Helicopters would cut Afghan toll, Ottawa told

Military taking casualties in Kandahar as combat bases must be supplied by road

GRAEME SMITH AND GLORIA GALLOWAY, Globe & Mail, 22 Jun 06

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN, and OTTAWA — Soldiers would be less likely to be killed or maimed by insurgents if helicopters were used to supply bases instead of increasingly dangerous convoys through hostile territory, a Canadian military spokesman said yesterday after a series of bloody attacks in Afghanistan.

"If we are going to be using vehicles on the ground to bring goods, to bring supplies to our forward operating bases, yes, it's problematic, because you're more exposed to IEDs as opposed to using a Chinook," Major Mario Couture said yesterday.

"No doubt, it would be a nice piece of equipment to have."

Six Canadian soldiers were injured by Taliban bombs yesterday and four of those casualties fit a pattern all too familiar to the troops: A supply convoy was returning to base from the Gumbad Platoon House, about 75 kilometres north of Kandahar, when a LAV-3 armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb around 8 a.m. It was the seventh explosion on the routes near Gumbad since Canadians moved into the base this year, including a blast in April that killed four soldiers, the worst one-day toll for the Canadian military since the Korean War.

General Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff, agreed that a reliable fleet of medium- or heavy-lift helicopters might save military lives in Afghanistan, but Canada doesn't own that kind of equipment.

"We don't have the kind of workhorse you need in an environment like that," Gen. Hillier told reporters after addressing a Senate committee.

"You have to have a helicopter that can lift off from a high altitude during hot temperatures and that's a pretty onerous and difficult thing for any rotary-wing aircraft to be able to do," he said.

"You have to carry a big load, you've got to be able to fly at least a hundred kilometres or so, and you've got to be able to do that . . . day and night."

When the Canadian military embarked on the Afghanistan mission, Gen. Hillier said, it looked at its Griffins and Sea King helicopters and decided they would be either ineffective or too difficult to maintain. So Canadian forces use helicopters owned by other members of the coalition.

Ottawa is set to unveil its largest military procurement package in a decade. While the package is expected to include the new aircraft to replace the aging fleet of Hercules, it's possible that medium-lift helicopters like the Chinook, something Gen. Hillier identified as a priority more than a year ago, will be part of the purchase of new military hardware.

If the helicopters are on the list, it would be inefficient to purchase fewer than eight of them so it is anticipated that Canada would move to acquire at least a dozen.

It would take 30 months to build and deliver a Chinook.

Brigadier-General Dave Fraser, the Canadian commander of the multinational brigade in Afghanistan, uses borrowed helicopters whenever possible to ferry troops and supplies to the theatres of action, Gen. Hillier said. Those arrangements are at the discretion of U.S. forces.

"If we had our own helicopters, possibly we could do more of that," he said ". . . Certainly it would enable the operation, without question."

Canadian military commanders had been warning that more violence was likely this summer after last week's launch of operation Mountain Thrust, the largest offensive against Taliban insurgents since the U.S. invasion of 2001. The troops got their first taste of strong resistance as militants launched four successive strikes against Canadian convoys in less than 24 hours.

The worst of yesterday's attacks was a suicide car bomb last night near the city's main jail. Two Canadian soldiers were injured, along with an Afghan policeman and six others. One civilian was killed.

The G-Wagon had been part of a convoy returning to base from the volatile Panjwai district along Highway 1. Just 20 kilometres west, along the same highway, insurgents had ambushed another Canadian convoy around 10:45 p.m. Tuesday. A brief gun battle left no Canadians hurt and no Taliban were reported killed.

Troops have grown wary of the six-hour drive to the Gumbad base, a rented farmhouse nicknamed the Red Devil Inn. Explosions have hit seven convoys near Gumbad since Alpha Company moved into the platoon house in early February.

The first attacks along the Gumbad route caused little damage to the Canadian vehicles: A bomb on Feb. 9 inflicted only concussions and bruises, and a March 10 explosion had similarly negligible results.

But another bomb on April 22, apparently triggered by remote control to hit a comparatively thin-skinned G-Wagon, killed four soldiers. Corporal Matthew Dinning, Bombardier Myles Mansell and Lieutenant William Turner were killed immediately. Corporal Randy Payne died at hospital in Kandahar.

The attacks continued to escalate with the bombing of a LAV-3 vehicle on May 25. No soldiers died that day, but the powerful blast injured five soldiers and a military interpreter. The $3-million LAV was so badly damaged that soldiers were forced to blow it up to avoid letting the crippled troop carrier be captured by the insurgents.

Despite the spate of violence, Canadians escaped several dangerous situations yesterday. A Bison troop carrier flipped over on rough terrain about 1:30 a.m., leaving two soldiers with bumps and bruises but healthy enough that they're expected to return to work soon. At about 6 a.m., another roadside bomb hit a LAV-3 armoured vehicle about 60 kilometres northwest of Kandahar city, near the city of Ghorak. The LAV was disabled, but nobody was hurt.

"We've put a lot of pressure on these people, and this is a push back we've felt today," Major Couture said.

"Today was definitely a bad day for us, but you know what? At the end of the day, none of our Canadian soldiers died," he added. "It's a testament to our equipment that again came to the rescue of our soldiers and made the difference between life and death."