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« on: May 08, 2008, 06:29:38 AM » |
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Afghan war challenging military's supply chain, AG says
Mike Blanchfield
Canwest News Service
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
OTTAWA - Supplying Canada's war effort in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has been hampered by delays in shipping everything from spare parts for battered vehicles to medical devices to help heal wounded soldiers, according to Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
Along the way, the Canadian Forces have also lost track of $7 million worth of inventory that somehow managed to reach Kandahar Airfield, but has since disappeared in the maze of metal shipping containers that are stacked like children's building blocks across the base.
The weaknesses in the supply chain were highlighted in an audit conducted at Kandahar Airfield in July 2007. While commanders complained about the shortages and delays, they also made clear that the military was successfully scrambling to keep up with its war-zone demands.
"So far the military has been able to adapt and adjust so that operations have not been significantly affected," Fraser reported Tuesday. "But unless the problems we found can be resolved, National Defence could have increasing difficulty supporting the mission."
The military has compensated by tripling support staff between May 2006 and July 2007 to more than 900 personnel. That also included a renewed reliance on civilian contractors, which also tripled between November 2006 and July 2007 to 266 from 95.
The Defence Department has responded to the audit by pledging to do more to track its vast supply shipments and better manage the replenishment of essential stocks.
The Forces rely on a fleet of commercially chartered cargo planes to deliver 85 tonnes of supplies per week. Some weeks, that has meant using up to nine chartered flights, mainly Russian-built heavy lifters, to bring in supplies and to bring home battered armoured vehicles for repair in Canada.
The chartered planes were needed because Canada's fleet of A310 Airbuses and ageing short-haul C-130 Hercules aircraft could not fully meet the demand. The audit was done before Canada took delivery of its first new C-17 Boeing Globemaster long-haul cargo planes.
"At the time of our visit to Kandahar Airfield, the supply system showed that 3,467 requisitions were outstanding, of which 61 per cent were already past the required delivery date," the audit stated.
The average delivery of supplies is supposed to take 10 to 20 days, but half of them failed to reach Kandahar in that time.
There have been significant delays in finding spare parts to repair armoured vehicles that have been pressed into service to counter the rising threat of roadside bombs, the leading killer of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
Between December 2006 and October 2007, of the major combat equipment sidelined for repairs, two-thirds were stuck in the shop waiting on parts from outside Afghanistan. Three new Nyala armoured vehicles had to be shipped back to Canada because repair parts could not be found. A landmine detection vehicle system was also shelved in 2006 for more than year because it not repairable.
In some cases, mechanics improvised in a time-honoured military tradition - they cannibalized parts from other vehicles to make repairs.
Meanwhile, the multinational field hospital, led by Canada, had to cope with a rising caseload in 2006, the year the current Taliban insurgency returned to Afghanistan with renewed force.
At time, the hospital ran "critically low" on some supplies, the audit found.
Meanwhile, Canada was forced to make up for a shortfall in medical personnel by recruiting civilian doctors. Between May 2006 and July 2007, health support personnel more than doubled to 175 from 70.
The audit also highlighted a new medical phenomenon of 21st-century war: because of advances in body armour, helmets and goggles, the hospital is contending with rising injuries to arms and legs.
That has driven up demand for surgical pins to fix bone fractures - a demand the Forces have been scrambling to meet.
In April 2006, the military recognized the growing need for pins and started to look for a supplier. In October 2006, they signed a deal to purchase up to $40,000 in pins without going through formal approvals every time.
But in the intervening six months, the Forces found they needed more than $400,000 worth of surgical items, and the first items did not arrive in Kandahar until November 2006 - seven months after the need was first identified.
Ottawa Citizen
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