National Defence Committee on Feb. 22nd, 2007

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Okay. General Lucas said it was problematic, though it was not a problem. Do you see that as a problem? Because you also have to take off some other parts of it and replace them afterwards. When we're talking about tactics, we're talking, as you said, about minutes. Don't you feel that we should have maybe checked for some other planes instead of focusing on those ones?

[LGen A. Leslie]

Sir, the concept of operations wherein you have a theatre that is receptive to receiving a large aircraft such as the C-17 or a C-130J, there's no real vision for using logistics wheels rolling off the back of very large aircraft straight into combat. There's always a period of, essentially, expanding the force package, which purchases you time, and that time can range from hours to days before the actual assets get into operational usage, such as heavy trucks, such as soldiers, indeed. We don't send soldiers overseas, crossing half of the face of the globe, and send them immediately into combat operations or peace support operations without a certain period of acclimatization, tweaking the equipment, and so on.

I don't know if that answers your question.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Yes, I think it does.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

Thank you very much, General Leslie.

We'll go to Monsieur Bachand, s'il vous plaît.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First off, I would like to start by welcoming the entire team as well as Gen. Leslie who impressed me a great deal with the quality of his French. His presentation was 90% in French. I also know that he is a great tactician. So perhaps he was trying to catch me off guard by making this presentation. I also know that he is able to withstand what I would call IPEDs in other words, improvised political explosive devices.

[Some hon. members]

Ah, ah!

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Gen. Leslie, how do you feel—I'm not talking about your leg—but rather as chief of the land staff? Out of the $20 billion announced by the government for projects, only $1 billion will be going to the land forces.

Don't you get the impression that you need to change your approach with the department? In fact, the billion dollars is for the much-wanted trucks. Earlier on, when Mr. Robertson was here, I talked to him about these $3 billion, in other words 15% of the total amount which means that 80% of the money will be going to the air force.

What I am even more concerned about is that so much money is invested in aviation—and that is the purpose of my question—that I wonder whether you may currently have projects which are in a way paying for it. I will be very specific: I am referring to ADATS, the Air Defence Anti-Tank System and to MMEVs, Multi-Mission Effects Vehicles.

For the benefit of the people watching us today, the ADATS are used to control air space and ensure that when our soldiers are in a theatre if there is a missile or an aircraft they are able to manage the air space.

With respect to MMEVs, they are for command and control in an operational theatre. The MMEV contract was cancelled and the ADATS program will probably continue until the 2010 Olympics. And then it will be stopped.

Do you not feel as though you are a victim of the tremendous influx of investment on the air force side and, at the end of the day, Ottawa's orphan child, because of these decisions?

[LGen A. Leslie]

First off, thank you for your comments.

When I went to Saint-Jean, during the ice storm, I had a good French-language instructor, you. So, I owe any ability that I have to speak French to you.

Sir, you've asked a complex question. Because I'm recovering from knee surgery and may be somewhat under the influence of prescribed medication, I will default back to English to try to answer you. And I apologize for that. Normally I wouldn't.

I certainly do not feel like the poor child among the three services. As you know, over the course of the last 15 to 20 years, a great deal of intellectual thought and future scenario planning has led most senior military officers to understand that the Canadian Forces has to be a team. I cannot do my job as a soldier unless I am delivered to wherever the moment of crisis might be, either domestically or internationally.

When the army shows up somewhere—and as you know, we tend to show up in very large numbers with thousands of pieces of equipment—the people who move us are the air force and the navy, certainly over strategic and even operational distances.

So when one considers that we have a first remit, which is to Canada, to be able to move great young soldiers around to help in domestic crises or

during the ice storm or other similar events,

in the Winnipeg floods, you have to get us there. And more often than not, internal to Canada, that will be done by the air force. So the idea of focusing a large number of resources to re-equip our operational and strategic fleets to move army folks around certainly resonates with me and with a great number of other soldiers.

The same is true of the navy. The joint support ship issue, which will have embedded within it the intellectual idea that you can move a company of soldiers within that construct, I think is a very good one, a very good one indeed. So I do not feel, as the army commander, that we are being disadvantaged by the current focus of activities, certainly in terms of the large crown projects, on the air force and the navy.

With regard to the response from folks such as you, from Canadians, and as I mentioned earlier, from the team here in Ottawa, the energy and attention that's been given across town to make sure that our soldiers are as well protected as they possibly can be—and that is expensive—has been brilliant. It really has.

In the past it would have taken years to do the design work and get approval to wrap our armoured vehicles in more armour--more steel--to buy night-vision goggles, to buy the RG-31, to buy the Triple 7 guns, and to buy new boots for the soldiers and the new flak vests to stop the shrapnel from hurting them. I guess when you total up the sums of all those various initiatives, they do not match that of the major crown projects being dedicated to air and sea assets, but I'm certainly very comfortable with where we are now.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Can you please say a few words about the MMEV and ADATS?

[LGen A. Leslie]

Yes, sir.

First and foremost, the Government of Canada has not made a decision on the future of MMEV, nor of ADATS, nor indeed on any of our large, complicated pieces of land-centric equipment.

ADATS is approaching the end of its useful life, in terms of its technology. Some of the fire-control systems, software, and computational assets that are integral to the vehicle, and the links it has with the look and sense of the fire-control systems are such that we're either going to have to make a major investment in keeping that fleet going—by major, I mean truly of a very large scale—or we're going to have to look for other options.

There is an operational requirement that the commander of Canada Command has identified in support of the Olympics, which you quite rightly have already referred to. Once we get a sense of what the full operation plan will be to support the Olympics, then I'll be able to give you more advice.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

You're out of time. Thank you very much.

Ms. Black.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the committee.

I think you know that several of us on the committee were in Kandahar last month, and I just wanted to start by saying how impressed all of us were with the professionalism of the well-trained men and women in the Canadian Forces who we met there. We all really appreciated the opportunity to be there and see first-hand what's happening on the airfield, and even to experience going out in the Nyala—a bit outside the wire anyway. I wanted to let you know that this was the consensus of everybody on the committee.

There has been a lot of talk in the media about the possibility of purchasing more Leopard tanks from Germany. I'm wondering, is this being contemplated? Is that happening?

Also, did anything have to be purchased to ready the Leopard tanks that we now have in Afghanistan and get them there?

My third question concerns the issue of the cooling system that's also been reported in the media. We're coming into spring in Afghanistan, and it's a very hot climate. What's happening around the cooling system and the ability to put in air conditioning?

There is this horrible vision of people cooking inside those things, and I would like an update on that, please.

[LGen A. Leslie]

Absolutely, Madam, thank you.

The threat environment that we're currently facing in Afghanistan is not necessarily the model, but it is a model, and no matter where we may go next internationally, it's logical to assume that we will be facing much the same type of threat from fundamentalists or terrorists who will use improvised explosive devices to harm either our soldiers or those we're charged with protecting.

In the absence of a technological breakthrough of sufficient sophistication, degree of accuracy, and lethality that you can mount it on relatively light vehicles to defeat a suicide bomber with five or six artillery shells in the back of his Toyota pickup truck as he rams up alongside you, or that can defeat an incoming projectile, such as a rocket-propelled grenade, we have had to default to options incorporating more mass on our vehicles, as have most other armies.

So we've put thousands of kilograms of extra armour on our M113 armoured personnel carriers. We bought the RG-31, and I know you've travelled in one. It's hideously uncomfortable, but it does the job. Think of the alternative.

Much the same is true of the Leopard, which is the single best-protected vehicle we have against an enormous blast. It's proved its worth in the sense that it has saved lives.

Like all soldiers who have been in combat, I don't necessarily like having to use the weapon systems that the Government of Canada makes available to us, but we are prepared to use them.

Very often, having these heavy pieces of equipment means that you don't have to use them, because you've presented or you've limited--

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Are we getting them from Germany?

[LGen A. Leslie]

Right.

It's not my place to comment on future policy options that the Government of Canada may or may not be studying. However, I will bring up the issue of cooling, which you quite correctly have identified. A lot of the kit we have in the Canadian army is absolutely first-rate; it really is.

The Leopard tanks that we're currently using in Afghanistan are in excess of 30 years old. We spent a great deal of money getting them fixed up over the last 10 or 15 years, but the current Leopard has some vulnerabilities. You will forgive me if I don't go into details. I trust you, but I don't necessarily trust....

Concerning the cooling system, it is projected that by the middle of the summer, the inside temperature for tank crews could be in excess of 60 degrees Celsius.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

That's why I'm asking the question.

[LGen A. Leslie]

A variety of studies have been undertaken by the great folks in S&T—science and technology—by research, by the assistant deputy minister matériel, and by François and his team, ranging from cooling vests, to internal air conditioning systems, to decreasing the amperage of the output, to taking a hard look at the hydraulic systems that exist inside that vehicle, because hydraulic systems under pressure produce heat.

However, as we've briefed the Chief of Defence Staff, there are a variety of options we have to consider. How much money do we want to reinvest in the current Leopard? Or are there other options available?

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Clearly, you wouldn't be able to put people in them in the summer. You just couldn't use them.

[LGen A. Leslie]

Not under those conditions, so we have to do something. And thank you for asking the question, because it concerns the safety of the soldiers.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

One of the other issues is that when we were at the base in Edmonton, one of the soldiers told me the tanks that went over there—some of them, anyway—had been decommissioned, and that they had to clear out the gun barrels; that they were filled with cement. Is that so?

[LGen A. Leslie]

I don't know if that is actually the case for the tanks we sent overseas, but there are one or two that fall under those circumstances. Currently, we have about 66 runners, and usually it takes around four to one or five to one, in terms of equipment back home to train on, to send one overseas.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

What are the main procurement issues right now for the army? What do you see as the big purchases coming up in the immediate future?

[LGen A. Leslie]

In the immediate future, the big focus for us is on survivability. That ranges from putting more armour mass on our vehicles to individual soldier survivability systems. If I had to choose one nugget, that would be it.

A fear I have is that sometimes we may get it wrong, because we are facing an adaptive, intelligent enemy who can very often figure out what we're doing within days or weeks of our actually doing it. They adapt their tactics and their explosive charges. So it's a continual balance, a to and fro.

The second nugget, I guess, would have to do with tactical transportation. That, of course, is in part being addressed by the armoured trucks, which are moving very briskly indeed, I'm glad to say. Once again, that's thanks to the efforts of everybody on this committee.

But also there is the issue of medium- to heavy-lift helicopters. I would really like to see medium- to heavy-lift helicopters there. We will always have to travel by road, because one of our remits is to be out there with the population, but just having those helicopters would allow us in many cases to not expose our troops to unnecessary risks.

The third one, I would say, is surveillance. That's an air-land combination: how do I see over the next hill better, faster, smarter?

Thank you, Madam.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

Thank you, General, and thank you, Ms. Black.

We'll go to Mr. Calkins.

Cheryl, would you be sharing time with...?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I want to, if there's time left over.