Originally Posted by
Not_a_boffin
Not sure that the vibration issue has been around for "so many years". It seems only to have surfaced relatively recently once they started running certain variants of the vehicle.
That's the problem with dynamics, natural frequencies and weight/inertia distribution. You can't necessarily predict that it's going to happen - or model it prior to design and build. There also seemed to be some confusion and conflation between vibration and airborne noise which are not necessarily the same thing.
They've taken it to Millbrook, which is exactly where you'd go with a problem like this - and probably where JLR, Nissan etc would go too.
The real problem they have is that they're at the back end of a catastrophic history of programme and development failures (FRES, Tracer etc) that have eaten hundreds of millions if not billions, left the army with a worn-out vehicle fleet, with Warrior CSP cancelled and Chally 3 approved by the skin of its teeth. Politically (particularly with the Tubster and Tobias Nice but Dim as ex-pongoes on the warpath) they can't afford for this to fail, but they're in a real bind. Conkers deep in terms of committed spend, later than a late thing that overslept badly and potentially with a difficult to solve problem.
Which is why turning up with an answer that came across as "ooooh I don't really know Vera" just digs them deeper. Had they put the Tubster back in his box by pointing out that :
1. Analogies with buying a car are irrelevant - you're not buying OTS where models sell in millions, you're essentially asking Bugatti to design and build you a couple of hundred Veyrons only with tracks and a turret. From scratch - which means you have to pay. (Of course whether that bespoke route was the correct choice is a different matter.....)
2. Vibration is difficult to predict and often only occurs when you do your T&E. Which is why you do your T&E.
3. They're asking the experts in the UK to sort it out.and until its diagnosed, they can't predict the fix and therefore cant predict the IOC. So don't ask stupid questions.
they might have come across better. Instead they came across as shifty and evasive.
589 projected Ajax orders for the UK, 450 Bugatti Veyrons delivered - and designed from scratch - over the course of ten years. Probably cheaper to offer to buy any potential enemy officer a Bugatti if they agree to order their troops not to attack ours.