According to a posting on the Twitter account of General Dynamics UK informes that Ajax continues to showcase its extensive capabilities, most recently through Ajax Live Firing with British Army crews as part of General Acceptance Testing, ahead of delivery of Ajax reconnaissance and strike vehicles to British Army Units. Lockheed Martin is working closely with the Defence Support Group for turret manufacture and assembly as well as Rheinmetall. 75% of turret and CT40 work will be carried out in the UK. The turret ring is 1.7 m in diameter, allowing for much more work-space than comparable Armoured fighting vehicles. In early August 2015, Rheinmetall of Germany was contracted to manufacture the Scout SV turrets. Meggitt was to manufacture the Scout SV ammunition handling system.
The Ajax, formerly known as the Scout SV (Specialist Vehicle), is a family of armoured fighting vehicles being developed by General Dynamics UK for the British Army. The Ajax is a development of the ASCOD armoured fighting vehicle used by the Spanish and Austrian armed forces. The family was originally developed by Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeug and Santa Bárbara Sistemas in the early 1990s. Both companies were purchased by General Dynamics in the early 2000s. In 2010, General Dynamics UK was selected as the winner of the Future Rapid Effect System contract with the ASCOD Common Base Platform, beating BAE Systems’ CV90 proposal.
Initially, the Ajax was to be procured in a number of blocks totalling 1,010 vehicles. There was even a possibility for a third Block of vehicles encompassing a “Direct Fire” vehicle with a 120mm main gun, “Manoeuvre Support”, and a “Joint Fires” variant equipped to succeed the FV102 Striker in the anti-tank role. On 3 September 2014, the British Government ordered 589 Scout SV vehicles, totaling a cost of £3.5 billion excluding VAT. A number of Block 2 variants were merged into the Block 1 order, which still encompassed the planned 589 vehicles. The Ajax family will be procured in a number of variants, initially planned to be in blocks, with the first vehicles planned to be delivered in 2017.
