The British Army’s ATHENA armored vehicle, a Command and Control Variant of AJAX family of tracked armored fighting vehicles, will soon begin factory tests.
“Our highly-skilled AJAX production team at Merthyr has completed production of the first UK fully-Assembled, Integrated & Tested vehicle. ATHENA, the Command & Control variant, will shortly be presented for General Acceptance Testing after completion of Factory Acceptance Testing,” the company tweeted June 10.
AJAX IFVs are being developed by General Dynamics UK for the British Army. The AJAX program includes six variants: AJAX (Reconnaissance armored vehicle), ARES APC (armored Personnel Carrier), APOLLO repair vehicle, ATHENA (command post vehicle), ATLAS recovery vehicle and ARGUS engineer armored vehicle.
The British Army will buy a total of 112 ATHENA vehicles. The IFV is operated by two crew members including driver and commander. The vehicle is equipped with an information processing/management system. The ATHENA command post vehicle is based on the same tracked chassis as the whole AJAX family as well as the same powerpack. For its self-protection, the ATHENA command post vehicle is fitted with a remotely operated weapon station (RWS) armed with one 12.7 mm heavy machine gun. The RWS is mounted at the front on the top of the crew compartment.
