The dots are there, if anyone has a pencil
So, we have yet another story - this time from the Ottawa Citizen, bragging about breaking the original RUMINT - about leasing twenty Leopard 2A6's from the Germans. The only new piece of information I could discern in the article was that the paper has supposedly confirmed that the deal was approved last week by the federal cabinet priorities and planning committee.
Well, here's some additional information, and none of it is new either.
The Leo 1's the CF currently operates were slated to be retired a few years ago, to be replaced by the Mobile Gun System (MGS) - a 105mm direct-fire gun on a wheeled LAV chassis. In fact, the CF had already begun destroying the Leos when LGen Caron and then LGen Leslie recommended the MGS program be cancelled in July 2006.
The utility of main battle tanks (MBT's) had undergone a rethinking - by Western militaries in general, and by the CF in particular. First, they were more valuable in urban and counterinsurgency operations (pdf file) than conventional military thinking had expected them to be. But for Canada, MBT's were also going to become more easily deployable with the purchase of heavy airlift, promised by the Harper government. No longer would the Armoured be the only branch of the Combat Arms that couldn't deploy overseas with their most important piece of kit.
Back to the MGS for a moment: the plan was for an initial buy of 16 Stryker MGS and a follow-on buy of 50 Canadian variants, at a cost of approximately $650M. The Citizen picked up on this point half a year ago, when they reminded Canadians:
So here's my question: if we've cancelled the Leo 1 replacement project, saving us over $630M in project costs already allocated; and if we'll need at least fifty vehicles to replace our current tanks, no matter what the replacement turns out to be; and if we seem to be indicating we're going to stick with the Leo, albeit the Leo 2, for a specific and temporary fix of twenty tanks in Afghanistan - then why is every media outlet simply reporting on the temporary fix, instead of looking at the longer-term implications of that fix?
More plainly, if we're getting twenty Leo 2's for Afghanistan, what might that tell us about the CF's plans for a more permanent solution to our MBT replacement issues? Especially since we have money sitting there from the MGS cancellation?
Update: From CTV, via ETL in the comments:
How do you know when you're done playing connect the dots? When there are no more dots to connect, of course. In this case, it seems like the more we connect, the more dots appear.
Like, are the leased tanks coming from operational squadrons or Bundeswehr surplus? If they're coming from surplus, what guarantee do we have of serviceability? Leasing twenty Leo 2A6's won't use up the entire budget, but how much will it use? How much will the option to buy cost on a per unit basis?
Heck, are the Germans the only ones we're talking to? The report I quoted from last fall talked about accessing Swiss Leopards as well - have they fallen by the wayside? And the list of countries operating Leopard 2's doesn't end there:
Keep moving the pencil, folks, until you run out of dots altogether.
Well, here's some additional information, and none of it is new either.
The Leo 1's the CF currently operates were slated to be retired a few years ago, to be replaced by the Mobile Gun System (MGS) - a 105mm direct-fire gun on a wheeled LAV chassis. In fact, the CF had already begun destroying the Leos when LGen Caron and then LGen Leslie recommended the MGS program be cancelled in July 2006.
The utility of main battle tanks (MBT's) had undergone a rethinking - by Western militaries in general, and by the CF in particular. First, they were more valuable in urban and counterinsurgency operations (pdf file) than conventional military thinking had expected them to be. But for Canada, MBT's were also going to become more easily deployable with the purchase of heavy airlift, promised by the Harper government. No longer would the Armoured be the only branch of the Combat Arms that couldn't deploy overseas with their most important piece of kit.
Back to the MGS for a moment: the plan was for an initial buy of 16 Stryker MGS and a follow-on buy of 50 Canadian variants, at a cost of approximately $650M. The Citizen picked up on this point half a year ago, when they reminded Canadians:
Information about what nations have used Leopard 2s for sale and how many are available has been gathered by Canadian military planners. If the army decided to go ahead with a purchase, at least 50 tanks would be needed. Sources said the work is part of prudent military planning...
So here's my question: if we've cancelled the Leo 1 replacement project, saving us over $630M in project costs already allocated; and if we'll need at least fifty vehicles to replace our current tanks, no matter what the replacement turns out to be; and if we seem to be indicating we're going to stick with the Leo, albeit the Leo 2, for a specific and temporary fix of twenty tanks in Afghanistan - then why is every media outlet simply reporting on the temporary fix, instead of looking at the longer-term implications of that fix?
More plainly, if we're getting twenty Leo 2's for Afghanistan, what might that tell us about the CF's plans for a more permanent solution to our MBT replacement issues? Especially since we have money sitting there from the MGS cancellation?
Update: From CTV, via ETL in the comments:
O'Connor said a leasing agreement is still in the works.
...
A Defence Department source said the cabinet priorities and planning committee approved the lease of the German-built Leopard A6M tanks last week.
...
The leasing deal, which apparently includes access to ample spare parts, also gives Canada the option to purchase an unspecified number of additional tanks at a later date.
How do you know when you're done playing connect the dots? When there are no more dots to connect, of course. In this case, it seems like the more we connect, the more dots appear.
Like, are the leased tanks coming from operational squadrons or Bundeswehr surplus? If they're coming from surplus, what guarantee do we have of serviceability? Leasing twenty Leo 2A6's won't use up the entire budget, but how much will it use? How much will the option to buy cost on a per unit basis?
Heck, are the Germans the only ones we're talking to? The report I quoted from last fall talked about accessing Swiss Leopards as well - have they fallen by the wayside? And the list of countries operating Leopard 2's doesn't end there:
The Leopard 2 is in service with the armies of Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Spain. The Finnish Army is buying 124 and the Polish Army 128 used Leopard 2A4 tanks from Germany. In August 2005, Greece placed an order for 183 used Leopard 2A4 and 150 Leopard 1A5 tanks from the Bundeswehr reserves. In November 2005, an agreement was signed for the sale of 298 German army Leopard 2A4 tanks to Turkey. Deliveries are planned for early 2006-07.
Keep moving the pencil, folks, until you run out of dots altogether.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 9:48 a.m.
2 Comments:
Let me pick a small nit by pointing out that lack of heavy airlift is no impediment to deployment of MBTs. Regiments with heavy iron routinely get their assets deployed by sealift because airlift just isn't cost-efficient -- unless timing is a critical, inflexible factor.
So that line about Armor being the only combat arms unable to deploy with their most important piece of kit is not exactly true. It was always possible to deploy them via sealift, provided you could charter the right assets (like the infamous GTS Katie).
Having strat-lift just means that we have the option of rapidly deploying MBTs. But we always had the option to deploy them the traditional way, via a couple weeks of sea and rail transport.
In unrelated news... maybe the always-knowledgable ETL can shed some light here. What's the benefit to acquiring 2A6Ms when presumably all the manufacturer-run depot maintenance facilities are overseas? Are we going to build that sort of stuff here, or just ship our 20 tanks over there every so often? Wouldn't we be better served by buying North American, since shipping M1A1s to Lima, Ohio by rail is bound to be less expensive than carting 2A6Ms across the Atlantic.
Chris: Quite except for landlocked Afstan which also has no railroads. We could always ship to Kararchi, rail to Quetta, and then drive across the border to Kandahar--watched all the way by the Taliban.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/pakistan_pol_2002.jpg
And Darfur (as if)--there you might ship to Port Sudan, rail via Khartoum to Nyala.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/sudan_pol00.jpg
Mark
Ottawa
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