4ef8-9b44-2c2950c1a6f9
Gyártunk majd mi nekik kölyök Lynx-et szívesen, ha mégse sikerülne rendberakni.
www.portfolio.hu
