While councils ration care and public services wither, Britain’s defence bureaucracy continues to reward failure handsomely.
At the centre of this observation is the Ajax debacle, and at the centre of that sits Andy Start, the former national armaments director. Start collected £325,000 in performance bonuses on top of a £275,000 salary while overseeing a £6.3bn armoured vehicle programme that has repeatedly sickened soldiers and paralysed procurement.
The Ajax programme was sold as the backbone of the British Army’s future reconnaissance capability. Instead it has become a case study in how the military-industrial complex absorbs public money without commensurate accountability.
Despite years of delays, escalating costs and mounting evidence of harm, senior officials were rewarded as if targets had been met. They were not.
During Mr Start’s tenure as chief executive of Defence Equipment & Support, Ajax was paused, restarted and paused again amid safety probes. Early trials left hundreds of troops requiring hearing assessments. In November 2025 ministers declared the vehicle “safe”; within weeks, exercises on Salisbury Plain were halted after dozens of soldiers fell ill. The programme’s initial operating capability arrived eight years late. Full capability remains uncertain.
None of this prevented bonuses being signed off. In Parliament, MPs have now called for those payments to be returned, arguing that “performance” is an odd label for stewardship that delivered spiralling risk and sunk costs.
The Ministry of Defence insists that remuneration is necessary to attract talent competitive with industry. But that defence rings hollow in the face of reported incompetence.
The principal contractor, General Dynamics, continued to receive payments even as fundamental design flaws persisted: excessive noise and vibration, weight far beyond the original concept, limits on speed and mobility, and operational constraints so severe that crews are time-limited and permanently kitted with hearing protection.
These are not marginal defects; they go to the viability of the platform and have harmed soldiers.
Ajax also exposes a deeper issue.
This is that Britain’s procurement culture rewards position over outcomes, status over outcome. Projects become too big to fail, even as evidence accumulates that they should. When ministers are told there is “no Plan B”, sunk costs morph into something impervious.
The result becomes an accountability vacuum in which poor contractors are funded, under-performing officials are rewarded, and soldiers bear the risk.
And remember: all of this is against a backdrop of austerity.
Defence spending is defended as sacrosanct and yet scrutiny of how it is spent is treated as a nuisance. If you question how much money is being thrown at defence you risk being called Chamberlain-like.
Returning bonuses would not mend Ajax. It would, however, signal that profiting from defence mismanagement in a time of austerity is no longer acceptable.
Start giving back his bonuses would be, well, a start.
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