72 Boxer-mounted RCH 155s due from 2028 as Britain fills the gap left by AS-90s sent to Ukraine

The British Army is to get 72 next-gen mobile artillery units, in the shape of a remote-controlled howitzer (RCH) module that mounts onto the Boxer armored vehicle already in service.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced a £1 billion ($1.35 billion) contract to provide the Army with a modern mobile system capable of providing artillery support against targets up to 70 km (44 miles) away.

First deliveries of the RCH 155 units are expected in 2028, with a “minimum deployable capability” expected before the end of the decade. It follows a £52 million early capability demonstrator contract signed in December 2025.

The RCH 155 is basically a 155 mm gun housed in a turreted artillery module mounted on the Boxer drive module. It is an auto-loading weapon, capable of firing eight rounds per minute. The unit features a fire control computer with integrated ballistics calculation, plus radio data transmission to a remote artillery control system.

Boxer is an eight-wheeled (8×8), all-terrain vehicle designed to take a number of different bolt-on mission modules allowing it to fulfill various roles. 

The British Army has initially chosen just a few of these types, primarily the troop carrier variant, but also the ambulance module and command vehicle unit.

According to the MoD, the barrel, breech, recoil system, and trunnions will be manufactured by German defense biz Rheinmetall at its large-caliber production facility in Telford, using British steel supplied by Sheffield Forgemasters.

The Boxer drive modules/chassis, engine, and drivetrain that the weapon system sits on will be manufactured by the UK division of pan-European defense firm KNDS in Stockport. The Army is to receive a total of 623 of these.

A new mobile artillery platform was needed to replace the UK’s aging fleet of AS-90 self-propelled howitzers. These could easily be mistaken for a tank, thanks to their tracked chassis and turret-mounted gun. The last of these were donated to Ukraine over the past few years to help it fight Russia.

The UK also procured a small number (14) of Archer mobile artillery systems as a stop-gap while a successor for AS-90 was selected. This is an automated 155 mm gun mounted on a 6×6 articulated truck chassis.

“This major investment is defence delivering for the battlefield and for Britain’s economy,” said Defence Secretary John Healey MP.

“By securing next-generation artillery with Germany, not only are we rearming to strengthen NATO against growing Russian aggression but also creating highly skilled jobs here in Britain.”

Ironically, Britain was one of the earliest partners in the Boxer joint venture, but withdrew from it in 2003 to focus on a different program, the Future Rapid Effect System (FRES). 

One strand of FRES eventually led to what is now known as the Ajax family of armored vehicles. You may have heard of it. The UK government announced it was rejoining the Boxer program in 2018 in order to meet its Mechanized Infantry Vehicle (MIV) requirement. ®

On Thursday, Microsoft shared mitigations for a high-severity Exchange Server vulnerability exploited in attacks that allow threat actors to execute arbitrary code via cross-site scripting (XSS) while targeting Outlook on the web users.

Microsoft describes this security flaw (CVE-2026-42897) as a spoofing vulnerability affecting up-to-date Exchange Server 2016, Exchange Server 2019, and Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE) software.

While patches aren’t yet available to permanently fix the vulnerability, the company added that the Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service (EEMS) will provide automatic mitigation for Exchange Server 2016, 2019, and SE on-premises servers.

“An attacker could exploit this issue by sending a specially crafted email to a user. If the user opens the email in Outlook Web Access and certain interaction conditions are met, arbitrary JavaScript can be executed in the browser context,” the Exchange Team said.

“Using EM Service is the best way for your organization to mitigate this vulnerability right away. If you have EM Service currently disabled, we recommend you enable it right away. Please note that EM Service will not be able to check for new mitigations if your server is running Exchange Server version older than March 2023.”

EEMS was introduced in September 2021 to provide automated protection for on-premises Exchange servers, securing them against ongoing attacks by applying interim mitigations for high-risk (and likely actively exploited) vulnerabilities.

EEMS runs as a Windows service on Exchange Mailbox servers and is automatically enabled on servers with the Mailbox role. The security feature was added after many hacking groups exploited ProxyLogon and ProxyShell zero-days (which lacked patches or mitigation information) to breach Internet-exposed Exchange servers.

Admins with servers in air-gapped environments can also mitigate the flaw by downloading the latest Exchange on-premises Mitigation Tool (EOMT) version and applying the mitigation by running the script via an elevated Exchange Management Shell (EMS) with one of the following commands:

Microsoft plans to release patches for Exchange SE RTM, Exchange 2016 CU23, and Exchange Server 2019 CU14 and CU15, but says that updates for Exchange 2016 and 2019 will only be available to customers enrolled in the Period 2 Exchange Server ESU program.

In October, weeks after Exchange 2016 and 2019 reached the end of support, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) released guidance to help IT admins harden Microsoft Exchange servers against attacks.

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Whitehall says the AI assistant will help citizens navigate public services faster; others may see it as a cheaper alternative to answering the phone

After years of turning public services into a maze of dead links, phone queues, and eligibility calculators, the UK government has unveiled the inevitable next step: an AI chatbot.

The UK government on Friday announced the launch of “GOV.UK Chat,” a generative AI assistant bolted into the GOV.UK app and trained on tens of thousands of pages of official guidance that Whitehall is boldly pitching as the “most comprehensive government-built chat tool in the world.”

Ministers say the system will help people navigate everything from maternity pay and retirement benefits to driving licenses and startup grants without having to dig through the bureaucratic swamp that is modern Britain.

According to the government, some public sector call centers handle around 100,000 calls a day, which helps explain why ministers are suddenly very enthusiastic about citizens talking to software instead.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said people fed up with being stuck on hold should not have to spend hours wading through online guidance either, which sounds suspiciously like somebody inside government has finally used GOV.UK.

“For too long, navigating government has felt like a full-time job,” she said. “Whether you’re a parent trying to find out what childcare you’re entitled to, a first-time buyer working out which schemes you can access, or someone approaching retirement, you shouldn’t have to spend time trawling through hundreds of web pages to get a straight answer.”

The rollout comes just months after polling showed plenty of Brits are already uneasy about AI spreading through public services. Concerns ranged from privacy and job losses to fears that dealing with the government will eventually mean getting stuck in an automated support maze when something important goes wrong.

The government said human support will still be available alongside the chatbot, at least for the time being.

Ministers are keen to stress that GOV.UK Chat is not deciding who gets benefits or owes tax. Right now, the system mostly pulls together existing guidance, calculators, and links from across GOV.UK rather than making decisions itself. Given Whitehall’s uneven history with large technology projects, that’s probably a wise decision.

Still, it is not hard to see where this is heading. Today, the chatbot helps you find childcare support. A few years from now, it will probably be explaining why an algorithm flagged your wheelie bin for suspicious behavior. ®