DND looks to buy more roadside bomb detection vehicles

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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - National Defence is looking to buy more specialized armoured vehicles to detect roadside bombs, the biggest scourge facing troops in Afghanistan, The Canadian Press has learned.

The army is drawing up a proposal to purchase as many as 30 vehicles for both overseas and training duty, say senior Defence sources in Ottawa.

The Expedient Route Opening Capability system -- known by its acronym EROC -- involves three vehicles working in tandem to sweep roadways before the arrival of combat or supply convoys.

Defence sources, who spoke on the condition of not being named, said last week that the proposal involves buying 10 more EROC sets sometime in the near future.

The Canadian army already has five sets -- or 15 trucks in total -- that were purchased from the U.S. Marine Corps last spring. It will not say how many of them are deployed in Afghanistan.

The plan for additional mine clearance vehicles is being drawn up by the army's land staff division, but has yet to be approved by the Conservative government.

"We haven't gone to government to ask permission yet, but it's one of those things we're going to have to do," the source said.

The purchase is expected to cost about $60 million.

Parliament's extension of the mission until 2011 has sent military planners into an inventory frenzy, trying to determine what equipment needs replacing, upgrading, or augmentation in order to carry on.

The vast majority of the 82 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan have died in roadside bombings -- or improvised explosive device (IED) attacks.

Field engineers, who operate the EROC vehicles, gave the proposal an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

"The IED threat in Kandahar is great," said Capt. Rob Horton, 35, operations officer of 12 Field Squadron, based in Edmonton. "And if we are going to put a vehicle on the road and the vehicle affords our operators blast protection from Point A to Point B and potentially (explode) an IED and not get seriously injured, that is something we are interested in."

Sgt. Tim McCormick, 37, recently led a team of eight engineers down a particularly dodgy stretch of road when their Buffalo struck a powerful roadside bomb.

A few months ago, he survived a smaller blast in a LAV III armoured vehicle, which combat engineers drove before the specialized trucks were purchased.

When McCormick recently hit the second bigger bomb, the first thought that went through his mind was: "Grab the seat!"

Once things settled down he jumped out and went looking for other mines "as if nothing had happened."

McCormick was skeptical of the vehicles at first, partly because they seem to take forever to get anywhere, but the bomb strike made him a convert.

"They save lives, they increase the confidence level of the troops doing this stuff and it makes it easier to screw off the IEDs that've been planted for us to step on," said McCormick, 37, who is based in Edmonton.

He then added at the end of the interview: "They need to buy more vehicles and they should stop thinking about it."