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DND denies rumour aging tanks bound for Afghanistan

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David Pugliese The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, August 24, 2006

CREDIT: The Canadian PressThe Leopard C1 tank, shown above in this photo from CFB Edmonton, is too difficult to transport and too costly to maintain for deployment in Afghanistan, says retired colonel Brian MacDonald. Military maintenance crews are working overtime to prepare the Forces' Leopard tanks for a deployment, but the army says soldiers who believe the armoured vehicles are being readied for use in Afghanistan are mistaken.
Several soldiers have said the tanks are being prepared for shipment to Afghanistan by early next year and that work is underway at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton to prepare the vehicles for that mission. They say the tanks would not be used in an offensive role, but instead to add more protection for Canadian patrols and convoys, which have faced increasing attacks from suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices.
In addition, some soldiers suggest the presence of tanks would make insurgents think twice about attacking Canadian convoys.
But an army official said yesterday there is absolutely no truth to such suggestions and that the Leopards are instead being prepared for an exercise in September at CFB Wainwright in Alberta.
"Right now, there are no plans to send tanks to Afghanistan," said army spokesman Maj. Daryl Morrell. "Who knows what rumours are out there, but the tanks have to be in great shape to go to Wainwright and take part in the exercises there."
Maj. Morrell said army commander Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie has made it clear he wants troops to retain their skills in working with tanks. "He wants to do some battlegroup-level training. He wants the infantry and the tankers to continue practising their co-operation, but the group doing their training for Afghanistan are not going to be working with the tanks," added Maj. Morrell.
Another army official, however, said the proposal of sending tanks to Afghanistan has been examined as part of routine planning, but it has not gone beyond that stage. The difficulty of operating a tank in the rough terrain of southern Afghanistan could pose problems, according to the official. In addition, there are concerns about the vulnerability of the Leopards to certain types of rocket-propelled grenades.
Retired army colonel Brian MacDonald said there are pros and cons to sending the Leopards to Afghanistan. The tanks would be more costly to maintain and operate and would be difficult to transport to Kandahar, he noted.
He said if the army was seeking more protection for the troops in Kandahar it should invest in additional Nyala armoured patrol vehicles. Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan operate the Nyala, the Light-Armoured Vehicle III or LAV-III, as well as the lightly armoured G-Wagon, among other vehicles.
"The G-Wagon armour makes it a very vulnerable vehicle," said Mr. MacDonald, senior analyst with the military lobby group the Conference of Defence Associations. "But on the other hand, we do have the 'Leos' in the inventory and ready to go."
The LAV-IIIs have been getting excellent reviews from troops in Afghanistan. Mr. MacDonald noted that such wheeled armoured vehicles are well-suited to the terrain there.
The Leopard tank is making a resurgence of sorts in the army. Originally, the service was talking about removing the tanks from its inventory and filling their role with a variety of wheeled armoured vehicles, including the Mobile Gun System (MGS).
But in June, the army leadership did an about-face and requested that the MGS program be cancelled and that the ongoing disposal of its Leopard tanks be halted. By then, the Defence Department had blown up, sold or given away a little less than half of the army's tank fleet.
Army officials have refused to discuss the reasons for the change of heart, but it is believed some senior officers raised concerns that future war zones would require better protection than that offered by the MGS and other vehicles. Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs, have been successful in knocking out lighter armoured vehicles. In Iraq, even tanks have been destroyed in such attacks, but those heavier armoured vehicles are generally seen as being more capable of surviving such strikes.
In addition, the army wants to redirect the approximately $3 billion that would have been spent on the MGS and other vehicles to more urgently needed equipment, such as automatic grenade launchers and missiles designed to destroy bunkers and other fortifications. Such equipment would be of use in Afghanistan and in future overseas missions.
The army's request to cancel both programs has yet to be approved by senior department officials or by Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.
Army planners are currently looking at ways to extend the life of the Leopard tanks. In the late 1990s, the military spent $145 million to upgrade its 114 Leopards with new computers and heat-sensing equipment to improve their fighting capability.


© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

Anon

Well it's nice to see there's still some sanity left in the world.

Ray

The terrain in Afghanistan is uncompromising.

Aging equipment will only bring the forces to a sad end!

AGLs (Auto Gren Launchers) are fantastic against terrorists in the hills. That is a good decision.

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA