Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I do not share the noble Lord’s pessimistic assessment. As I have pointed out, there is in place an exciting programme of land vehicles. For Boxer, initial operating capability will be achieved in 2025. We anticipate that very good progress is being made on Ajax, and they will come into play later on in this decade. I point out to the noble Lord that, as he is aware, we have Warrior functioning; it is part of the transition. We have Challenger 2, and we are upgrading to Challenger 3. We have got a perfectly well-equipped Army. We observe our obligations to NATO and we observe our obligations to keep this country safe.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, between the cancelled Warrior capability sustainment programme and the extraordinarily delayed Ajax programme—it may well be in a good place now, but it is not expected to have what is called “full operating capability” until 2029, which is a full decade longer than was planned—the MoD has spent over £3 billion in failing to introduce or upgrade two armoured vehicles. What lessons have been learnt from this, and what changes to procurement have been made? Is there nowhere else in the world a vehicle already in production that we could buy with some of the £41 billion set down for capability of this nature in the future?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

In relation to Ajax, I confirm for the noble Lord that the initial operating capability requires 50 operational deployable vehicles to be delivered and to be achieved by December 2025, and that will be a significant augmentation of the capability. The full operating capability requires 422 of the 589 operational deployable vehicles to be delivered; that is to be achieved between October 2028 and September 2029. As I indicated to my noble friend Lord Lancaster, there is a very exciting period of development for land capability; I think we should celebrate that.

On the final point of the noble Lord’s question, I have acknowledged that I think there is the opportunity for the MoD, in procurement, to look at different models of getting things when they need them. I think this is recognised within the MoD, and I think the phrase used has been that we have pursued the exquisite, involving cost and time, perhaps at the expense of actually getting what we need, when we wanted it.