Tracks and weighs 38 tons
Ths vehicle is an utter debacle – with bad noise and vibration, it puts soldiers in hospital.
This is despite two layer ear protection. It is excessively noisy even outside the vehicle. This cannot be part of the ‘military compact’.
How has this come about – possible explanations include:
Ego of a senior person
Preference for ‘in house’ engine
Corruption
DEI, H&S, bureaucratic restrictions. Maybe it had to be designed by a 50% female engineer team etc.
Procurement, legal and contract issues – maybe had to use an ‘European’ engine
Incredibly eight years late, and a billion spent……..
We now have the issues of ‘sunk costs’ and further delays.
However, somebody needs to ‘bite the bullet’ and make the right decision. Rolls Royce used to make engines that were so quiet in cars that you could hear the clock tick. You could balance a ‘threepenny’ bit on the engine, and the vibration would not topple it.
There may be other issues, I read today that it has metal tracks, and rubber might be better…..
it must be possible to create a good product – what have other manufactures done? Incidentally heads have to roll for this – proper disciplinary action and punishment.
And someone now needs to invoke ‘the dunkirk spirit’ – like building Spitfires – or making vaccines – personally I’d camp out at the factory, get the best engineers in, 24/7, have a prototype running in within three months, prove the principles, then churn them out with a real sense of urgency. It may be just replacing the engines, not building the rest from scratch. If I could come out of retirement and do this – why can’t these supposed professionals?
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