Canada's military needs new wheels

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Canada's military needs new wheels
1
Mon, 01-26-2004 - 7:38pm
The Canadian army truck fleet could experience "catastrophic" failure at any time due to poor brakes and steering systems and must be replaced within four years or safety will be compromised, defence department officials say.

The trucks, known in military jargon as Medium Logistic Vehicle Wheeled (MLVW) are the backbone of army transportation.

But the 22-year-old vehicles, commonly seen on highways near military bases, are becoming more difficult and costly to maintain, according to defence documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

Serious safety issues include the potential for failing brakes and steering columns.

"We are at a critical stage in the life of the MLVW where unpredicted catastrophic failures could occur without warning," one document notes. Catastrophic failure is used to signify accidents that could involve serious injuries or death.

Col. Bob Gunn, who helps determine army equipment needs, acknowledged the problems with the trucks. He said the military is working on getting replacements by 2010.

The trucks were sidelined four years ago because of rusted wheel rims. "We replaced them all, so that's good for now," said Gunn. "We were extremely fortunate."

Various options in the meantime include continuing with costly repairs, driving the trucks less, replacing them earlier than planned, or accepting the risks posed.

Replacing the trucks would cost a little more than $1 billion.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1075072209327&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467

Renee

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-25-2003
Tue, 01-27-2004 - 9:31am
Oh, dear! They need more bullets, too:

Talk about biting the bullet: It seems inconceivable, and it is surely shameful, but at least some of the Canadian Forces' reserve units have run out of ammunition.

For almost a year now, militia units in 125 towns and cities across Canada have had only extremely limited amounts of live or "ball" ammunition -- just enough for soldiers to requalify annually on their service weapons -- and some have had no blanks for training.

The shortage means that about 15,000 part-time soldiers, a good many of whom may actually serve overseas to augment the chronically overburdened and depleted regular Forces, are training for war and its oft-dangerous cousin, modern peacekeeping, without the ability to practise regularly in battle conditions.

To be fair, any soldiers who go abroad receive additional training to bring them up to what's called "deployable" competency, and reserve units destined for such active service get first dibs on available ammunition.

But effectively, as one commanding officer put it yesterday, all reserve units "are starving" for ammo and even for the simulators that are supposed to supplant or support field training.

In recent years, with the regular Forces stretched beyond capacity by missions in Bosnia and Afghanistan, reservists have made up as much as 20 per cent of the soldiers serving in the former Yugoslavia.

Occasionally the number has been as large -- O irony -- as almost 50 per cent in the rifle companies.

The luckiest militia regiments, chiefly in Western Canada and Ontario, have been scrambling to share 400 kits of what's called Simunition, a military-style version of the Paintball game popular a few years ago among civilians.

These kits refit the upper part of the Forces' regulation C-7 rifle with a paintball-type system -- so-called "marking cartridges" replace the regular cartridges, which consist of a brass case, a primer and a 5.56-millimetre bullet -- with the lower part of the rifle left intact.

Even some of those who have warned about the sorry state of the Canadian Forces for years were astonished to learn of the militia's desperate plight.

John Selkirk, a member of the Reserves 2000 organization, an interest group composed in the main of retired militia officers, laughed bitterly when I told him yesterday what I'd learned.

"Well," he said, "there are so many things that just rot your socks. It would not surprise me. But you're saying they have absolutely none?"

But none is precisely what Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Compton, the commanding officer of the storied Hamilton-based Argylls and Sutherland Highlanders, says he has for the 200 part-time soldiers, or "citizen soldiers" as they proudly call themselves, of his regiment.

"I have a very limited amount of live ammunition for annual reclassification," he said yesterday.

"But no blank ammunition, and no pyrotechnics . It's very frustrating, and if it's frustrating for us, and we're infantry, imagine what it's like for those in the artillery: Their business is to shoot guns, and they have nothing to train people with."

Lt.-Col. Compton said that the news came down early last year, a few months before the start of the military's new fiscal year, and that as of April, 2003, the regiment has received no new issue of training ammunition. As far as he knows, it is a nationwide shortage and one that is likely to endure this year.

"It's every reserve unit I'm aware of," he said, "and I've spoken to them across Ontario and as far away as the West Coast."

Indeed, Lt.-Col. Blair McGregor, the commanding officer of the Seaforth Highlanders based in Vancouver, confirmed that his unit too has severely restricted amounts of live ammunition -- only for requalification -- and only a small quantity of training ammo.

That, The Globe and Mail has learned, is left over from the previous year because the regiment's main training exercise last summer was cancelled because of the forest fires in British Columbia.

If the ammunition crisis is in some measure reflective of a philosophical difference, with some senior officers believing soldiers can be properly trained using simulators of various sorts and others (the smart ones) adhering to the notion that their men and women must experience battle conditions and shoot real weapons, it is also a function of the general dire straits the Forces have endured for years.

Almost two years ago, a report called A Nation at Risk from the Conference of Defence Associations detailed the many crises facing the Forces -- decades of underfunding, a severe shortage of skilled personnel and spare parts -- and sang the praises of the reserves, which the report said had been nearly destroyed.

Cost-efficient, far more multicultural than the regular forces, the militia was described as a valuable national institution, in part because its locations in so many Canadian communities connect the army to the people in a way that nothing else does.

While most reservists are students, who may enroll as a summer job, many transfer to the regular army, and also provide most of the individual overseas augmentations to regular units.

Lt.-Col. Compton's Argylls, for instance, have nine members now serving in Bosnia; Lt.-Col. McGregor's Seaforths have no members overseas now, but have sent about 50 to Bosnia and Croatia.

The entire budget for a year's worth of ammunition -- live, training and pyrotechnics -- for the Argylls is only about $200,000.

Let me tell you how I heard of all this.

Last Saturday night, I attended the Argylls' annual Robbie Burns Dinner in the gorgeous officers' mess. Seated beside me was Major Atheling Seunarine, the regiment's second-in-command.

Proudly, he told me about a wonderful demonstration coming up for this weekend; the Argylls have recently begun to specialize in urban-warfare tactics, and developed this initiative with the Canadian Forces Liaison Council, a group of businesspeople who promote the reserves.

But over the course of the dinner, without a complaining bone in his body, Major Seunarine acknowledged that the regiment was turning to urban-warfare tactics because, well, they have no ammunition for traditional training.

As Harry Ferguson, a Hamilton businessman who is the regiment's corporate development officer, said yesterday, "Some bastard up in Ottawa probably did it. It's like a Monty Python skit: You can just imagine a Canadian soldier being delivered to the field in Afghanistan somewhere and saying, 'Oh, is this a real bullet? It's pathetic.' "

Last I saw him, Mr. Ferguson was reciting Mr. Burns's famous Ode to a Haggis and periodically stabbing and slicing at the steaming bag. I can think of more deserving places for that dagger.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPPrint/LAC/20040127/BLATCHFORD27/TPFront/

Renee