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Leo 2A6M CAN - are they in service?

Clearly the CAF can abandon all force development activities and just refer to FakeName78 on Reddit instead.

Actually it is Adam Zivo at the National Post


I originally referenced the article in the Ukraine thread.


I reposted after reviewing the staff college papers referred to in the article. See above.
 
Beyond hope ....


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We can spin this .... all we need is to decide how we are going to use them, how we are going to maintain them and invest in a lot more infrastructure. Oh, and bring them all back up to factory condition.


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Personally that strikes me as one of those lazy staff papers that was written at the last moment to crank something out.

I've just looked through the Strathconian for the last few years and, notwithstanding the pandemic, there are pictures and stories of leopards on the road training their crews, the combat team commanders course and doing combined arms work.

Referring back to the 2005 situation is just plain lazy (even a few years before Ukraine II as the lessons from Ukraine I were there). IMHO the experimentation that was done in 2004/5 clearly established the theory they were going for didn't work out in practice. The Americans had abandoned the use of the MGS as a combat team asset in favour of plain recce/cavalry and are seeking to replace it with a light tank. For crying out loud we needed heavy armour (as did the Americans in Iraq) by UCR just to deal with insurgents. And don't even get me started on needing to UCR M777s, counter mortar radars and UAVs.

Is there a cost to maintaining heavy armour and esoteric equipment - of course there is. Any half-wit knows that. However, if you want to do war on the cheap you pay an even bigger price. One is that you go with crappy tinplate equipment and die and loose. The other is that you find yourself without the capability to go in the first place and therefore have wasted an annual budget of 26 billion per year for nothing of value. Quite frankly we do not need a uniformed civil service to push memos around. We need defence capabilities that are actually capable.

For pity's sake, stop treating the esoteric elements of warfare such as heavy armour, artillery, air defence and anti-armour weaponry an economy of effort capability that can be stripped away during peacetime. These are some of the hardest skills to master when you actually need them and you absolutely need to have a core of trained competent personnel (and that includes maintainers) who keep the capability alive. Here's a thought. Throw four of those infantry battalions and five thousand Ottawa cubicle dwellers under the bus and create one really good light and one really good armoured brigade with the annual cost savings. Point the heavy one at our NATO commitment and the light one at everything else.

:mad:
 
Personally that strikes me as one of those lazy staff papers that was written at the last moment to crank something out.
The 2019 paper is an accurate description of the problems plaguing our three Leo 2 fleets through the past decade.
 
I am not sure why an old thread is being brought back from the dead by the addition of a snip from a CFC service paper?

The army has a capability development process and governance for its organization, doctrine and training. Corps' have influence and have people inside them with ideas, but they are not left to their own devices either.
I'd argue that the Army has failed in the highlighted part of the above comment.

An Army that has virtually no anti-tank capability beyond its own tanks, zero anti-air capabilities, only a very limited number of towed artillery systems and has allowed all elements of the force to atrophy to the point that a Battle Group sized deployment is a major stressor on the organization (and at the same time done virtually nothing to leverage the Reserves to make up for these missing capabilities) hasn't taken "capability development" seriously.

How much of the blame can be put on the Army leadership vs the GOC can be debated, but the reality is the various Corps ARE in effect being left to figure out what to do with the resources they have been given.
 
The 2019 paper is an accurate description of the problems plaguing our three Leo 2 fleets through the past decade.
So get rid of the tanks to make the problems go away, rather than fixing issues to make better use of the existing resources and potentially upsetting a mafia or two?
 
So get rid of the tanks to make the problems go away, rather than fixing issues to make better use of the existing resources and potentially upsetting a mafia or two?
Maybe there does come a time when you have to look at a particular capability with a critical eye and decide if the outputs you are able to generate from that capability are so marginal that they are no longer worth the inputs required to maintain them.

Now personally with the size of our defence budget I find it near impossible to believe that we simply don't have the capability of maintaining a useful tank tank force...along with the various other absolutely required capabilities that we are currently missing (AD, Infantry AT, SPG's, etc.).

That does however require a vision and the will to make the structural changes required to achieve that vision. These both unfortunately appear to be what is currently missing.
 
Maybe there does come a time when you have to look at a particular capability with a critical eye and decide if the outputs you are able to generate from that capability are so marginal that they are no longer worth the inputs required to maintain them.

Now personally with the size of our defence budget I find it near impossible to believe that we simply don't have the capability of maintaining a useful tank tank force...along with the various other absolutely required capabilities that we are currently missing (AD, Infantry AT, SPG's, etc.).

That does however require a vision and the will to make the structural changes required to achieve that vision. These both unfortunately appear to be what is currently missing.
Vision unfortunately runs into difficulty in Ottawa.

The perceived problem is "resources" which translates into funding.

The CF's biggest resource hog is personnel costs which has as a major subset the personnel dedicated to self administration (not to be confused with logistics which IMHO is under resourced)

Any for-profit agency has to deal with resource hogs or die. Government agencies do not. They either seek more resources or curb their outputs to conform to the resource envelope.

Anyone in the chain of command who has vision has to deal with the numerous agencies that hog resources. Often these are agencies not within his/her control which requires creating sufficient consensus to develop and implement a solution. Resource hogs are notorious for not shedding their own share of those resources. Add to that the fact that visionaries rarely remain in their job long enough to actually build that consensus and implement their vision and you have a system that simply perks along in its own lethargy.

I can only see two ways out of the dilemma. Both are simple and unscientific and need to be administered from the outside by a heavy hand.

The first is to arbitrarily and drastically limit the amount of resources that can be spent on internal administration so as to force a change in processes that can be conducted within the restricted resource envelope.

The second is to hand off all defence outputs that are not required day to day in peacetime to a part-time force that has a strong core of full-time leadership.

All of that of course requires that budget inputs are not reduced. Too often when we reduce full-time manning we reduce the budget that supported it. That is counterproductive. The savings need to go to building capacity through equipment acquisition and maintenance as well as training.

🍻
 
Maybe there does come a time when you have to look at a particular capability with a critical eye and decide if the outputs you are able to generate from that capability are so marginal that they are no longer worth the inputs required to maintain them.

Now personally with the size of our defence budget I find it near impossible to believe that we simply don't have the capability of maintaining a useful tank tank force...along with the various other absolutely required capabilities that we are currently missing (AD, Infantry AT, SPG's, etc.).
How do you define useful? In a vacuum a sustainable squadron in support of a battlegroup seems like a worthwhile capability to have But does that hold true if the MRP interaction comes with the consequence ruling out deployable regiments and capping all RCAC deployments at a squadron level? Maybe that's not a problem if deployed Bde's are off the table.

3 RCAC regiments each providing a different capability, each with intra regimental MRP
 
How do you define useful? In a vacuum a sustainable squadron in support of a battlegroup seems like a worthwhile capability to have But does that hold true if the MRP interaction comes with the consequence ruling out deployable regiments and capping all RCAC deployments at a squadron level? Maybe that's not a problem if deployed Bde's are off the table.

3 RCAC regiments each providing a different capability, each with intra regimental MRP
That's where the big heads need to have the overall vision of what our requirements are. But if for example the cost of maintaining a squadron of deployable tanks means that we can't also afford AD and ATGMs then some tough decisions have to be made.

I still say however that I can't believe that we're at the point where we need to make those types trade off of decisions. I'm confident there is enough bloat in the system for the resources to be found to both maintain and expand our current capabilities. The tough part (as always) is getting agreement on what "bloat" can be eliminated. Everyone's idea of what is an urgent requirement and what is useless is different.

And I agree with @FJAG 100%...any "bloat" that is eliminated must be redirected into other priorities not just cut from the budget. Not doing "more with less"...more like doing "more with the same" at the very least, or if we actually decide to meet our 2% of GDP commitment, doing "more with more"...and more efficiently than we did before.
 
I'd argue that the Army has failed in the highlighted part of the above comment.

An Army that has virtually no anti-tank capability beyond its own tanks

Pffft....

All we need to do is mimic the FORCE test badges, and the Infantry will take care of the rest, somehow ;)

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On paper, at least, Canada has more than 90 Leopard tanks, he noted. But Mr. Leslie said he’s been told only about 20 are functioning. “The rest are either in storage or they are waiting for spare parts to be fixed.”

He said the Canadian Army needs a minimum of 30 to 35 tanks for training. He said this scarcity means Canada has no tanks to spare.


The high altitude view would seem to support both of the staff papers situational analysis.


The 2019 paper is an accurate description of the problems plaguing our three Leo 2 fleets through the past decade.

I note that Major Timms, in the 2022 paper cited the author of the 2019 paper in his later role

12.... Additionally, existing facilities are not up to code in terms of operator safety.11 In some cases, such as the Force Mobility
Enhancement building, these deficiencies are less substantial. Nonetheless, multiple
agencies, including Director Land Infrastructure, have identified notable risks....

11 Matthew D. C. Johns, Tank Life Extension Survey (Ottawa: Director Land Infrastructure, Canadian
Army Headquarters, [2021])


I don't think that the analysis of either of the authors can be dismissed out of hand.

I think that Major Johns, at the time of writing, was expressing an opinion that the CA, in 2005, might as well have stuck with the proposed System of Systems for the RCAC. The Tanks have not delivered the capability expected of them. They have been inadequately resourced and lacking those resources they can not deliver. "Something must be done!"

I further think that Major Timms takes up the challenge of "What can be done?"

My take from Major Timms is that major shifts are required

1 levelling off the fleet to a uniform standard - a decade long project involving the OEM
2 changing expectations of the fleet in terms of numbers available and on what notice
3 centralized facilities that tie individual tanks to a specific crew and a specific set of technicians - perhaps a mixture of RCAC, RCEME and OEM
4 tie the centralized training grounds and the centrralized maintenance.

All of which suggests to me that this footnote from Major Johns's paper is the critical observation

16 Dossev, “Leo 2 FoV CAFDWG”. The complexity and maintenance schedule of the Leo 2 makes it akin to a helicopter and it should be considered in that light. Similar logic to the concept of “3 to get 1” for airframes should be applied. CA acknowledges that to achieve a level of “general expertise” requires a minimum of 6 squadrons (three complete regiments).
In accordance with the Leo 2 FoV Implementation Order “all 1st and 2nd line maintenance was to be conducted by CAF personnel as per the Leo 1 C2”.19 Historical data demonstrates that this was a significant underestimation which has left the fleet in dire straits.20 The C2 required on average 296 hours/year of preventative and corrective maintenance (PM/CM), whereas the Leo 2 requires 1795, (per Johns 2019)

So perhaps the RCAC should be reviewing RCAF practices? What does it need to do to work towards that standard?

Does 427 at Edmonton serve as a sufficient model?
How do the OEMs tie in?
Should Wainwright become the RCAC's Cold Lake - with tanks and anti-tank forces collocated with OEMs for Line 3 and 4 maintenance and managing upgrades?

Having had considerable experience with Preventative Maintenance in civilian industry, both as a perpetrator (supplier) and a victim (user) I have a lot of sympathy for Major Timms position on teardown inspections. They do indeed create more problems than they solve. And in nobody's book is a 90 hour teardown a Level 1 operator function. If such a teardown is required it needs to be done in an OEM shop. As infrequently as possible.

This observation came from an article about the prospect of Stryker's in Ukraine by a Stryker veteran

The key, said Duplessis, is to maintain a stockpile of common spare parts and develop a system to provide situational awareness of the condition of vehicles and what parts are needed.

The biggest challenge may not be maintaining the vehicle itself, but the digital systems on the vehicle said Duplessis. There are also parts of the weapons station that frequently broke.

“The digital components and the remote weapon station would be more of a challenge for somebody who's never operated the system,” he said.


That would seem to me to jibe with the observed increase in maintenance requirements of Leo 1 (296 hours) vs Leo 2 (1795 hours) and the further observation that the tank is becoming more like a helicopter (and less like a simple bulldozer with a field gun).




If the tank is worth saving - and public opinion notwithstanding I believe it is - then some of the suggestions bear adopting.

I would go a bit further and put an Anti-Tank Regiment under the command of the RCAC and collocate it with the Tanks. (Just as I would put an Anti-Aircraft Regiment under command of the RCAF and collocate it with the fighters at Cold Lake). I would also push Rheinmetall to establish a workshop at Wainwright or Edmonton.

If the tank were anchored to its bay in its hangar, with its dedicated team of RCEME and OEM techs, and its RCAC crew, it strikes me that that makes for a great opportunity to bring Reservists into the Mix as well. Instead of a tank having a crew of 4 why not allocate a crew of 12 with 4 regs and 8 reservists from the RCAC? And maybe some RCEME reservists as well?



With this though the RCAC might have to put a bit of water in its wine.


The RCAC wants 19 tank squadrons (with 5 field spares apparently - what about AEV and ARV spares?).
They also apparently need 6 tank squadrons to be able to reliably field one at NTM.

Major Johns suggested that with the current assumptions the Canadian Army needed three times as many tanks.

Can we set aside current assumptions? Can we reduce the doctrinal squadrons and create 6 smaller squadrons?

We have sufficient tanks to create 6 Russo-Ukrainian sub-units of 10 vehicles, or 6 Swedish sub-units of 11, or (just about) 6 American sub-units of 14.

Why not one single Regiment with all the tanks, with OEM maintenance, manned by a mix of Regs and Reserves, tasked to keep one small sub-unit (a half-squadron?) at notice to move and the ability to surge three more small sub-units?

By the way a full complement of tank transporters - one trailer assigned to each vehicle bay - would be a legitimate additional expense if we want the tanks to be deployable with the LAVs.


At bottom the RCAC would be required to generate one Heavy Mobile Protected Fires Regiment and two "Cavalry" Regiments with a combined total of three or four anti-tank sub-units.



Edit: WRT the maintenance load of electronics - current generations put less weight on repair and more on self-diagnostics and plug'n'play replacements. Another OEM upgrade issue along with replacing hydraulics with electrics and upgrading FCSs.
 
The Brits Challenger 3 - by Rheinmetall

Only 148 tanks but 148 very busy commanders (or should there be more crews per tank?)

The sense of the presentation is that the Tank Commander is going to be as much Forward Observer as Crew Commander and is going to have a lot more engagement options available.


Maybe Canada should be considering the Rheinmetall Panther KF51 as the Force 2030 solution? Start converting 2A4s?

The KF51 is based on the hull of the Leopard 2A4, this of conventional layout for an MBT with the driver at the front, the fighting compartment/turret in the middle, and the powerpack at the rear. The driver is seated in the front right of the hull and is provided with a single-piece hatch above their position in the roof of the glacis plate. A separate crew station can be provided in the left front of the hull for either a dedicated systems operator or a unit commander. Colour cameras for the driver are installed in the centre of the front and rear of the hull.[4] Should the KF51 enter production a new hull would be designed by Rheinmetall.[4]

 
The Brits Challenger 3 - by Rheinmetall

Only 148 tanks but 148 very busy commanders (or should there be more crews per tank?)

The sense of the presentation is that the Tank Commander is going to be as much Forward Observer as Crew Commander and is going to have a lot more engagement options available.


Maybe Canada should be considering the Rheinmetall Panther KF51 as the Force 2030 solution? Start converting 2A4s?




I wonder why the Panther is right hand drive?

Unless their main target markets include:

  • Thailand.
  • South Africa.
  • Singapore.
  • New Zealand.
  • Malta.
  • Malaysia.
  • Kenya.
  • Japan.

 
I think that Major Johns, at the time of writing, was expressing an opinion that the CA, in 2005, might as well have stuck with the proposed System of Systems for the RCAC. The Tanks have not delivered the capability expected of them.
I think this is Johns' fundamental mistake. The 2005 Systems of Systems didn't work and the MGS never delivered on its promise in the US. On the other hand, the Leo2s we got in Afghanistan delivered day after day. The problem we have is that memories fade. Once the bullets stopped flying the tanks became an administrative burden rather than an asset. That's typical bean-counter logic.

Regardless of what type of conflict you envision, at some point in time violent offensive action, will at some point in time be a requirement and there simply is no viable substitute for a tank yet or in the foreseeable future. The issue is how do we maintain the capability and conduct the necessary combined arms training economically during peacetime so that it can be rapidly deployed when needed.

I think that you are bang on with this one.

Can we set aside current assumptions?

Not only can we, we must.

What is important is that we have an armour capability that can be trucked out when we need it. The minimum is a squadron based on our concept of forming building-block battle groups. The maximum depends on our defence objectives but IMHO should, at a minimum, be one tank regiment so that we can deploy one mechanized brigade group (3 tank squadrons in the armoured regiment + 1 tank squadron in the cavalry regiment) or an armoured brigade group (4 +1 tank squadrons)

You have a number of ideas which IMHO are valuable.

If the tank were anchored to its bay in its hangar, with its dedicated team of RCEME and OEM techs, and its RCAC crew, it strikes me that that makes for a great opportunity to bring Reservists into the Mix as well. Instead of a tank having a crew of 4 why not allocate a crew of 12 with 4 regs and 8 reservists from the RCAC? And maybe some RCEME reservists as well?
I can't see any reason why this wouldn't work. Well I guess I can see some but what I can't see is any reason why this can't be made to work. Some thoughts below. I think Timms is bang on when he says that tank maintenance is a combination of crew and RCEME and workshop. Adding more crew to the mix helps spread that load.

I'll work on the presumption of the current holdings (20 x A6M; 20 x A4M; 42 A4+; 12 x ARVs; and 18 AEVs)

The RCAC wants 19 tank squadrons (with 5 field spares apparently - what about AEV and ARV spares?).
They also apparently need 6 tank squadrons to be able to reliably field one at NTM.
They don't get what they want.

Convert to a 14-tank squadron and a 44-tank regiment. There is no shortage of armies who have gone for the option of more 14-tank squadrons rather than fewer 19-tank squadrons. While more is always better there is no demonstrable reason why 14-tank squadrons would not be a viable entity. Moreover, a large body of doctrinal and TTP lore already exists that could be quickly adapted to.

Why a 44-tank regiment? So that you can form two of them (I'd like three but its a hard push). Yup. We're a fewof tanks short of that, but each regiment could have two full 14-tank squadrons, a 2-tank RHQ plus there is an army wide fleet of 22 spare tanks (14 would be spares for deployments and 8 as true spares). I would propose that every tank we own goes to those two regiments including technical spares and that all training (including heavy armour maintainers) be done at those three regiments.

Why do I want two regiments? So that there are two regimental command teams for rotational deployments.

Major Johns suggested that with the current assumptions the Canadian Army needed three times as many tanks.
I agree that if we deployed a squadron of tanks, we would probably need a base of two units to support it with rotations but that does not equate to two fully manned RegF regiments or two full regiments worth of tanks. If we ever decided to deploy a full armoured regiment on a rotational basis, that might change, but the likelihood of that is low.

Can we set aside current assumptions? Can we reduce the doctrinal squadrons and create 6 smaller squadrons?
In fact I see 6-8 squadrons. 2 RegF and 4-6 ResF in two 30/70 regiments sharing equipment.

We have sufficient tanks to create 6 Russo-Ukrainian sub-units of 10 vehicles, or 6 Swedish sub-units of 11, or (just about) 6 American sub-units of 14.
As you can see, I opt for the 14. That provides enough to deploy 4 full squadrons (56 tanks - a 3 +1 Mech brigade) and in a pinch 5 full squadrons (70 tanks - a 4 + 1 Armd brigade) with some training spares left over.

Why not one single Regiment with all the tanks, with OEM maintenance, manned by a mix of Regs and Reserves, tasked to keep one small sub-unit (a half-squadron?) at notice to move and the ability to surge three more small sub-units?
While that would be administratively more efficient, it wouldn't be as versatile. 2 RHQs facilitate rotations. Also in an armoured brigade (using the US model) you have two tank heavy combined arms battalions so that becomes an option.

Moreover, 2 regiments facilitate administration and training of a 30/70 regiment. There are currently 18 ResF armoured regiments (more properly 18 squadron sized elements). Allocating 4-6 of those as armoured squadrons is manageable (especially when a 14-tank squadron has under 70 pers)

Locations? Definitely one in Edmonton and one is Shilo. Each is collocated with a mech infantry battalion to facilitate combined arms training. (and IMHO those two battalions should be turned into 4 x 30/70 battalions). There are enough armoured ResF units close to each of those locations to fill out the 70% elements.

If we could come up with good simulators, we could even expand the ResF components to Ontario and Quebec.

🍻
 
One major correction @FJAG - I have no ideas. I suck up ideas from other people.
 
Even the Brits worked with some 3x 14 regiments during the Cold War IIRC.

WRT the single Regiment - you could always go the Yankee route (kindofish)

One Regiment with 2 Squadrons each with 3 troops of 10 to 14 each. Operating out of one barn.
 
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