Half of armoured military vehicles in Afghanistan are useless

Time to buy more I guess. A good thing is they are built in London, ON, so maybe it'll help out the economy as well.

No icebreakers then eh? Like I said previously, we have a finite amount of cash for the military and at the moment, protecting our guys in the sandpit is #1.

The model of the lav III has to be redesigned. It was never built to carry as much armour as required by the mission, so, as the article says, it strains the transmission and engine. It needs a beefer power train to handle the extra weight, other wise it will continue to break down at high rates. And each unit down is a lost unit in the field and lost manpower to fix it

No icebreakers then eh? Like I said previously, we have a finite amount of cash for the military and at the moment, protecting our guys in the sandpit is #1.

Nope, we should be building those too, along with new SAR Buffaloes in Victoria.

So, which bail-out package for car companies should we bin and use to buy these things?

The Americans have produced a suitable mine resistant vehicle that should be used instead of the lightly armoured LAV3 and Humvee.. It's called the Cougar. I saw it on an epsisode of Future Weapons on Discovery, as well.


http://defense-update.com/products/c/cougar.htm
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... s2723.aspx

With the civilianized one soon to be on a dealer's showroom near you soon!

for the inner city driver
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The Brits are using it now. Our American chums do have some really good kit and US industry is very proactive in designing stuff to meet the threat.

Cutting corners and cheaping out is no way to improve morale amongst the troops who put their lives on the line every day.

They have to be given the best protection and equipment, so they feel confident that they will be able to do any job asked of them and then come home in one piece at the end of the day.

Canada has a small well trained military, and it should be one of the best equipped in the world, if its numbers are to remain low. This is not just for foreign deployment, but domestic deployment as well. Canadians were used as shock troops, and proved their effectiveness in that role. Our government doesn't need to create an military based on the anvil , just an effective hammer..... something that hits hard and fast with crippling force.

And I wish you were the PM!

I agree with Shep...as usual. Canada will probably never have a large military, but we should be on the cutting edge of technology to protect our soldiers, and, like Shep said, be an effective hammer.

I'd love for Canada to have an aircraft carrier, or maybe a few battle mechs one day, but the numbers in the military don't account for that. So...might as well stand shoulder to shoulder with our British and American allies in advanced equipment.

Also, that does not mean buying used shit from the Brits. I'm talking about new, fancy stuff.

Those used Brit subs were a great Liberal deal.......EH101, Airborne.....crappy subs...

We are out of combat in the next couple of years so now the question is, do we bring the junk home or give it to the Afghan army. I'm guessing that will be the fate of the Leopard-1s and I wonder if the Afghans can use them.