OTTAWA - At the height of fierce fighting in Afghanistan last summer, more than a quarter of Canada's new fleet of heavily armoured RG-31 Nyala patrol vehicles were in the shop with maintenance problems, army records show.
The sturdy South African-built trucks, which resemble a sport utility vehicle on steroids, were beset with a series of electrical and software glitches, many relating to the roof-mounted, remote-controlled machine gun.
The former director of the Nyala project at National Defence says the army aims to have 95 per cent availability for its fighting vehicles.
"We were running into a couple of systemic problems,'' Mike Moggridge, who recently stepped down as program manager, said in an interview.
"We do our best to provide the best performance. The only thing worse than trying to introduce a new piece of equipment into theatre during an operation is not to deliver that capability at all.''
Over the last 18 months, Canada has purchased 75 Nyalas at a cost of about $91 million. The big-wheeled trucks were hurried into service as the threat of Taliban roadside bombs became more intense.
Moggridge said none of the faults were a safety concern for soldiers, most of whom like the RG-31 for the protection it affords against improvised explosives.
The V-shaped hull deflects the force of mine blasts away from the vehicle and its occupants.
The head of the army, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, told troops in Kandahar two weeks ago that continuous clashes with the Taliban along the kidney-busting Afghan trails were taking an unexpectedly harsh toll on LAV IIIs, Bisons and Nyalas.
The wear and tear of fighting did sideline one or two vehicles last year.
But Nyala maintenance logs, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, show the vehicles arrived with a series of minor defects.
The first 50 vehicles rolled into the war zone with 100 amp alternators, which were "quickly cooked every time soldiers turned on jamming equipment,'' meant to foil improvised attacks, said Moggridge.
The alternators could not handle the combined load of the remote-controlled machine gun system, newly installed Canadian radios and the jammers. Eventually the electrical system was upgraded to handle 280 amps.
In addition, a software glitch in the remote weapons system caused the roof-mounted machine to jam, a fault that could only be corrected by the crew climbing outside of the vehicle to clear the chamber manually. Once again, army mechanics devised a fix.
Between mid-June and mid-July last year, 13 of the 50 Nyalas -- some with as few as 550 kilometres on them -- were deemed "non-mission capable'' by the army.
"Yes, that is high and in my mind unacceptable,'' Moggridge said.
The ratio has since improved, with only one or two of the current complement of 75 RG-31s down for maintenance at any time, he said.
Currently most of the issues faced by mechanics involve battle damage, or wear and tear.
The front axles on at least 10 vehicles have been replaced, at a cost of roughly $500,000, because drivers are taking speed bumps at 70 kilometres an hour.
"If you figure somebody has a remote-control detonator, and that speed bump is the likely time they're going to do it, the guys are taking those kind of bumps at high speed,'' said Moggridge.
Barney O'Kelly, a spokesman for BAE Systems Inc., the British defence giant that manufacturers the Nyalas under a South African subsidiary, said countries that have purchased the Nyala have been satisfied.
"The feedback has been superb,'' he said in a recent interview. "It's become a very important land vehicle for armed forces around the world.''
O'Kelly denied there were teething pains and said the problems encountered by Canadians had more to do with the way the vehicle was being driven and the kinds of missions where it was used.
Unlike other new armoured vehicles, which go through eight-month shakedown trials, the RG-31 went straight from the assembly line to the bomb-laced streets of Kandahar.
Moggridge said the absence of a trial period meant potential bugs had to be worked out in the field.
It was a battlefield necessity as it became clear to the army in late 2005 that it would need a better protected patrol vehicle than the lightly armoured Mercedes G-Wagon.
The procurement of the Nyala broke speed records at the Defence Department, going from request to field delivery in five months.
"Our motto on this project was: schedule is king, lives depend on it,'' said Moggridge.
