Armoured Cavalry 2025

Military Capability

Record date: 31 March 2026

Whole-life cost: £8.9bn
Published schedule: 04/12/2014 – 31/03/2030
NISTA delivery confidence: RED
Senior responsible owner: Mark Colley

What the project is for

The Armoured Cavalry Programme is central to the Army’s Integrated Review and Future Soldier. It will deliver a multi-role Ground Mounted Crewed Reconnaissance capability, centred on the Ajax family of vehicles and their training and support systems, into service with the British Army. The six Ajax variants deliver a step change in capability compared to current in-service vehicles in the areas of Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance (ISTAR) sensors, multi-domain integration, lethality, protection, and mobility. 589 vehicles will be delivered through a firm-price contract with General Dynamics Land Systems (United Kingdom).

Departmental delivery commentary

Compared to financial year 24/25 Q4, the NISTA/SRO Delivery Confidence Assessment (DCA) rating at 25/26 Q4 decreased to Red. This is primarily due to the following factors. 1. The programme remains on pause following issues identified during Exercise TITAN STORM, which led to a halt in vehicle acceptance and delivery activities from December 2025. 2. The current pause has delayed the completion of the Demonstration phase and it is likely that a re-approval will be required post a Ministerial decision regarding the future of the programme.

Schedule

Compared to financial year 24/25-Q4, the programme's end-date at 25/26-Q4 remains unchanged 31/03/2030. This is primarily due to the following factors.

Cost

Compared to financial year 24/25-Q4, the project's departmentally agreed Whole Life Cost at 25/26-Q4 (measured in £m) decreased from £7505.71M to £7470.12M This is primarily due to the following factors. 1. There are no significant changes to the budgeted Whole Life Costs of the programme. Due to the bulk of costs linked to the firm price contract with GD, variances presented in-year are related to reprofiling and therefore no overall impact on the programme. 2. The Armoured Cavalry Programme Approved Budgetary Limit has remained unchanged since 2015.

Benefits

Compared to financial year 24/25-Q4, the project's departmentally agreed Benefits at 25/26-Q4 (measured in £m) remained at 0. There are no monetised benefits.

Delivery ratings

NISTA assessment: RED
SRO assessment: Not disclosed

These are the published NISTA and senior responsible owner assessments, not UK Pulse scores.

Financial year

Baseline: £365.3m
Forecast: £278.1m
Variance: 23.9%

The in-year varience exceeds 5%. This is primarily due to the following factors. 1. £40M CDEL was due to lack of Contract Change Proposal progress. The impact of the stop notice has caused additional reductions of c.£44M CDEL related to acceptance of vehicles and knock-on effect to vehicle production. 2. The RDEL variance is caused by a much lower demand for spares against the GD spares availability service requiring a DEL switch from CDEL to RDEL to apply the correct accounting treatment. There is no increase in the programme value as these reductions have been re-profiled into future years.

Expected benefits

Not disclosed

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