25 July 2012
Updated 20 September 2012
DND’s Close Combat Vehicle Project is off the rails,
again. The vehicle that DND would really
like to have as a CCV, the new German Puma,
was not offered in recent rounds of solicitation, and the project stalled
between October 2011 and May 2012. It
was a reset again in September, 2012.
Without the Puma on offer, the
CCV project has been thrown into confusion.
The first CCVs were to be fielded in December, 2012.
The failures in the project arise from three deep-seated
problems. The first is that many
military writers live in a mad-hatter world where words mean what they want
them to mean whenever they want them to mean it. The second is that, as a customer, the
government of Canada is known to be fickle and cheap. The third is that there is no distinctive
purpose for the CCV in Army doctrine.
There is nothing wrong with living in a mad-hatter world
until one has to communicate with others.
Then, the meaning of words does matter.
The terms “Armoured Personnel Carrier” (APC) and “Infantry Fighting
Vehicle” (IFV) are well known in the defense world. A “Close Combat Vehicle” (CCV) is a strictly
Canadian term whose meaning was left deliberately vague.
The first APC was invented by none other than Canada’s LGen
Guy Simonds, who had the turret removed from the chassis of the Sherman tank,
creating space for troops. The classic
example of an APC is the M-113, still in service around the world. The first IFV was the Russian BMP-1, which
came out in the later 1960s. The
Americans matched the BMP series with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which was
first used in combat in the 1991 Gulf War.
The Bradley reputedly destroyed more Iraqi T-72 tanks than the M1A1 Abrams
tank did, thanks to the TOW missiles the Bradley carried.
Canada’s procurement specialists, when soliciting proposals
for the new vehicle, sowed confusion when they persisted in using the term CCV,
describing it as a IFV in the non-operative
parts of the solicitation. The first
proposal for the CCV Project, released on April 26, 2010, and revised June 4,
2010, operatively defined the required vehicle as: “The CCV will provide a high
level of crew protection incorporating mine blast resistance and protection
against both improvised explosive devices (IED) and ballistic threats. The CCV will incorporate a protected main
weapon station to engage and defeat the enemy.”
If you add the non-operative criterion that the vehicle
weigh between 25 and 45 tons, the Sherman tank, which weighed 35 tons, met the
description of a CCV perfectly. The crew of the Sherman was well protected,
and the tank had a 75 mm main gun, a co-ax .30 cal, a hull .30 cal, and a
turret mounted .50 cal. About a section
of infantry, in addition, could be carried on
the Sherman, placing the tank between mines and the troops.
Unsurprisingly, all the original CCV submissions were
rejected, and a new solicitation of interest and qualification for a CCV was
issued on August 26, 2010. That
solicitation operatively defined the vehicle as: “The CCV must be an
integrated, supportable, existing or upgraded version of a Military
Off-The-Shelf Base Vehicle and MOTS turret, each of which is in production for
and/or service with another military recognized by DND….” This definition eliminates a Somali technical
in virtue of the fact that a Toyota pick-up truck is not deemed MOTS, the
Technical lacks a turret, and the Somali militias are not recognized by DND.
It is only in the non-operative background information,
which says that the vehicle should weigh between 25 – 45 tons, and that some
vehicles will be used in an IFV role, that one gains a clue as to what the
solicitations are driving at.
But the background information confuses things when it says
“…able to deliver a combat ready Canadian Army infantry section in close combat,
while operating in intimate support of CF tanks.” Well, what is operating in intimate support of tanks: an eight man infantry
section or the CCV? That is the
distinction between an APC and an IFV!
And what’s this business about tanks?
The current Canadian Army operating doctrine, adopted in
2007, is Land Operations 2021: Adaptive
Dispersed Operations. In it, an overseas deployed Canadian battle-group is
defined to be “medium weight.” Since the
upper limit on “medium weight” is 45 tons, and a Leopard 2 weighs 65 tons, the
term “medium weight” is a euphemism for “without tanks.” The euphemism for “without tanks” is repeated
in the 2011 Land Operations 2021 publication Designing Canada’s Army of Tomorrow. Regardless of actual practise, this means that
the tactical folks are planning for another Afghanistan deployment without
tanks. Therefore this new CCV may (or may not!) have to make up for that lack
of firepower and armoured protection.
The potential suppliers of such vehicles are sophisticated enough
to see the confusion and contradictory statements of the Canadian
solicitations. They are playing things
close to the vest for fear of getting burned.
That is why nothing is going forward despite smoke and handwaving in
Ottawa. Nor will it unless the
government decides to go single-source.
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