Recommendation 20

The Department told us that it had no safety concerns about Ajax provided it was operated and maintained correctly within its design parameters. It then asserted that the incident during the exercise occurred because the vehicles had not been operated or maintained within those parameters.37 32 Qq 41-42 33 Qq 31-32 34 Committee of Public Accounts, Armoured Vehicles: the Ajax programme, HC 259, Seventh Report of Session 2022–23, 3 June 2022 35 Q 44 36 Qq 44 and 49 37 Qq 45 and 47 14 Yet the Department admitted that this had deliberately been quite a difficult test, during which soldiers had been operating for a long period. In these circumstances, when travelling across country, the Department said that the tension of tracks alters and that this was a possible cause of the vibrations. The Department confirmed that using Ajax in this way was not wilful ignorance, but a normal part of operating in armoured vehicles.38 The Department’s immediate solution has been to instruct soldiers to do maintenance checks every time they stop the vehicle. It did not explain the practicality of this for soldiers operating Ajax for long periods in combat.39