Scorpion, AVGP Cougar, other light AFV alternatives and Cold War tanks of Canada (From: TAPV thread)

[Colin Parkinson]

Canada was not the only country that went with a system like the Cougar, Australia did the same with the Saladin turret and the Scorpion turret on M113. The French built purpose designed armoured cars with large calibre guns and of course the Saladin by the brits.

 

[GK .Dundas]

Canada was not the only country that went with a system like the Cougar, Australia did the same with the Saladin turret and the Scorpion turret on M113. The French built purpose designed armoured cars with large calibre guns and of course the Saladin by the brits.

I always wondered what would have happened and we gone thru with the Scorpion purchase in 74 and the the Leo C I purchase . would we have formed light armour regiments  or cascaded some down to the reserves .
As I recall it was at roughly the same time the reserve armor regiments were getting the Lynx to work with .

 

[Eland2]

I always wondered what would have happened and we gone thru with the Scorpion purchase in 74 and the the Leo C I purchase . would we have formed light armour regiments  or cascaded some down to the reserves .
As I recall it was at roughly the same time the reserve armor regiments were getting the Lynx to work with .

That would have been an interesting scenario. I suspect that the Scorpions would have been used mainly for recce, possibly airfield defence and flank screening, in the same way that the British used theirs.

I agree that they could have been deployed in sabre-type units and used to provide fire support for assault troops - in effect light armoured cavalry. Although doctrinally speaking, the Canadian Army at that time wasn't configured to employ such units so new ones would have needed to be created, or perhaps formed as specialized squadrons within existing armoured regiments.

When I was serving in an armoured recce unit about 36 years ago, I remember asking one of the troop officers why he didn't think Canada would get the Scorpion instead of the Cougar. His answer was that the balance of payments with the UK was too high at the time, although I think the real answer was that the military wanted to gain a fire-support/recce capability within a family of wheeled vehicles to save on operational and maintenance costs, and the government wanted the vehicles to be mostly built in Canada using mostly Canadian-derived components.

Even if GM Diesel Canada, the original builders of the AVGP series of vehicles could have built Scorpions under licence from Alvis, they didn't seem to be set up for, or have any experience in building tracked weapons platforms.

If they had been so equipped, it's possible that the wheeled AVGP programme would have been abandoned and the army would have gotten Scorpions and Spartan APCs (also based on the Scorpion platform) instead, and possibly repair/recovery, CP, and ambulance variants.

 

[Old Sweat]

I graduated from Staff College in 1971 and was posted to DG Plans in CFHQ. As I recall the White Paper on Defence, "Defence in the Seventies" announced the land force was going to go to a light recce role in Europe. The plan was to buy the Scorpion but it foundered because the Brits would not allow us to manufacture the 76mm ammunition and, maybe, spares in Canada.

At the time we had two squadrons of Centurions in CFE and a third in Gagetown, plus a bunch in stores. The third squadron and the war reserve tanks were kept in CFE and I think we had a plan to flyover a third squadron in time of crisis.

I am not armour and I am recalling events of 46 years ago, so I may have details wrong, but my memory is pretty good. 

 

[GK .Dundas]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Treasury Board supposeably cancelled the project rough 24 hours before it was due to be signed  over some niggling  little detail. This left the Brits furious

 

[TCBF]

- Scorpion et al would have been a nightmare. As it was, we were effectively cut off for Cougar turret parts when England went on strike (again), or so were told... then, in 1980, all of these turret parts started showing up with the stuff marked "ROC - Iran Only".
The Brits weren't on strike, they merely valued their Iranian customers over their Canadian customers. Once Iran deposed the Shah, all of those parts became available to us. Sure felt nice to be so highly valued by our former colonial masters.

 

[GK .Dundas]

The story behind  the adoption of and the cancellation of the Scorpion .
http://canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/last-minute-cancellation-canada-and-the-scorpion-by-frank-maas/

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I graduated from Staff College in 1971 and was posted to DG Plans in CFHQ. As I recall the White Paper on Defence, "Defence in the Seventies" announced the land force was going to go to a light recce role in Europe. The plan was to buy the Scorpion but it foundered because the Brits would not allow us to manufacture the 76mm ammunition and, maybe, spares in Canada.

At the time we had two squadrons of Centurions in CFE and a third in Gagetown, plus a bunch in stores. The third squadron and the war reserve tanks were kept in CFE and I think we had a plan to flyover a third squadron in time of crisis.

I am not armour and I am recalling events of 46 years ago, so I may have details wrong, but my memory is pretty good.

OS,
I was there on Centurions at the time. If we had a spare Sqn and war reserve Centurions in CFE, it was the best kept secret in NATO. I don't recall anyone ever talking about them or where they could have been. I'm pretty sure we would have had a maintenance crew, from the Regiment, to do periodic maintenance also, but we didn't.

Perhaps my memory is not as good as yours. Being a young single Cpl, and the DM hovering over 3DM\CAD, I may have missed a couple of years :blotto:

 

[Old Sweat]

OS,
I was there on Centurions at the time. If we had a spare Sqn and war reserve Centurions in CFE, it was the best kept secret in NATO. I don't recall anyone ever talking about them or where they could have been. I'm pretty sure we would have had a maintenance crew, from the Regiment, to do periodic maintenance also, but we didn't.

Perhaps my memory is not as good as yours. Being a young single Cpl, and the DM hovering over 3DM\CAD, I may have missed a couple of years :blotto:

Thinking back to my time in HQ 4 CIBG in the mid-sixties, we had something like 75 Centurions in Europe. The armoured regiment had three squadrons plus the ones in RHQ and the rest (about a squadrons worth) were in storage in a Brit Depot to be fed into the Canadian component of the British armoured delivery system in wartime. (I was responsible for keeping an eye on operational equipment, both issued and in the replacement system, and monitored the upgrading of the Centurions to Mk XV or something akin.)

With the move south, they were moved somewhere, and were available along with the ones made surplus by the regiment's downsizing for issue in time of crisis. Leaping ahead to the late-80s, FMC came up with a plan for a division in Europe including two armoured regiments, each of about 32 Leopards using the tanks for the 4 CMBG regiment and the replacement ones in reserve.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but that's how I recall at least part of the issue.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Thinking back to my time in HQ 4 CIBG in the mid-sixties, we had something like 75 Centurions in Europe. The armoured regiment had three squadrons plus the ones in RHQ and the rest (about a squadrons worth) were in storage in a Brit Depot to be fed into the Canadian component of the British armoured delivery system in wartime. (I was responsible for keeping an eye on operational equipment, both issued and in the replacement system, and monitored the upgrading of the Centurions to Mk XV or something akin.)

With the move south, they were moved somewhere, and were available along with the ones made surplus by the regiment's downsizing for issue in time of crisis. Leaping ahead to the late-80s, FMC came up with a plan for a division in Europe including two armoured regiments, each of about 32 Leopards using the tanks for the 4 CMBG regiment and the replacement ones in reserve.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but that's how I recall at least part of the issue.

Thanks OS, I learned something new today. 40 some odd years after the fact, but new to me anyway.

 

[George Wallace]

Thanks OS, I learned something new today. 40 some odd years after the fact, but new to me anyway.

Not necessarily your memory, but the access to information you may have had at the time.  Even our most well known "historians" have made errors in their written publications, so the faulty memories of us paisans who were there shouldn't be faulted.  ;D

 

[Eland2]

Given the history of Canada's ill-fated attempt to acquire the Scorpion, it's a wonder we even managed to get the Scorpion turrets for the Cougar WFSV programme. It was also interesting to learn that General JA Dextraze ultimately put the kibosh on the Scorpion project so the army could keep its existing Centurions just a little longer. I get the feeling now that if it wasn't for him digging in his heels, Canada might not have any tanks at all today.

 

[TCBF]

- We had over 350 Centurians. Original plans called for 850, but we never bought the additional 500. The crunch came in 1970. We lost 3 Brigade and the RCD in Gagetown were no more, to rebadge the Strathconas in Germany to RCD and move south. The FGH parked their tanks in Wainwright then rebadged to Strathconas in Calgary. The Hussars in Petawawa parked their remaining Centurians. One squadron plus was retained in Gagetown and designated the flyover sqn for Lahr, to flush them to three sqns when needed.

- We bought 114 Leopard C1 'gun' tanks (vice AVLB, ARV, Badger, etc) to replace 350 + Centurians.

 

[MilEME09]

To which we then bought 100 Leopard 2's from the Netherlands, 15 from German for spares, and 12 from Switzerland to be converted to support vehicles. That is a total of 127 hulls, how many of those 100 are actually at units right now I have no idea, but it follows the trend of doing more with less, at least with the leopard we pulled off a 1 for 1 if you include the spares.

 

[George Wallace]

To which we then bought 100 Leopard 2's from the Netherlands, 15 from German for spares, and 12 from Switzerland to be converted to support vehicles. That is a total of 127 hulls, how many of those 100 are actually at units right now I have no idea, but it follows the trend of doing more with less, at least with the leopard we pulled off a 1 for 1 if you include the spares.

Just a question on your 1 for 1 statement: are you referring to 1 for 1 replacement of the 128 Leopard 1 C1's that had already been deemed obsolete and retired, or going further back to replacement of the over 300 Centurions?  The trend I have noticed in ALL our procurement and 'Replacement' programs is exactly as you allude to; what is being replaced is being replaced by half the number.  We have seen it in most of our vehicle fleets, our aircraft, and ships.  Eventually the point will come where "Less is not better", no matter how advanced and capable that equipment is.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

It's always been something like 1 for 2 or 1 for 3 in every major purchase I have seen, which then makes something like a truck take on a value far greater than it should. For a military soft skinned vehicles need to be considered almost disposable, certain in any real fight you are going to lose a lot of them from breakdown, abandonment, enemy fire, accidents. In fact we should have had continuous replacement for our vehicles based on a maximum 15 year cycle.
AFV's need something similar, except of course the costs are much higher, so a major rebuild program should have been put into place, where you buy more than the bare minimum and then keep some in reserve, as each vehicle reaches age/hours run it goes into the renewal cycle and a replacement is released. This would reduce vehicle downtime, maintain expertise on AFV major repair, maintain part supplies and allow flexibility to deal with unexpected needs like deployments or key vehicle major failures. The LAV would be an excellent candidate for the above. 

 

[Danjanou]

The downward spiral is evident at least in regards to tanks.  In 1945 we had 14 "Tank" regiments on establishment (in 4 brigades)each with about 50+ Tanks ( Sherman Vcs mainly) per Regiment not including OP tanks light tanks etc. So say 700+ Tanks.

We exchanged this for 350 Centurions, half the number. We exchanged these for 128 Leopard 1s again half the present number and if memory serves if Afghanistan hadn't shown the need for a MBT, the plan was to replace the Leopards with 66 odd wheeled mobile gun systems, againd dwonsizing by half.  :

 

[George Wallace]

Once again, the point has to be made; that land vehicles, F and B vehicles, have to move to stay functional.  Idle vehicles mean that seals dry out, rust takes hold, and other problems with POL products degrading happen.  Long term storage of a "War Stock" is expensive and creates delays to 'recondition' and repair the vehicles so that they can be returned to active service.  The current program that the CAF implemented of rotating vehicles from unit/sub-unit to unit/sub-unit adds to the mix of problems of keeping vehicles in good working condition.  I won't even get into the problems in the Supply Chain when we operate 'mixed' fleets. 

We need fleets that can move our troops, and fleets that our troops can fight in; and those fleets have to be kept active. 


Danjanou

The day will come when we are left with one Jedi and a Light Sabre.

 

[Bzzliteyr]

Once again, the point has to be made; that land vehicles, F and B vehicles, have to move to stay functional.  Idle vehicles mean that seals dry out, rust takes hold, and other problems with POL products degrading happen.  Long term storage of a "War Stock" is expensive and creates delays to 'recondition' and repair the vehicles so that they can be returned to active service.  The current program that the CAF implemented of rotating vehicles from unit/sub-unit to unit/sub-unit adds to the mix of problems of keeping vehicles in good working condition.  I won't even get into the problems in the Supply Chain when we operate 'mixed' fleets. 

We need fleets that can move our troops, and fleets that our troops can fight in; and those fleets have to be kept active. 


Danjanou

The day will come when we are left with one Jedi and a Light Sabre.

But no batteries for that light sabre because the civilian contractor we hired to deliver them is on strike.

 

[Danjanou]

Danjanou

The day will come when we are left with one Jedi and a Light Sabre.

And follwoing my logic along the way the 66 MGS would have been replaced with 30 of these bad boys  ;D