A Tracked LAV (TLAV) manoeuvres into position at Forward Operating Base Ghundi Gar. Having arrived as an escort for a resupply convoy the TLAV now takes up position as part of the Hotel Company Combat Team of the 2nd Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, currently in this location as part of OP HADRIAN. 2 RCR BG is an integral element of the Joint Task Force Afghanistan.

Joint Task Force Afghanistan (JTF-Afg) is Canada?s contribution to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The focus of this mission is to help Afghans rebuild their lives, families, communities and nation. Canadian Forces personnel in Afghanistan are working to improve the quality of life of Afghans by providing a more secure environment in which Afghan society can recover from more than 25 years of conflict.

Photo by: Sgt Craig Fiander, JTF ? Afg, Image Technician

www.sfu.ca/casr/np-afghan-06.htm

Armoured Vehicles - NATO/ISAF - Southern Afghanistan - December 2006

Punching at Panjwaii - Canadian Leopard Tanks in Combat CF Tracked Vehicles Tackle the Taliban and Afghan Winters

Stephen Priestley , CASR Researcher / Illustrator

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In to Action - Canadian Leopard C2 tanks and the TLAV M113A3s in Combat

After a month of settling in and training, the Leopard C2 tanks of B Squadron of Lord Strathcona's Horse (RC) are on the move. On 03 Dec 2006 (Afghan time) the tanks rolled out of the Kandahar Airfield compound heading for Panjwaii District. The Leopards form a new direct fire unit capable of punching through the thick, mud-brick walls (left) that typify much of Panjwaii District and caused Canadian troops problems during Operation Medusa.

Images from Kandahar reveal details about the deployed Leopard C2s. As many as ten tanks are visible (right) all fitted with MEXAS armour kits - more than previously said to exist - and at least one Leopard each is fitted with a dozer blade (right, front vehicle) or with a mine rack (topmost image, front vehicle).

The Leopard C2s aren't the only tracked armour in southern Afghanistan. The first Leo airlift included a Taurus Armoured Recovery Vehicle (ARV). There are also at least two AEV (Armoured Engineering Vehicle) Badgers joining the fight in Panjwaii (left). Both these specialist vehicles are based on a Leopard chassis. Light tracked vehicles also accompany the heavy armour. It had been announced that 40 rebuilt TLAVs would go to Kandahar in 2007. It seems some arrived early.

Images of M113A3s in Afghanistan have been of poor quality so far. [1] The TLAV's rooftop remote-control armament has been covered - until revealed, we must assume that PWS (Protected Weapons Stations) have been mounted. M113A3s will act as infantry section carriers. The arrival of tracked LAVs is well-timed - winter rains are turning the Afghan dust into mud.

The tracked vehicles address some of the mobility limitations that were encountered with LAV IIIs during Operation Medusa [2] which will be worsened by the winter conditions. More important is the Leo's greater firepower - within a day of arriving at Foward Operating Base Ma'sum Ghar, the Leopard's 105s were returning fire on Taliban rocket launcher positions.

Journalists contrast upgraded Leopard fire control, sights, and protection with the cruder systems of the Soviet tanks defeated by Afghan Mujahideen in the '80s. Quite true but parallels can be drawn with Northern Alliance tanks (left) in 2001 - T-55s used as mobile, direct-fire artillery. A Leopard firing from its FOB revetment is simply more sophisticated kit doing the same job.

The CF sees other roles for the Leopards in Afghanistan (among them protecting convoys from attack) but, in Part 2, we will focus on mouseholing mud-brick walls.

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[1] 'Life-extended' TLAV (M113A3 and long-wheelbased MTVL) emphasized new armament arrangements - either RWS (Remote Weapon Systems) or 'One Metre' turrets (recycled from AVGP Grizzly section carriers). The former is probably the Rafael PWS as planned but may also be the Kongsberg M151 RWS (as on APVs).

Another M113 type in theatre is the remote mine-clearing ILDS Protection Vehicle.

[2] LAV IIIs had difficulties with Panjwaii mud-brick compounds and its irrigation ditches. Tracked M113A3s [without heavy caliber guns] will cope better with the latter but not with the former.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrATZkFUhaI

The Dutch are using M113 Gavin tracks, too and are being VERY successful in counter-insurgency operations!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKa3tK3zi4c

What caused the turn-around?

COMBAT.

REALITY.

AFGHANISTAN.

A DESIRE TO WIN, NOT CONTINUE TO LOSE IN WHEELED TRUCKS...

EXPERIENCE ONE FAILURE DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FUBAR LAV-III/Strykerrr UNIT....

Strykers fail: VIDEO of Canadian LAV-IIIs hopelessly stuck in mud, breaks main bearing, mission aborted

American Stryker versions of the LAV-III are even more bloated and weighted down with bird cage and electronics inside....why are we wasting $4M on each of these flat-bottom, road-bound trucks?

From the recent PBS documentary, "Afghanistan: the Other War"

Go to 2:58 and see why the Canadians have gone to tracks in Afghanistan like other smart armies, Brits, Dutch etc.

Canadian LAV-IIIs hopelessly stuck in mud, breaks main bearing, mission aborted

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXFMix3dudU

We need to stop wasting billions on fatally flawed break-down-prone wheeled Stryker trucks that fail to get the job done and put our men into constant road/trail ambushes and put our money into M113 Gavin light for cross-country mobility but medium-weight in armor protection tracks that don't get stuck and break down in a mere light rain and minor mud.

STILL PHOTOS OF THE LAV-III DEBACLE IN AFGHANISTAN (AMERICANS EXPERIENCE THIS DAILY, TOO)

1: UHO. Its raining in Afghanistan. 20-ton wheeled trucks + muddy roads don't mix. Too bad wars don't take place where its comfortable and dry.

2: "We are going to make contact with a new village and reach out to them and win over their hearts and minds in our low-maintenance, all-terrain, high-speed SASO wheeled vehicles. Our LAV-IIIs are used by the Americans who call them 'Strykers'".

3: "WAHOO! Look at Me! I'm going 60 miles per hour on the road!!" (Not for long!)

LAV-III stuck a 1st time; Road Speed: 0 MPH

4: "Ohhh....sh$%^&! I drove into a rut....."

5: "Can we get it out?"

6: "We had technical difficulties and had to cancel the mission to the village"

7: "What's that dangling underneath the LAV-III?"

8: "Oh No. Its the main bearing. Its broke, man. This thing won't run its trashed."

9: "What a Piece-of-Shit (POS)."

10: "Careful! Don't get the 'recovery' LAV-III stuck, too!"

11: "Oh Boy. The 'recovery' LAV-III is spinning in the mud, too."

12: "Please...please grip...grip....we don't want to be stuck here outside the wire when the sun goes down..."

LAV-III stuck a 2d time and now with "company": THE TOW TRUCK IS STUCK, TOO!

13: "Gun it!!! Get through the dip!"

14: "Damn! We are Stuck Again! Dude! It's Getting Dark!"

15: "We Got to get Back to the FOB before the Taliban come out!"

16: "Go Easy! Easy! Let the Wheels Catch!"

17: "Damn. Forget it. Cut the Engine!"

18: "Mission Aborted! Maybe an officer will figure this out."

"We REALLY showed our Afghan allies today why they should trust their very lives to us.

Yeah, Right. We need to turn these pieces-of-shit in and get tracks so we can win"

Paul Hornback's Wheels vs. Tracks Article in the March-April 1998 issue of U.S. Army Armor magazine (before it became politicized) Warned Us Against the Wheeled SASO "Nation-Building" Racket EuroFad

1st TSG (A) EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wheels/Tracks NRMM Study

Steel Tracked M113 Gavin went 75+ mph in 1979! There's NO justification for wheeled trucks on the non-linear battlefield!

According to Hunnicutt Bradley: A History of American Fighting and Support Vehicles on page 109, the "Hot Rod" averaged 75.76 mph over a 500 foot gravel test track at Fort Knox in 1979. Power was 2 x 440 cubic inch Chrysler gas engines driving two modified 727 transmissions.

Imagine what M113 Gavins would do today on band tracks with hybrid-electric drive!

www.combatreform2.com/bandtracks.htm
www.combatreform2.com/hybridelectricdrive.htm

...thanks be to retired LTC Dave Tooker for finding these pictures!!

The Situational High Ground: Refusing Battle where the Enemy got there first

Its 1863. Robert E Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia is on the march. For the first half of the American Civil War, the "Johnny Rebs" could out-march and out-fight the slow, cautious and conservative Union Army, taking the high ground first and waiting for them to charge blindly into their withering rifle fires. He is way up in Pennsylvania roaming about and the Union Army can't stop him. He is headed towards the general direction of the crossroads town of Gettysburg.

Where is the Union Army? What is it doing? Does it know where Lee is?

Union Cavalry General John Buford finds out.

When Lee gets to Gettysburg, he has a rude awakening: Buford's blue cavalry on horses was already there holding the high ground, and he has no JEB Stuart gray cavalry to push them off because their impulsive leader was on wild patrols seeking some "action". Dispatching the word to General Meade to send everything he's got to Gettysburg since he found the Confederate Army---in a battle of hours, soon the entire Union Army held the high ground and could entrench---which combat engineer Lee of all people would know--would mean he would have to fight uphill while the "damned Yankees" poured kinetic energy (KE) aka bullets and low explosives (LE) aka artillery fire into them.

Lee should have walked away and refused battle.

He did not.

Lee was more than anything else a southern military man full of "honor" and "pride"; vanities that no General commanding the lives of thousands of men should indulge. He decided he must attack the Union Army when they offered to do battle with him, even though the laws-of-physics deck-was-stacked against him lest his men think he was a "coward". He was a prisoner to his own vanity. After repeated charges and the loss of thousands upon thousands of men, Pickett's charge up Cemetery Ridge sealed the doom of the entire Confederate cause as from then on, they would never have the numbers to meet the swelling ranks of the industrialized Union Army in equal terms of either firepower or maneuver.