I'll just start off, if I might, Mr. Chairman.
Any piece of military equipment put out there is a compromise of a number of factors: protection, mobility, power, its firepower. It's always a compromise of all of these characteristics of a vehicle. The Nyala is a great vehicle. And we realized, because of how the mission was evolving, that we needed to provide a more heavily armoured car than we initially had with the G-wagon or the jeep that we had in theatre, which were armour-protected but didn't have sufficient protection.
On the market at the time, the Nyala, the RG-31, was out there. It was designed more specifically for road work. Well, in the Kandahar area there aren't a lot of roads, so it's going over some pretty tough terrain. Also, it's a vehicle that we fielded pretty quickly, because we needed it out there. That vehicle has saved a lot of lives, and we've learned a lot about how it is to be employed, and the drivers have learned what they can put it through. That put a lot of strain on the vehicle.
Because the vehicle is so popular, a lot of our allies have lined up at the manufacturer to buy it as well, so all of the parts are actually not going for spares, but to the manufacturing of original equipment. So therein lies the challenge. At the same time, the manufacturer is learning about its vehicle and producing better variants of that vehicle.
I will turn this over to General Grant, who, as the commander on the ground at the time, received those vehicles and put them into theatre.