TO MAKE a change from the relentlessly bad news on the domestic front, I thought it might be a good idea to switch topics and bring some relentlessly bad news on the defence front.
What triggered my interest was the contrast between two separate published pieces, the first in the Times, written by defence editor Larisa Brown and headed: ‘British Army will “not fight war like Ukraine” after tank upgraded’.
It had the sub-head: ‘Controversial Ajax vehicles to be deployed seven years behind schedule following works on noise and vibration issues’.
An illustration of the Ajax has the caption ‘The Ajax tanks are being deployed 16 years after the programme to upgrade them began’, thus making the firm link between the armoured fighting vehicle and its descriptor as a ‘tank’.
We need now to remind ourselves that the Times is one of Britian’s oldest and most prestigious newspapers, for a long time regarded as ‘the paper of record’ and the epitome of what used to be called the ‘quality press’. And here we have this newspaper describe the Ajax as a ‘tank’.
To bridle at this is not pedantry or an exhibition of nerdery. In the armoury of modern military equipment, the tank is a specific weapon occupying a specific niche in the order of battle. And whatever else the Ajax is, it is not a tank.
The Army itself variously describes it as an ‘armoured fighting vehicle’ or ‘combat vehicle’, but essentially its description is determined by its role. It is an armoured reconnaissance vehicle, formerly known as the Scout SV (Specialist Vehicle).
That the Times allows it to be called a tank in a serious article does rather demonstrate how far this paper has fallen in technical competence and accuracy. It is the poorer for it – not even the Guardian, which has also covered the story, makes this mistake.
That aside, the Ajax is one of six variants; this is the lead vehicle delivering surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities through its advanced sensor suite, with 50 units now delivered to the Army, eight years late at £10million a pop.
The paper tells us that the Ministry of Defence is saying that this is the first armoured fighting vehicle to enter service with the British Army in nearly 30 years and the ‘most advanced’ of its type on the planet. Whether it is the most advanced remains to be seen but it isn’t the first to enter service in 30 years by any means.
Apart from the Terrier combat engineer vehicle, which entered service in 2013, that accolade goes to the Boxer APC which entered service in August in small numbers. But then I suppose it is too much to expect the MoD to know anything about its armed forces.
But what is particularly worrying here is that the article goes on to cite General Sir Roly Walker, chief of the general staff who apparently has been blocked by the Government from speaking to the media.
The paper does tell us that he said in June that vehicles such as Ajax ‘take months to produce and years to train competent crews for . . . They’re also increasingly on the wrong side of the cost curve when it comes to price per kill, a £20million tank and four experienced crew members lost to a £1,000 drone operated by a kid with only a few days training – who probably isn’t even on the same map sheet as the tank.’
When soldiers involved in the delivery of Ajax were quizzed about the relevance of the vehicles when the front line in Ukraine is dominated by drones, we are told that in a future conflict the British Army would hope to avoid the situation in Ukraine, where its forces are bogged down in trenches with hundreds of drones flying overhead daily.
Ajax would be used along with other assets, such as the Challenger 3 main battle tank, drones, other aircraft and long-range fires. It would not be used in isolation.
This is expanded upon in the Guardian piece, where it reminds us that the Ukraine conflict has become dominated by cheap one-way drones that have become increasingly effective in knocking out armour, which is easily detected near the front line.
Yet we have Lt Col Andrew Rawlinson who argues this did not mean that Ajax had become a waste of money. He agrees that it would not be effective if simply thrown into Ukraine-style trench warfare but, he says, the UK had a different military approach, adding: ‘We wouldn’t fight like the Ukrainians’.
In any case, the cheaper technology such as drones has its own limitations, Rawlinson says, although some do acknowledge that Ajax’s reconnaissance functions could be replaced by drones.
Major James Faire in the Times then says: ‘The way in which the British Army wishes to employ this platform, and the way in which we want to fight, is not the way in which the conflict in Ukraine is currently being conducted . . . We would like to try to avoid getting ourselves into the situation where we are in trenches, unable to move, with drones consistently overhead.’ He said the Army would want to remain mobile ‘without getting bogged down’.
This, it seems to me, is rather like that Army saying ‘We don’t like the war you’re fighting, so we’ll look for another one which is more to our liking, where we can use our new toys.’
It is redolent of Army officers in the Boer War complaining that the Boers wore khaki camouflage uniforms and fought from the cover of trenches rather than wearing red tunics and standing up to fight ‘like men’.
And that brings me to the second piece which caught my attention, an article in the Kyiv Independent headed ‘Pokrovsk is simply being absorbed – Ukraine’s defense (sic) on a knife-edge’.
This is charting the final stages of the fall of Pokrovsk, discussed in this blogpost, where I noted the Russian use of infiltration techniques to evade the watchful eyes of the drone operators.
In this latest piece we get more insight into what is going on. As of November 6 most of the urban area of Pokrovsk remains in a contested ‘grey zone’ and, while this zone and the areas assessed as firmly under Russian control have expanded over the past week, Ukrainian positions are still present inside the city, intermixing and overlapping with streets and buildings taken by Russian soldiers.
Ultimately, the paper says, citing DeepState co-founder Roman Pohorilyi, because of the nature of the fight in the city, talk of an encirclement of Pokrovsk itself is inaccurate. Logistics are the most important thing here, because they are what defines an encirclement, which bloggers and analysts try to determine, he says. ‘But in reality, Pokrovsk is simply being absorbed; enemy soldiers are seeping in and setting up positions.’
As Russia’s small assault and infiltration groups continue to move north through Pokrovsk and beyond, the lack of a stable Ukrainian line of defence makes Ukrainian drone teams increasingly vulnerable to being assaulted and caught in firefights themselves.
This, says a drone pilot, disrupts their ability to focus on their own work, which is crucial for maintaining the kill zone that slows, if not stops, Russian advances.
The Ukrainian defence is also hampered by Russian drone strikes on logistics further back in the rear, with dozens of drone teams from Russia’s elite Rubicon school deployed to the front-line hotspot.
That is the reality of the fight in Ukraine. It is not a situation of choice by either side, but brought about by the balance of technologies, weapons availabilities and manpower strengths.
If the British Army thinks it can shape the battlefield to its own liking, it has learnt nothing from past conflicts and, against any peer enemy, is due for a drubbing – even if spending improved.
As it is, in the 16 years that it has taken to get the Ajax into service – more than twice as long as the Second World War – the concept is now obsolete and the life expectancy of such a vehicle on the modern battlefield can probably be measured in minutes.
The Army is to acquire 589 Ajax vehicles and variants, with full delivery due to be completed by the end of the decade. If they deploy them one after the other, they could get several days of use out of them.
This article appeared in Turbulent Times on November 7, 2025, and is republished by kind permission.
