The first two UK Boxer prototypes have arrived in the UK ahead of joint army-industry trials. Boxer is the British Army’s new state-of-the-art armoured fighting vehicle. The vehicles will form a core part of the Army’s new Armoured Brigade Combat Teams, where it will be paired with Ajax and Challenger 3 to form the cornerstone of the Army’s ability to fight and win wars on land. The arrival of the vehicles will allow troops from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers to begin getting up-close and trialling Boxer, marking a major success milestone in the programme. The Boxer platform sets an unprecedented standard for armoured vehicles. From its ground-breaking power to weight ratio and mobility to its cutting-edge threat detection technology, Boxer will be a step change for manoeuvre for the British Army.
Lt Gen Hamilton said:“The delivery of Boxer vehicles ensures warfighting remains at the heart of the British Army and today’s milestone reaffirms our threat-led approach; delivering the Army the capability it needs to meet the challenges of the battlefield as outlined in Future Soldier.”
Lieutenant General Simon Hamilton, Director General Land at Defence Equipment and Support said: “The delivery of these prototypes to the Army for trials is not only positive news for the future of the British Army, it also boosts our commitment to investing in the UK’s defence industry and supply chains, meaning we can retain critical engineering and manufacturing skills in the UK.”
Boxer is modular by design to meet these requirements – the same vehicle base can be rapidly reconfigured to fill different roles on the battlefield, from carrying troops across a range of terrain, to treating severely injured service personnel on the journey to hospital using the Ambulance variant. The UK and Germany have worked closely together on the programme, with the vehicle build in the UK benefitting from German expertise, data and collaboration. While the first 117 vehicles are being built on German production lines, UK facilities in Telford and Stockport are ramping up their manufacturing capabilities for the remaining 506. The overall programme protects up to 1,000 jobs nationally, enhancing skill sets and creating an ambitious UK apprenticeship scheme. UK production is focused in Telford through Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), and Stockport through KNDS, with supply chain sub-contracts across the UK, including in Glasgow with Thales.
The Boxer is a multirole armoured fighting vehicle designed by an international consortium to accomplish a number of operations through the use of installable mission modules. The governments participating in the Boxer programme have changed as the programme has developed. The Boxer vehicle is produced by the ARTEC GmbH (armoured vehicle technology) industrial group, and the programme is being managed by OCCAR (Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation). ARTEC GmbH is based in Munich; its parent companies are Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH and Rheinmetall Military Vehicles GmbH on the German side, and Rheinmetall Defence Nederland B.V. for the Netherlands. Overall, Rheinmetall has a 64% stake in the joint venture. In November 2019 the UK Ministry of Defence awarded ARTEC a US$2.97 billion (GBP2.3 billion) contract to deliver more than 520 Boxer vehicles in multiple configurations.[
