http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national ... ml?ref=rss Wow intresting move on my governments part, who in the last 5 years stated tanks were an unessesary burden on the budget and had all but scrapped the Loepards for the Stryker. Any thoughts ?
That is because now many countries have to much a choice. Either stick with tanks or choice to go with lighter vehicles (I believe the documentary used the term FRES). Or if they have the money go with both. Since most countries in the west will have trouble to keep both maintained etc, they must choose which one they prefer.
Well from what I have herd the Cdn Stryker project has been shelved on account of its poor showing and unfavorable AARs from the Amis... So Leps have been brought back to life... It will be time to buy new tanks soon though... I wonder what the choice would be for Canada
are they mark 1 or 2's? Are there any challangers or M1's in afganistan? How the hell do they air lift Leopards? FNG
You drive a tank into a big plane then fly to Germany, than fly to Afghanistan. Well at least thats my understanding. I dont think Canada needs to buy new tanks possibly upgrade them like Poland is planning to do.
The background as I see it is that the Taliban are now employing open wave attacks against NATO etc defended areas in an attempt to overwhelm them by numbers. In this setting I believe that the purpose of the tanks is for point defence and very limited localized counter attack only - also, the very presence of these metal monsters may be enough to deter such attacks in the first place - assuming that the Taliban aren't all completely suicidal.
well, because the taliban have kinda stopped hit-and-run tactics and started to dig in and fight , the tank seems to be very helpful in this kind of situation..
No FNG. The coalition forces have no heavy armour in Afghanistan at the moment. The heaviest thing we have there is the LAVIII (All Canadian as well). It has preformed better than we thought it could.
Well then they had better send some heavy armor there on the double, or those poor LAVIIIs will get vaporized by T90s, or T72s, or whatever the Afgan badguys have. Either that, or send A10s, or don't fight. I vote for don't fight.
I don,t think they have any mbts and there is already A10s there....that is what hit the Canadian troops with FF
Well I doubt the Taliban have any armour and if they do the soldiers are equiped with very good anti tank weapons. Airpower isnt always working for your side as Canadians are quite aware of there were at least 2 major incidents in Afghanistan of American planes killing Canadian soldiers. The latest was not too long ago an A10 Warthog attacked some Canadian troops with some fatalities.
Most of their armour was disabled beofre the coalition invaded the country. And the armour they had working was destroyed by the americans in 2001.
So we (NATO/UN) pull out of Afghanistan, followed in short order by: Taliban kick out current government Mass executions of "collaborators" (including almost any moderate) Opium production rises again Osama crawls out of cave Al Quaida training etc. resume 2-3 years down the line we're back to 9/11 etc. etc. Hopefully Western Governments and the UN have learned that the absolute worst thing to do in the middle of a messy situation is to pull out and leave it alone.
I agree with everything except the point about opium. Actually afghan opium production has never been as high as it is right now.
Well in that case I vote for send mass amounts of the best weapons available to try and imtimidate the Talibans.
Am I wrong or would this be the first time a LEO will have ever been used in combat ? Allbeit not against other MTBs but combat none the less