Twisting the tank purchase

Let's get this straight right now: the Canadian Forces did not just announce the purchase of new Main Battle Tanks specifically for Afghanistan.

This means that Jack Layton needs to shut the hell up:

"Given the indication from the Minister of Defence that we could be engaged for as long as 15 years, given the purchase or leasing of expenditure on major military purchases for this kind of warfare, we think Canadians are owed answers to a whole series of questions about how deep and how long this engagement is going to be, about the nature of the mission, and to face directly the fact that it's not working the way it's being conducted at the moment," NDP Leader Jack Layton told reporters.

It means that Denis Coderre needs to shut the hell up:

"We need to know what's going on," Mr. Coderre said. "Why do we have to buy stuff for the Afghanistan mission, which we support, . . . when that equipment will be ready only after February, 2009," when Canada's current commitment ends?

It means that Steven Staples needs to shut the hell up:

But Steven Staples, the director of the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank, said Mr. O'Connor has given many indications that February, 2009, "is just a little signpost along the road, that they see it carrying on much beyond 2009."

That was reinforced, he said, by the decision to purchase 100 Leopard II tanks from the Dutch. "That just takes it to a whole new level."

Opinion is divided on whether tanks are an appropriate purchase at this juncture.

Mr. Staples said insurgents in other countries have managed to destroy them with explosives and advanced rocket-propelled grenades. And "you can't win the hearts and minds [of the people] staring down the barrel of a 55-tonne tank."

(Oh, and by the way, Ms. Galloway, opinion among military professionals is hardly divided about the utility of tanks. Given the opportunity, just about everyone in uniform thinks they're an exceptionally useful piece of kit to have in the inventory.)

The politicians and opinion-peddlers with an axe to grind are distorting the truth to fit their own agendas.

Canada needed to replace it's aging Leopard C2 MBT's, and formulated a plan to do just that more than three years ago. At that time, we had no ability to transport tanks for an overseas deployment other than by ship and rail, which poses a real limit on operations. Since pulling out of Germany, Canada's Leos had stayed mostly at home (with the exception of Kosovo).

Gen Hillier's comments on this are instructive:

When it was announced in October 2003 that the Army was getting rid of its Leopard tanks and switching to the wheeled MGS, some parliamentarians raised concerns the move would put Canadian troops in jeopardy.

But Hillier, then head of the Army, strenuously defended the decision. He said the Army has rarely deployed its Leopard tanks and that the vehicles were of limited value on current missions, such as in Afghanistan. Hillier said the purchase of the MGS and the loss of the Leopard tank would promote a new kind of thinking among Army officers.

“I think we’re actually losing a millstone around our neck that’s been hamstringing our thinking, hamstringing the way we approach operations based on building around a tank force yet never deploying that tank because it’s not appropriate to do so,” Hillier said in October 2003.

Now, as chief of the Defence Staff, Hillier says he never questioned the use of tanks. He said he questioned the military’s ability to move tanks around the world to places where they would be of use.

Hillier said the Canadian Forces still want a direct-fire gun system that is lighter than a tank, easy to transport and able to move around the tight confines of hamlets as in Afghanistan. Such a system is not yet available, Hillier added.

Note that Hillier's previous objections to Canada's tank fleet weren't related to the effectiveness of tanks per se, but rather to the wisdom of continuing to operate a piece of equipment we couldn't use effectively outside our borders. He was concerned about the most effective use of scarce resources at a time when the budget was awfully thin.

Today, that situation has changed. The new Leo 2's aren't being purchased as an escalation of the Afghan mission. They're being purchased because Canada needs tanks, because Canada's current tanks are on the verge of breaking down forever (they're so old that spare parts are going to be discontinued in 2012), because Canada will soon have the ability to independently deploy tanks on our own heavy-transport aircraft, and because there's not yet a feasible replacement for tanks in today's conflicts.

The fact that we have a squadron of tanks deployed to Afghanistan currently supports this position: we need the capability. The fact that we're borrowing a squadron of modern tanks from the Germans until we can get a squadron of the Dutch purchases into theatre to replace what we've already deployed just illustrates that the CF is smart enough to substitute new for old wherever it can.

This isn't an escalation, it's an equipment upgrade. Anything else you hear or read is pure spin.