$500,000 worth of artillery shells lost by Canadian Army in Afghanistan pullout

The Canadian Army somehow lost three highly sophisticated, precision-guided artillery shells on its way out of Afghanistan in an embarrassing case that resulted in a two-year investigation.

Known as Excalibur rounds, the 155-millimetre ammunition could not be accounted for as the army withdrew from Kandahar in late 2011.

Newly released records obtained by The Canadian Press show that defence officials at first thought as many as five shells were missing. That number was reduced to three when it was realized paperwork had been filed twice.

The shells come with a price tag of $177,224 (U.S.) per round. Both the country’s overseas command and military police conducted extensive investigations, but never located the ammunition.

Defence officials requested last summer that the loss of more than $513,000 be written off the govern- ment’s books. The request was approved, the documents show.

What happened to the ammunition remains a mystery.

“Although theft is a possibility, given physical size and weight of the ammunition and the tight ammunition security measures that were in place in theatre, theft is highly unlikely,” said a July 18, 2014 briefing to the country’s joint operations commander.

The loss has international repercussions because the U.S. technology is governed by International Traffic in Arms Regulation. It had to be reported to National Defence’s Controlled Technology Access and Transfer (CTAT) office.

Regulations require that CTAT must be notified within 48 hours of a piece of technology going missing, but the army delayed reporting it for over 15 months, saying that given the “protocols in place to fire an Excalibur round, it was a belief that this was a paperwork error only.”