British Army declares best 8x8 APC available...without competition????

via Defense News.

British Ministry of Defence officials have defended the decision to forgo a competition and instead name the Boxer wheeled armored vehicle as its preferred choice to equip new Army strike brigades.

In explaining the move to lawmakers, the officials said the German-developed machine stood out from its rivals.

“When we looked at the marketplace, the Boxer was the standout vehicle, and procuring through OCCAR (Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation) offers us a lot of value in the way we can acquire that vehicle,” Lt. Gen. Paul Jaques, the MoD’s chief of materiel (land) told the parliamentary Defence Committee on April 24.

Jaques said the Boxer was chosen without competition because it is the best protected vehicle available, has the best power-to-weight ratio, has the best mobility and has proven its reliability in service with the German military in Afghanistan.

Rivals had questioned the high costs of the Boxer, but to that point, Jaques said: “It offers us the best value for money, taking together performance and cost.”

The British had come to the same conclusion as the Australian Army, which recently announced it was purchasing the Boxer, Jaques noted.

“We carried out an exercise done at reasonably low cost, working with our allies and doing some very sensible interrogation of the marketplace based on what exists, and we came to a conclusion. And the Australians, running a parallel fully competed system, which cost them a lot of time and money, came to the same conclusion,” Jaques told the committee.

“The Australians last week have opened up to us all the data from their competition. What that gives us is a mine of data for us to understand what we will shape, what we will do in the demonstration phase,” he said.

He added that exactly the same vehicles considered by the Australians were looked at by the British.

Uh...wow.

So the Brits are following the Australians and basing this decision in part on their competition...even though the Aussies were looking for a RECON VEHICLE?????

This is weird....bordering on batshit crazy.

On the surface this looks like pure corruption.  They just picked the most expensive option, based on the results of a different competition for a different requirement and they want the public to believe that they're good stewards of taxpayer money.

Simply amazing.