In 2003, the Canadian government made the controversial decision to remove from service all 66 of the Canadian army’s Leopard C2 tanks—local variants of the German-designed Leopard 1A5.
Three years later in September 2006, a Canadian force riding in wheeled light armored vehicles blundered into a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.
Intersecting rocket- and gunfire laced the vehicles. Of the 50 Canadians in the fight, four were killed and at least 10 were wounded. The outgunned Canadians called in a NATO warplane, but the crew accidentally dropped a thousand-pound bomb practically on top of the same troops it was supposed to be saving.
