Canada's equipment in Afghanistan

[GAP]

Canada's equipment in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Thursday, July 9, 2009 | 4:36 PM ET CBC News
Article Link


Canadian forces working with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan are using a number of different vehicles and pieces of equipment to carry out their duties. Here is what's being used:

Leopard 2A6M
The first Canadian Leopard 2 tanks, leased from Germany, arrived in Afghanistan in 2007 as replacements for the aging Leopard 1 tanks. The tanks have stronger armour, superior firing capabilities and go twice as fast as the older generation tanks they replaced.

The hardy tanks are designed for minimum maintenance. It's possible to completely replace the engine and transmission in 30 minutes in the field.

Variants:

Armoured Repair and Recovery Vehicle — Bueffel (Buffalo).
Armoured Engineer Vehicle — Kodiak.
Armoured Bridge Layer — Biber (Beaver).
Armament:

120-mm L55 smooth bore gun (34 rounds).
1 x 7.62-mm co-axially mounted machine-gun (4500 rounds).
1 x 7.62-mm anti-aircraft machine-gun.
76-mm grenade launchers (2 clusters of 8 launchers).
Specifications:

Length: 11.0 m (gun facing forward).
Weight: 63.5 tonnes.
Engine: Multi-fuel engine, 12 cylinders, 1,500 hp.
Speed: 72 km/h.
"G-Wagon" (Gelaendenwagen)
(Photo Courtesy of DND) In 2005, the Canadian Forces took delivery of the first new Gelaendenwagen vehicles, "G-Wagon" for short, produced by Mercedes Benz in Graz, Austria. The G-Wagon will be used as a tactical transport vehicle for regular and reserve units in field operations and training.

It has specially designed armour to provide protection against small arms, hand grenades and anti-personnel mines. The Canadian Forces say the armour kits are based on a modular approach, so that vehicle parts such as the doors and front windshield can be removed and replaced by armoured modules. Additional armour protects the floor, roof and rear wall of the crew area.

Variants:
More on link

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Slow news day. Very poorly researched. A totally, and woefully incomplete cut and paste job. Typical CBC tax wasting crap.

 

[GAP]

Cut and paste it may be, but to someone not familiar with what being used over there, it's interesting....

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Cut and paste it may be, but to someone not familiar with what being used over there, it's interesting....

True. Any insight is better than none, I suppose.

 

[McG]

True. Any insight is better than none, I suppose.

Nothing would be better than false insight.

Some errors:
The Biber AVLB is not a variant of the Leoard 2.  It is a Leopard 1 variant, its current bridge cannot adequately support the Leopard 2 weight, and it is not deployed outside of Canada.

The Kodiak AEV is not in Canadian service.  The Badger AEV is in Canadian service and is deployed to Afghanistan, but it is another Leopard 1 variant.

MMEV - There was only ever one.  It should no longer exist and it never deployed anywhere.

The Nyala is the APV.  "Armoured Patrol Vehicle" is the CF generic project name that bought it and "RG-31 Nyala" is the name the manufacturer gave it.  There was an older model of RG-31 in service since Bosnia, but the article makes no mention of this while seeming to suggest the new vehicle is two different vehicles. 

The Taurus ARV does not double as a bulldozer (unless you have no idea what a bulldozer can actually do).

The numbers of LAV III & Bison are completely unrelated to anything that is deployed (but that's not a bad thing as the correct numbers should not be published).

Where's mention of the T-LAV and Leopard 1? What about the AVGP MRT; did we replace that deployed fleet?  Cougar, Husky & Buffalo of the EROC project?