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Posted on 11/19/2003 5:11:35 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
CAMP UDAIRI, Kuwait - Pfc. Gerard Minnitto normally packs a light machine gun, but these days the Stryker brigade infantryman from Tacoma is turning a wrench.
He's among the soldiers and General Dynamics contractors working around the clock to bolt slat armor onto the brigade's fleet of more than 300 Strykers before they move up into Iraq.
The armor - each looking like a great green cage - is meant to protect the $2 million vehicles and the soldiers inside from rocket-propelled grenades. The inexpensive shoulder-fired RPGs are ubiquitous in Iraq and have killed dozens of U.S. troops.
Naturally, Minnitto and his buddies hope the awkward-looking steel contraptions will do the trick, absorbing the worst of the RPGs like a catcher's mask does a baseball. They're optimistic, although a bit skeptical.
And when you get right down to it, there's only one way to find out for sure.
"When I see the first time an RPG hits it," the Mount Tahoma High School graduate said, "then I'll know whether it works."
The idea behind the cage armor goes back at least to his days in Vietnam, said John Funk, the General Dynamics logistics support manager. Troops in that war improvised with chicken wire and other means to counter the RPG threat.
The idea is to detonate the grenade away from the vehicle and prevent its hot chemical reaction from boring through and causing burns, shock and shrapnel wounds.
The Army is working with General Dynamics, the Stryker manufacturer, on a kind of plate armor that will defeat RPGs. But that's not due until the Army develops the third of its six planned Stryker brigades in 2005.
The Army and the contractor have been working on the interim slat armor solution for about nine months, said Maj. Todd Thomas from the Stryker program management office at the U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Command in Warren, Mich.
Thomas has deployed to Kuwait with the brigade and will go north with it to Iraq, where he will work out of a repair and maintenance yard.
So will about 50 of the 100 or so General Dynamics mechanics who are working with about 50 Stryker soldiers to prepare the vehicles for combat duty. For now, they're set up in two new "sprung shelters" - big bubble hangars with room to comfortably fit eight Strykers each.
The work, which began last week, ought to take about 14 days, Thomas said. He doesn't know how much the additional armor cost to develop and install.
The soldiers are mostly infantrymen like Minnitto, temporarily assigned to the slat armor detail.
"It sounds good to me," said Pfc. Gabriel Deroo, a light machine gunner from Paw Paw, Mich. "I mean, any extra armor is good."
Spc. Rod "Buster" Potter, a Stryker vehicle commander from Caldwell, Idaho, said he gets the concept behind the armor. But he said he'd feel better if he'd seen a live test demonstration or a video of the slats in action.
Thomas said the armor has been tested.
"They did test it, and it did very well in testing," he said. "We have a high sense of confidence."
The extra armor weighs about 5,200 pounds, [emphasis Cannoneer No. 4's] about 3,000 pounds lighter than the add-on anti-RPG armor that's under development for later Stryker brigades, said Howard Warner, another official with the General Dynamics logistics support team.
Soldiers said they figure the heavy armor cages, sticking a foot and a half off the front, rear and sides, may cut into the Stryker's speed and maneuverability.
But they recounted an incident from their last training exercise before they left Fort Lewis in which a Stryker hit a ditch and was saved from rolling over by the bulky slat cage.
And while some think the cage is ugly, Potter said he thinks it might help discourage adversaries in Iraq.
"I think it looks intimidating," he said.
Ugly. Intimidating. Whatever.
"I don't care what it looks like," said Pvt. Joshua Blankenship, "as long as it keeps us safe."
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com
(Published 12:01AM, November 19th, 2003)
If anybody would have a pic of such, I expect it would be you.
Nah, I don't always have the pics, but I sometimes know where to look. In this case, I'll give the JED armored vehicle ID and info sight a look and see what they've got. Besides BTRs.
-archy-/-
[/sarcasm]
That's what scares me. The loss of knowledge between wars is a hemmorage FYI.
The USMC ran FT17s in tinsien China in 1927 and a Col Serenno Brett ran a mixed platoon of light and heavy tanks in Panama for the army during the same period....And the info was lost. We need to trap that info and nail it down.
When I was researching for TANK ACES, I quickly found out that everything we had to learn in Vietnam about jungle tanking was learnt in Bataan and Guadalcanal in 42....And in Panama in 1926.
The problem is institutional memory. The ONLY source available to modern soldiers is personal memoirs. "Tank Sergeant" has been carried in tankers' pockets in Mogadishu, etc.
There has GOT to be a better way
Time marches on. The only people still on active duty are generals and a handful of crusty CWO's and National Guard and Reserve guys who have been called up. 1972 was 31 years ago. Nam vets are as rare now as WW II vets were when I came in.
The Stryker Brigade Combat Team Tactical Studies Group (Chairborne) is evolving into a forum where guys who have been there and done that can tell the rest of us about it. These posts are being read in the Pentagon, at General Dynamics, and overseas, and some of our best posters on these Stryker threads are presently inside the belly of the beast.
I wish all you early baby boomers would teach a friend of yours how to use a computer and recruit him as a Freeper and get him on the SBCTTSG (ChBN)Ping List. Good war stories are a terrible thing to waste.
Supposedly the Canadians, the Danes, the Swedes, and all those other armies that have bought LAV III's and Piranha III's don't have as many enemies as we do, so their soldiers don't need as much protection as ours do.
Risk aversion and undue sensitivity to American casualties has made the Stryker what it is to day.
Welcome to 4GW.
Well, that's a relief.
As the sun touched the horizon, we performed one last test when we rolled up to a wall of dirt, positioned to be some sort of flood-control basin. Up the wall the LAV climbed, pushing, pulling one, then two axles over the hump, then it teetered forward until level. As the machine dug down, its Achilles' heel showed itself: a high center. The sheer weight of the vehicle had tires digging dirt until there was no more. The LAV then quietly rested on its underbelly, treads floating in air. How does one get an LAV unstuck? Obviously, with another LAV. So we waited, at the end of an amazing day of driving an amazing vehicle, finally halted by a careless driver doing something he probably shouldn't have. Our advice: If you ever have the chance to get an LAV stuck, take it.
Also the reported ammo load for the MGS is 18 rds! And other reports which I take with some salt, state that the coaxial has to be cleared from outside of the vehicle and parts of the auto loader are not armoured.
Please note, I am not a LAV hater, actually I think they are pretty damm good, but I think this MGS is a piece of junk which we do not need and can not replace MBT, no matter what the defence minister is smoking.
Here is the US army link
http://www.army.mil/features/strykerDemo/default.htm
You are sure they're not
Faraday cages to ground
electro-zap hits?
The armor - each looking like a great green cage - is meant to protect the $2 million vehicles and the soldiers inside from rocket-propelled grenades.
~~~~~
FR's Stryker experts* ~ looking out for the safety of the troops ~ respond.
*Thank you!
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