You see "game-changing" and you think "clickbait". I was skeptical. But I left impressed with the design. Compact, dial-a-munition, high ROF, and ÷85% elevation. Wow. Every design has its tradeoffs. I have to think muzzle velocity suffers in the telescoping round design. Enough to matter practically? Doesn't seem so. The idea of riddling an enemy AFV at say 2,700m leaving 50 tungsten darts stuck into its armor is kinda funny. I also wonder if that clever rotating chamber part of autoloader will prove reliable. Or if the design limits propellant / muzzle velocity. But these seem issues which can be engineered if they are even issues.

The rotating chamber and telescoping ammo seem like perfect technology matches. As one engineer noted, they've been working on this for over 20 years so clearly there were many technical issues to overcome. This really does seem to be a game changer.

For all its prior issues, ajax finally seems to be getting there.

Looks like a great weapon. Capable for today.

This cannon and AA ammunition variant (assuming a decent cost/round), should be put into anti-drone trials ASAP. If these trials are successful, we need to procure a dedicated AA platform with a similar turret, destined to be placed at FODs for the army and air force, as well as to be available at every UK RAF base, as the state of air defences for the home country right now is shocking. A combination of cheaper systems such as AA guns and DEW systems, combined with higher end GBAD missile systems like sky sabre, providing cover for UK and overseas bases should absolutely be a top priority for HMG right now.

Eugene Stoner pioneered cased telescoped ammunition and this rotating breech principle in the 1970s while working at ARES. For reference, see the 75mm cannon that was fitted in the test vehicles HSTV-L and RDF-LT.

2:36 "selecting a menu of options" It's like a restaurant.

Nothing will convince me that the Ajax was the right choice. When CV90 was right there already owned by BAE a British operated company. A well tested ralatively cheap and liked package on the cusp of an upgrade package itself at the time of descision making for the project andlikely could have ammounted to significantly more being built for the same price and in service at a faster rate. Someone at the MoD must have close ties to General Dynamics UK for them to be awarded the contract.

I didn't see that blurred out building at 0:18. Moving along now.

I'm happy you're on our side

Excellent. A great anglo french project. The side loading is a great idea. It reduces the room required behind the gun.

I would also like them to jointly develop vehicles for the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

That tungsten dart is wicked evil. I love it.

We did a lot of this development back in the 70s, on the US LAVs. Although this is not direct "caseless ammunition" it still has lot of the same problems. Fouling of the mechanisms was a major problem. The big advantage of a 40mm is that it can have an active warhead. Lower sized rounds (as yet) only contain dumb fuses. The 40s can also contain directed explosions, for specific purposes. These are already available on larger rounds, such as the 120s. Mortars, in particular are very useful in these modes, since the blast and brizance can cut through concrete and metal. Also, since the gun is balanced, it can go up/down much faster, and if the turret can keep up, it can outmaneuver a heavy tank, allowing it to chip that enemy to death, with tiny cuts. When we did HiMag, with a hypervelocity-75, that vehicle could outgun any modern tank, except for direct front-to-front contact. Unfortunately in modern warfare, all of these vehicles are sitting-ducks to drone warfare, and are probably not useful as they now stand. Will require additional short-range protections from overhead 2-kilo rounds. The Ukraine war is showing all of these weaknesses.

US tested it few decades ago and it was already promising. Definietly a improvement for a subpar Rarden cannon on the warrior. Also having a quick change of ammunition type is important as well. Since France already did choose it, we can be sure it will serve well

I wonder if these would fit areas allocated for 30mm guns on warships? Would be a nice upgrade for the carriers.

The compact ammunition is very intresting. And rhe gun is a potent peice. Compact and very versatile.

I have been following this for a long time and find it fascinating. Its wonderful to see a story like this. It leaves out what the challenges were that lead to the long development time, however. The barrels apparently wore out quite quickly and things were done to alleviate that but everyone has been very quiet about it recently so I think we probably wont know for a long time how good it really is.

Thank you for the post as extremely accurate as is the gun and munitions

Combine this with a skynex system and you have no drone problem.

This has been going for some time, i've been following here and there about this and it's good to see it getting operational, we know it works clearly as the french are happy to use it on just about every platform by the looks, now all we need for Ajax is an ATGM mount and it will be utterly lethal to all.

Brilliant

CTA guns are one of the coolest bits of tech to be developed in recent years, I'm glad the government didn't go for the cheaper option and actually picked something forward thinking

Honestly, at this stage, literally nothing makes the expense of Ajax worth it.

Beautiful design - simple, compact and elegant!

Great news! Thank you for an informative video.

Great article, thanks

Hopefully now the CT40 has become operational it will provide the British Army with the firepower it so desperately needs. Now this system needs to be put into service asap along all of the potential ammunition natures available to it.

"I talked to some soldiers, they couldn't be happier with it" sounds like hyperbole, but historically, it should be given to some soldiers unsupervised for a month to find out how soldier proof it is, tweak it a bit, THEN it will be all the bells and whistles. It does sound promising.

Very impressive! Lots of innovations

Sounds like an excellent cannon. I hope the US will take a look at this weapon system for use on our armored vehicles, etc.

Looks like a fantastic weapon

"High elevation was originally to be used in urban contexts, now we can use it for drones". The old becomes new again, the new becomes old. In Chechnya the Russians were forced to use anti-aircraft cannon in urban warfare because it was the only thing they had that could shoot high enough to get to the upper floors, now the CT40 will be useful for shooting drones because it was built with high elevation to shoot upper floors in FIBUA.

One FPV dron, just one, you gamechanger

Actually an amazing design.

They've been trying to make telescoped ammo a thing since the 50's, when the seppos invented it. We'll see if this actually works in the long term, or if ammo feeding will become an albatross for the crews.

Fricken awesome

That rotating chamber really reminds me of the G11.

I was unfamiliar with this ammo. Ingenious!

Brilliant and clever design

This looks like a real winner!

Telescoping ammo is really neat. It saves a lot of space and enables vehicles to carry more rounds. Something we've seen a need for in Ukraine for example.

Would be great to have no wars. We live in hope.

WOW!!! GET IT INTO THE MARKET PLACE ASAP!!!

It's revival really took place in the Afghan war and the war against ISIS. Autocannons were the only answer to fast moving VBIEDs

Amazing ideas! Wow!

Its basically what the HSTVL did in the 1970's but improved

Times have changed , drones will decimate them .

looks like a good one!

The extreme high angle barrel and shotgun round will become standard for ifv’s. Follow up with a basic bolt on aerial aiming system upgrade.

Looks like a scaled up HK G11 to me... great work!

Where I live, _Ajax_ is a very ancient, good quality window cleaner. 😀

Yeah.. this is a wow.

Finally the CT40 gains more recognition. When i first learned of this weapon, i was waiting for widespread use of it due to its many advantages, but uptake has been surprisingly slow. I guess many militaries would not want to budget for an overhaul witn a new weapon system replacement just yet. Would love to see new CV90 Marks get armed with this!! ❤

i don't think game changer means what they think it means

The tungsten dart seemed very effective. Quite hard to get 3 of them in the treble 20 though.

I'll believe it when i see it put in work like the Bradley and its Bush Master.

Very nice. !!

Nice!!! Anyone who's stuck their arm in the Rarden to catch the working parts to save the working parts from wearing out will like this much more i can assure you. Says the 2" scar on my finger from the Bosnia deployment!!!! Love the fact you can switch on the fly to another round type. Also the elevated gun position with an air burst round is fantastic!!!!! Finally something to be proud of. Be nice to have something like an anti tank variant like TOW on the Bradley but a fire and forget missile system.

Beautiful, as an ex military man I really like this new technology. Soon, rail guns.

Wow!, this is a new iteration after nearly sevent years? Look how precise this is... somehow you've set wheels in motion* and time is on your side! You may be the victor!

Very cool. Now make 5 million of them in a year.

Game changer

European cooperation, love it. nice kit too :)

a rotating breech? I never seen that before, thats nuts

A 40mm shell is more powerful than a 30mm shell? Wow, imagine my surprise. :P

Incredible piece of kit, the next question is how much longer will you need a Gunner?

First new design sit the 1960s. This is long overdue. Hope it works out well.

Neat, sounds lovely to me

Is the ammunition electronically programmable for the air burst?

I wonder whats the velocity of the rounds due to those rounds

I think they should upgrade the fire extinguishers. They should put one in the back too.

This seems like a great replacement for Bradley type vehicles. The dart seems like the round used on Abrams tanks, scaled down. That super shotgun shell form-factor seems really really handy. Shipboard, it could give aircraft, drones, and fast pirate style boats, a real headache. A worthy follow on to the old Bofors 40mm.

Nice to see the British are getting this cannon too.

🇯🇵The number of orders is eight times greater than the Type 89 armored fighting vehicle deployed by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force...

I know where they can test it!

Its about time someone looked at ammunition design, both size and weight, with todays materials it should be easy, but not only have they achieved that its 4× more powerful than the traditional round, like he said everyone is going to want lighter, small more powerful rounds for every gun possible, however it ALL depends on the cost, if its 4x more expensive (thats just a guess from me) then getting the cost down will be critical, i remember the US designing a special round for the cannon on the zumwalt destroyer, the cannon was designed to only fire this special round, unfortunately the cost of the rounds was astronomical ( thats being generous too, it was totally ridiculous, somewhere along the lines of tens of thousands of dollars per round) even the US government with 700+ billion dollars yearly defense budgets wouldn't pay those prices, so the cannons became useless, they are going to be removed, so that means getting the cost down wast doable, so lets hope these special rounds for this new gun have taken costs seriously, otherwise its a great idea but totally unpractical, only fit tor the movie's, lets hope not, id love to see this cannon destroying Russian tras.

what a beast 👌🦾

After two world wars France is just like “say something to my face; I dare you!”

All pretty cool! 👍 I wonder if, eventually, small arms munitions will use case-telescoped rounds as well? Now, that would be something.

Had the pleasure of getting hands on with this system at Shrivenham, The issues they had with the weapon are the laser etched barcodes on each round that the system use for identifying the rounds it has stored are very very very easy to become unreadable. Any dirt, grease, oil, even fingerprints on them stuffs the system and has to be stopped and fixed. It seems like an innovative idea, but an immature one. We should have used a more proven system rather than throw in with this new design.

The money spent alone on development for this pearl of engineering could have bought 400+ CV90's. Just saying.

I would think the anti-air shells would be quite effective against infantry as well.

This will make the world a better place to raise children ❤

How does it distinguish between rounds when you’re choosing the type you require?

For what the main gun on a IFV has to do, a 30mm gun is still better because you can carry more ammo and give more suppression fire that way. There is not much point to having more firepower from a medium caliber gun, because "more" will still not be enough to penetrate a Main Battle Tank from the front and for every other thing you might possibly do with that gun (like shooting unarmored or thinly armored targets, giving suppression fire, trying to take out the optical systems on a tank), the fire power of a 30mm gun is more than enough.

Why aren't we investing in our own industrial base and spending the uK defence budget on Uk suppliers?

Looks good. Unique ammunitions though, which means another thing that must be supplied to where it's needed in plentiful supplies. Without ammunition its a lump of metal. We shouldn't have too many types of cannon that all need different types of ammunition. It we're happy with CT40 then it should be fitted across the IFV fleet to keep supplies and logistics as simple as possible.

200 rounds per minute when does the loader have time to load the specific rounds he wants to fire? or is it all automatic thru software? is there a storage compartment for each type and the auto loader does the rest? how to you target what you want to shoot? point and click? radar for drones and helicopters?

Is it a Taper-Barrel or how does this munition work exactly?

is the game changing part that the canon is installed as standard instead of being a fitted for option that never cones to be?

The CT ammo is a very nice idea. The linkless magazine even better. However I am not so hot on the rotating chamber. If there's a slight misalignment on that mechanism, strange things will happen compared to a conventional breech/chamber arrangement.

will it track and target the drones maneuvering at 80 kmh automatically?

Its good to see the British Army are doing something about a possible treat from the East. (Good to be prepared for the future)

So the recce vehicle has more firepower then the Warrior? Madness

Lets get it on more applications. Get that price down.

140mm of pen against RHA at 1500 meters or from point blank? And is it able to fire ATGM ?

Should it not be compared to Bushmaster firing super 40 ? The CTA concept began in 1954 in USAF lab so getting it right has taken a long time . Nobody mentions high round cost and barrel wear now !

Another game changer

It had better be game changing. It is 40 years on from when I used the 30mm Rarden, and it wasn't new then....