UK scraps three planned Boxer variants after budget cut

The British Army has dropped plans for armored mortar, repair and recovery, and anti-tank overwatch versions of its Boxer wheeled armored vehicle, and has ruled out using Boxer in the armored cavalry role, Defence Minister Luke Pollard told Parliament.

Pollard, the minister for defence readiness and industry, gave the answers in response to written questions from Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member of Parliament for Huntingdon, the UK Defence Journal reported. Obese-Jecty asked what had been cut from the Mechanised Infantry Vehicle programme after the government’s major projects watchdog, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, recorded £1.86 billion ($2.47 billion) coming out of the programme in its annual report for 2025 to 2026.

“As part of reprioritisation within the Military Strategic Headquarters, the Armoured Mortar, Repair and Recovery and Mounted Close Combat Overwatch capabilities of the Mechanised Infantry Vehicle programme are no longer being pursued,” said Pollard.

He added that the Army is considering how the underlying capability requirements will be addressed, meaning the need for those three jobs remains even though the Boxer versions designed to fill them are gone.

Each of the cancelled variants was meant to cover a different gap in the British Army’s mechanized infantry brigades. The armored mortar would have given battlegroups their own 120 mm indirect fire that could move with the infantry, and Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land test-fired a mortar module on a Boxer on Salisbury Plain in 2022. The repair and recovery vehicle was intended to tow and fix damaged Boxers, which weigh well over 30 tonnes and need a purpose-built recovery vehicle to move once disabled. Mounted Close Combat Overwatch was the long-range anti-tank version, and Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land and MBDA had shown a Boxer concept carrying Brimstone missiles for the role.

Earlier Army planning had pointed to initial operating capability for the recovery vehicle in 2029, the armored mortar in 2030 and the overwatch variant in the early 2030s, EDR Magazine reported.

Asked how many Boxers would go to armored cavalry units and how many to mechanized infantry, Pollard said Boxer will not be used for armored cavalry at all.

“Boxer vehicles will not be used in the Armoured Cavalry role. Boxer will form the spine of the Mechanised Infantry force,” said Pollard.

Under current plans, he said, Boxer is being fielded in supporting roles across 3rd (UK) Division, including command and control, specialist troop carrier and medical vehicles, with detailed fielding plans and vehicle allocations still being refined. Armored cavalry, the British Army’s reconnaissance and screening role, is being equipped with the tracked Ajax family built by General Dynamics Land Systems UK, which carries a stabilized 40 mm cannon.

Britain rejoined the multinational Boxer program in 2018, 15 years after leaving it, and has ordered more than 600 of the 8×8 vehicles in infantry carrier, specialist carrier, command and ambulance versions. The vehicles are built under license in Britain by Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land at Telford and by KNDS UK, formerly WFEL, at Stockport, with the rest coming from German production lines.