FV Designations for the vehicles in the British Ajax (SV) program?

[dan_inbox]

So far the British fighting vehicles received FV-xx designations. For ex, the Challenger is FV-4030, Chall 2 is FV-4034, and the CVRT family had FV-10X series.
Are there (or will there be) such FV designations for the vehicles in the Ajax (SV) program Ajax, Apollo, ATlas, etc ?

 

[Hood]

I think the FV series during the mid-90s.
The AS-90 for example never received an FV number, neither did the Trojan AVRE or the Rhino ARRV.

This site is perhaps the best reference for all British armoured designations: http://arcaneafvs.com/index.html

 

[dan_inbox]

So, it looks like no FV number for the new series, eh?
Argh. Those folks have no respect for the poor guys trying to organize their filing directories. Sheesh.

Thanks, Hood.
And the site is interesting, too, with AFVs I didn't know. Had no clue about the A22D. Thanks.

 

[Hood]

Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the FV numbers were the product of the Fighting Vehicle Design Establishment (FVDE) and its successor, the Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (FVRDE).
I think the end of issuing new numbers coincides roughly to the time when it became part of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), before that organisation became Qinetiq was and privatised in 2006.

I've always found the FV-series quite confusing. Each chassis had a bloc of numbers for all variants using that chassis but the allocation of blocks never seemed to be in number order (the CVR(T) series reverting back to 100) and the whole system jumped from three-digit to four-digit numbers in the mid-50s.

 

[JFC Fuller]

Challenger II is a hybrid in that it was evolved out of the FVRDE/MVEE designed Challenger I (itself evolved out of Chieftain) but was actually developed by Vickers following the privatisation of the Royal Ordnance Factory Leeds (and associated handing over of the Challenger intellectual property to Vickers) in 1987 so it sort of makes sense that it would get an FV number. AS90 by contrast was a completely private venture so wouldn't get an FV number.

An interesting question I don't know the answer to, though it might be answered by the existence on an FV number for Challenger 2: CR2 development is usually stated to have begun in 1986 as a Vickers private venture but the final agreement on the ROF Leeds sale didn't happen until well into 1987 and the agreement in principle to hand over the IP was October 1986. That means that Vickers wouldn't have had the Challenger IP so wouldn't have been able to begin Challenger II development. In turn that makes me wonder whether Challenger II development actually started, or was at least conceived, under the auspices of "Super-RARDE" (hence the FV number). Certainly the presence of a Challenger II concept would have been a significant inducement to buy ROF Leeds and the Challenger IP. A formal MoD development contract wasn't awarded until December 1988 after what was a politically one-sided competition against General Dynamics offering the M1 Abrams for what was called a Chieftain replacement programme.