"Armoured vehicles are going to change a lot."

Even the worst of situations yields lessons learned, as long as you're willing and prepared to absorb them. The CF seems to be on track in that regard - at least more so than they were in years past.

We've known for quite awhile now that 1) we're wearing out our equipment - especially vehicles - faster than planned because of higher than planned op-tempo, and 2) the difficult operating conditions of southern Afghanistan are exacerbating the problem.

But I haven't seen as frank a discussion of the constellation of issues surrounding these facts as in this Jane's article by Sharon Hobson:

The army's equipment, especially its armoured vehicles, is breaking at a high rate, with an off-the-road rate of more than 70 per cent for some fleets. As a result, the army is working with industry to keep them serviceable for the next two and a half years and to restore the equipment so that it will be ready for future missions.

Dan Ross, Assistant Deputy Minister (Materiel), told Jane's that approximately every "second rotation, we rotate large numbers of vehicles for major R&O [repair and overhaul] work by air to our staging base in Dubai, and then back by ship to Montreal." The vehicles are stripped down by the army's '202 Workshop' and the components sent out for repair to the various suppliers.

...

Ross stated that the fundamental problem "is we don't have enough vehicles. We've got 651 LAVs for an army of nine infantry battalions, armoured regiments, artillery regiments, and engineer regiments. ... It's about 60-65 per cent of what we need. If you had a float of 100 or 200 that you could have in your system, it would make a huge difference. Our upcoming CFDS [Canada First Defence Strategy] programme will buy additional vehicles, but that is a [political] process .... It's not going to affect this mission."

...

Beyond this, the Quality Engineering and Test Establishment is doing non-destructive testing of suspension components of the Coyote and LAV III because that is where the major failures are occurring. "The problem is differentials and drive shafts and shock absorbers and tie-rod ends. We tend to rip out the centre two sections on rough ground," Ross explained, and it is hoped that the weak points can be found and addressed. "We're also looking very hard at other suppliers or other types of components. Now General Dynamics is probably not very happy with me doing that, but they're my vehicles, and if I want to put different tyres on them, I'll put different tyres on them."

Ross says: "my concern is, do I keep buying the same thing? If that tie-rod end always breaks, can I have GD make it out of different material, can I go buy one from Ford or Volvo, or what will reduce the failure rate of critical suspension components?"

GDLS and the DND, nevertheless, work closely and Yamashita was adamant that since GDLS already uses 450 Canadian suppliers, "we can get supplies from anywhere so it's not necessary to go outside of us, direct to suppliers."

...

The Afghanistan mission has provided the army with a wealth of operational data on which to build future fleets as the DND has been tracking every combat incident that has resulted in a damaged vehicle "because I wanted to document with empirical data everything we learned from the whole operation." That information will be used to write the mandatory requirements for upgrades and new vehicles. For example, "we know to the millimeter what it takes to stop high velocity fragments from artillery shells. We know exactly how far 7 mm ballistic armour will bend from an anti-tank weapon", he says. "Armoured vehicles are going to change a lot."

Mr. Ross needs to be a bit more diligent policing his words about the location of our Theatre Support Element, but other than that, I'm pleased to see such an open discussion of these issues.