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Let's turn to AJAX, you have spent nearly 4 billion
pounds of British taxpayers money on a light tank which
is badly delayed by many years coming into service. If we
look at some of the similar progenitor problems, you have
wasted 130 million pounds on tracer, 133 million on frez,
these were all precursors, you cancelled the warrior
capability upgrade by a cost of 584 million. That is 866
million in a total.
- That is nearly a billion wasted on IFEs already and
now you have paid nearly 4 billion upfront to General
Dynamics for a tank that doesn’t work.
- What have you learnt from Experience simon?
We have learnt a great deal from experience.
- If you want me to go into details, for Ajax, a number
of the factors that drag us down on occasions loom up
- Technical complexity, a moving military requirement,
complexity of integration, and a program that spans many
years
It’s spanned many years alright. Look, it’s meant to be a
stealthy reconnaissance vehicle. It is heavier than a
Sherman tank, it is too small, and it is as stealthy as a
four transit full of spanners. And it vibrates so much it
deafens its own crew. And you have given over 4 billion
pounds upfront for which we’ve got 14 support vehicles
and we haven't actually gotten any of the Ajax vehicles.
And you've even had to cancel the trials to vibrations
cancel the vibration problems
- Everyone knows this is a disaster and the vehicles
vibrate very badly and if you've cancelled the trials
because of the vibration you must know where the
vibrations come from. EWhat is the source of the
vibration on Ajax?
Just winding it back a bit. We have had a reported
vibration problem. Those reports started to come in
towards the end of last year. This year, it became clear
as we rolled out 24 platforms into service and they are
being trialed at the moment.
No you’ve stopped the trials because of the vibration
The trials are there to being the platforms into service.
We have suspended the trials for 2 reasons: 1 for
vibration and the other to do with noise. We have
suspended the trials pending some investigative work. ‘
People have almost been deafened. People have been taken
out of the vehicle nauseous. You must know where the
vibration is coming from. Is it coming from the turret,
the turret bustle, the hull..where is the vibration
coming from? Answer the question please.
The answer is we’ve got some instrumentive trials down at
Millbrook which are currently paused. Once we get that
restarted we can get to the source of the vibration
issue. That has been an absolute priority for the past 4
weeks.
Are you seriously giving evidence on record to the public
accounts committee of parliament that after all these
months of trials, after people having to be tested for
hearing damage, you still don’t know where the vibration
and noise is coming from. Is that your evidence?
I'll turn that around. People were reporting for hearing
and vibration issues. We paused the trials. The trials
that we were undertaking down at Millbrook were to get to
the seat with the problem with the vibrations so we could
sort them out with engineering issues. At this stage, I
do not have definitive information on the source of the
vibration or more importantly what we can actually do to
address it.
So you don’t know whether you can fix it or not? Your
evidence is patently ludicrous. You have been testing
this vehicle for months. This contract has been signed in
2014. You must know where the vibration is coming from.
You just don’t want to tell us because that means you may
have to cancel the program.
- What you did with Warrior that had been in
development for 10 years, was what you did was throw good
money away.
- If you do what you did on Warrior, you’ll do exactly
the same.
- You claim complexity, well i'll put it to you. Your
evidence is ludicrous.
Can I just point out that we are going through a
comprehensive set of trials on Ajax to bring it into
service. During those trials, that is when the vibration
issue arose. We were testing the full range of capability
of the equipment
From where?
I really refute the point that this is a tank that does
not work. It has an absolutely well-beaten capability in
terms of integrated sensors, weapon systems and
protection to troops. During the trial process, the
vibration issue has come up. During trials, issues arise.
On this occasion, we stopped trh trial primary thought is
the safety of those who are undertaking the trials. We
need to do very specific vibration management to get to
the source of the vibration. But does this mean that the
capability needs to be cancelled? Not at all. You get
these sort of things. That is why we do trials. We’re on
the case. We’re doing some work to get to the sources of
it and i am confident we are getting to it.
If you can’t tell this committee where the vibration is
coming from after months of trials, palpably you cannot
be on the case.
Can I ask Sir Simon, when these trials are complete, what
steps are you planning to take to resolve this matter.
The scope of work we have at Millbrook are an independent
trial organisation near Bedford. Their work will complete
by the end of August WE are currently getting drops of
data from those trials. We are working with General
Dynamics with their engineers as you would expect to
analyse the data and get to the source of the issue. It
is a concurrent piece. Trials work at Millbrook,
engineering work in GD of course involving the army.
According to figure 10 of the NRO report, as of march
2021, you have spent 3.755 billion pounds on this program
to which according to what you answered this morning,
just over 3 billion of that has gone to general dynamics.
Why have you written the contract such that we pay over 4
billion pounds to General Dynamics without having the
vehicle delivered. You wouldn’t buy a car like that.
You wouldn’t look to have a motor vehicle type of
arrangement with bespoke development programme. So much
is done pretty much with all our military programs. We’ve
paid for the work against great milestones which ahs been
completed by General Dynamics all the way through form
contract signature and where we are at the moment is the
advanced stage of manufacture.
- All the one of costs in terms of manufacture,
demonstration, production of training devices have been
paid against stepwise capability milestones.
- If we take the car example and deferred all those
costs until the delivery of the vehicles, we would get a
pretty nasty spike, industry would have to cash flow all
the way through the development programme and interest
would accrue.
Well extending the car analogy, for 4 billion pounds, I
would want a car that works.
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