geo said:
The Bison and the LAVIIIs are derivatives of the Mowag Cougar/ Grizzly vehicle design bought by Canada & built by GM Diesel
You are correct. However, the MOWAG designs Canada acquired in the mid-1970's were not designed in Canada. What happened with the MOWAG-based vehicles is that we took a foreign design and adapted them for Canadian needs in the form of the Grizzly, Cougar and later, the Bison, LAVIII and Coyote.
The LAVIII is ultimately an extension, or an enhanced version of the LAV-25, which was built to satisfy a USMC requirement for a light cavalry vehicle. The turret mounted on the LAV-25, if I recall correctly, was originally designed and developed by Arrowpointe Systems of Detroit, Michigan. General Motors eventually bought out Arrowpointe, or acquired the rights to the turret system. Then they were manufactured by GM Delco, which was soon swallowed up by General Dynamics Land Systems. The turrets on the Grizzly are designed and made by Cadillac Gage (which I believe is now part of the GDLS fold). The Cougars were equipped with turrets made by Alvis UK in England, which were originally designed to be mounted on the hulls of the Scorpion light tank, not armoured cars.
Not much real Canadian content there. The Grizzly/Cougar/Bison/LAV-III/Coyote is a classically Canadian story: Take someone else's design, make a few improvements here and there and then slap a big maple leaf on it, as if it were something Canadians developed from the ground up.
Our reluctance to design any serious military hardware in this country has complex roots, but they seem to go back to the Ram II tank built in World War II, which had a Canadian-designed turret and a modified, US-built M3 Grant hull. It proved to be a failure because the turret was unable to accommodate anything larger than a six-pounder gun, and the British/Canadian armies needed more firepower. So the tank ended up being relegated to the training role, and later, was converted into the Kangaroo APC.
Then came the Avro Arrow interceptor, a platform which had huge potential and capabilities, boasting the world's first true 'fly-by-wire' system. It was killed by cost overruns, Avro mismanagement, lack of foreign markets and ultimately a weak government which caved into American pressure to can it (I believe this happened because the US aerospace industry had nothing at the time which could compete).
Then came the Bobcat APC, again a wonderful idea with lots of potential, but something which collapsed under its own weight - probably due to government meddling, underfunding, and insufficient engineering/manufacturing resources.
