Bring back the Iltis

That would be the logical conclusion of this piece maintaining that any tanks of ours in Afstan will have some vulnerability to enemy attacks, and implying that if the protection is not perfect do not bother sending them at all.

But, if that is the case, why send vehicles with protection that are nonetheless vulnerable to greater or lesser degrees, such as LAV IIIs, Bisons, Nyalas, Coyotes, M113s, G Wagons etc.? Surely the Iltis must be all we really need.

Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese really is fishing hard for negative news. At least he has the good grace to identify the "study" on which his piece is hooked as being from "the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives".

The end result is that the Canadian Forces will be trapped in an arms race with insurgents as they try to outdo each other, according to the study's author...

Mr Pugliese also quotes from University of British Columbia political science professor Michael Wallace--"a senior adviser to the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute on International Affairs." How odd that this institute (so far it has no website) is not also identified as "left-leaning". After all its director is Steve Staples, of erstwhile Polaris Institute fame.

And how odd also that, in his effort to be fair and balanced. Mr Pugliese quotes only Army generals (and we all know how objective they are) to defend the case for the tanks. Why not civilians from say the CDFAI, the CMSS or the CISS? Could it be that they are associated with DND's Security and Defence Forum and thus not objective enough, even if actually expert (see Babbling's post below)?

Compare with this piece in the Globe and Mail:

Lives lost, lessons learned

Five years ago this month, the first Canadian soldiers arrived in Afghanistan to begin their first real combat mission in decades. The deployment came after nearly 10 years of cuts by a federal government that was more focused on deficit reduction than military expansion. As they grappled with the transition from peacekeeping to conventional warfare, the Canadian Forces have learned many hard lessons, particularly about the state and capabilities of its equipment...

Look who was consulted:

...David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary; Alexander Moens, who teaches international relations at the Simon Fraser University; Wesley Wark, a security expert at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies; Scott Taylor, editor of the military magazine Esprit de Corps; and Richard Martin, the president of Alvera Consulting Inc., who previously served with the military in the Directorate of Land (Equipment) Requirements and other departments.

Rather a better selection than from Mr Pugliese. The Globe's Afstan coverage has been looking up a bit.

Update: Bruce Rolston at Flit has a similar view; his D-Day analogy is wonderful.

Upperdate: The Ruxted Group takes on Prof. Wallace at Army.ca.