Posted on 12/03/2003 6:18:49 AM PST by O.C. - Old Cracker
At Camp Udairi in Kuwait, US armament technicians are working extra-hard in giant hangars on a Christmas gift for US troops plagued by guerrilla attacks in Iraq. It is the Stryker, an eight-wheel drive armored combat vehicle, the first new armored carrier to enter service in the US army since the Abrams tank was introduced in the 1980s.
DEBKAfile’s military sources quote US civil administrator Paul Bremer as informing the emergency White House consultations last month on the mounting guerrilla war in Iraq that soldiers of the US 2nd division fighting in the Baghdad area and the 4th division under constant attack in the Sunni triangle, “can’t wait to get their hands” on the Strykers.
These innovative vehicles are destined to eventually replace the heavy Abrams M1 battle tank and the Bradley M2 fighting vehicles in Iraq. They are more mobile and agile, have a far greater turn of speed, superior night visibility and unmatched high-tech instruments.
US military chiefs in Washington and Baghdad believe the Stryker, built by General Motors Defense of Canada and General Dynamics Land Systems Division of the United States, will provide American troops with a better response to the ubiquitous rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), favorite weapon of Saddam Hussein’s loyalists. They are expected to show their rapid- response mettle against the guerrillas’ agile RPG pick-up trucks, which turned up for the first time in the Samarra battle of November 30 after an absence of several months.
In that battle, heavy Iraqi casualties – the exact number is in dispute – were inflicted against pro-Saddam fighters dressed in Fedayeen uniforms.
Closely resembling a large green armadillo (see photo) , the Stryker’s slat armor “cage” is designed to trap an RPG and defuse it inches away from the vehicle’s skin - much in the way a baseball catcher’s mask protects his head from a 90-mile-an-hour fastball. The US military took its most state-of-the-art combat vehicle – already equipped with 14.5 mm-thick armor against machine gun rounds, mortars and artillery fragments -- and dressed it in a “crinoline” skirt, a green-painted steel grill bolted on to it sides. Only the Stryker’s roof and wheels remain exposed. Stryker tests have been underway for three years at Fort Lewis, Washington, where a dummy Iraqi village was built a year before the US invasion last March and where the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division trained and re-formed into the US Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat Teams.
A vanguard force arrived in Kuwait in October and crossed into Iraq for the first real battlefield tests of the vehicles. The last of the Stryker Brigade's 5,000 soldiers arrived in Kuwait from Fort Lewis in mid-November. The brigade has 300 Strykers.
Named after Stewart Stryker, killed in action in World War Two, and Robert Stryker, a soldier killed in Vietnam, the 19-ton vehicle has eight giant tires, a range of 500 km (300 miles) and a maximum speed of 60 mph (100 km). In addition to its two-man crew, the Stryker can carry eight infantry troops or commandos.
One feature that arouses controversy among military experts is the comparatively mild punch packed by the novel contraption’s M2 0.50 caliber machine gun, 21.7 mm grenade launcher and 7.62 mm MK240 machine gun. It is also fitted with four smoke grenade launchers and a stabilizer system that enables on-the-move accurate fire.
But the vehicle is not designed for heavy combat, say its advocates. Its function is to race on its eight huge wheels to the edge of a battle zone, including urban areas, drop off infantry soldiers and lay down covering fire.
One of the Stryker’s most outstanding tools of war is its state-of-the-art digital communications system, the FBCB2, that keeps the entire fleet connected by text messaging and a GPS map network. The system – effectively a “tactical Internet” -- enables the commander of one Stryker vehicle to mark the position of enemy forces on a map for the benefit of all his fellows.
Each vehicle commander has the use of seven M45 periscopes and a thermal imager display by video camera that can identify enemy forces, including hidden snipers and RPG-toting ambush units.
The Stryker Brigade will be the first unit in history to be engaged in this way in computerized warfare. The unit coming closest to this is the “digitized” US 4th Infantry Division. A commander can click on a blue icon and electronically pinpoint for everyone else on the battle network the position of friendly forces. A click on a red icon marks the position of the enemy. No time is wasted on description and explanation. A commander does not need to go into the field and personally deploy his troops at their most effective combat points. He simply moves his resources around on a screen.
Each new brigade is furthermore equipped with a reconnaissance-intelligence battalion which consists of three times as many spotters as a regular battalion, four drones and a large array of sophisticated sensors.
The US army does not intend, in the first stage, to replace all its tanks in Iraq with Strykers. But it does want the new vehicles to back up its heavy armor on the battlefield. The army is also considering whether to use Strykers on rapid-response policing missions for urban flare-ups or spot roadblocks on intercity highways.
The novel contrivance has its critics. Some US commanders are saying that no sensor in the world, no matter how advanced, can tell the difference between a friendly civilian and a guerrilla – until the insurgent whips out a hand grenade and stares into the eyes of the Stryker’s 11-man contingent. There are military engineering experts who suggest that steel spikes should be fitted to the outside of the ”cage” to deflect flying grenades or projectiles away from the vehicle. US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld is less than pleased with the vehicle. Nonetheless, Congress poured another $35 million into the defense budget in September to speed up preparations for the deployment of the 5th and 6th Stryker brigades.
And the troops in Iraq are eagerly awaiting the deployment – only weeks away – of the first Stryker brigade in Iraq. They expect casualties to rise initially when the new system is first tested in battle. Further improvements will inevitably be called for. But running-in problems aside, the shift to Strykers marks the beginning of the end of the historic role heavy tanks, such as the Abrams and Israel’s Merkava 3 and 4, have played on the battlefield. Experts believe these 70-ton behemoths-on-tracks are being reduced to the dinosaurs of modern combat and that the 19-ton, eight-wheeled Stryker is poised to leap into the breach.
Yeah, and ballerinas are going to replace middle linebackers in the NFL.
Sometimes. But like the Vietnam-era chainlink fencing *RPG screens* the reail idea is to cause the outside metal shell of the PG-7 rocket to become dented and come in contact with the copper shaped charge liner, since both are used as electrical contacts for the piecoelectric crystal in the rocket's nose that when crushed, creates enough of an electrical charge to detonate the electrical blasting cap and booster charge at the back of the warhead. If the two metallic components are in contact they short out and no explosion results, in practice, about 50% of the time when chain link screen is used; the slats may do a little better or not quite as well.
Some rounds, no doubt, will detonate on the outside if the slats themselves if they hit just right. Whether the stand-off distance will be enough to reduce the shaped charge's armor-cutting effect or will more effectively focus it to cause even more damage will be another question soon to be answered. If the slat armor is suddenly removed fron the vehicles in service, we'll know the answer.
The addition of the slat armor now raises the weight of a loaded Stryker squad carrier in excess of 23 tons, no longer 19. It'll also be interesting to see if the truck-component axles, designed for a 15-ton truck load, can handle the additional overload.
-archy-/-
Leadership in the 21st century?
That may help save some young lieutenants from being *accidentally* shot by their own troops, particularly the platoon sergeant. I doubt if a similar accident will happen to such a deserving LT's vehicle with the full crew aboard, but one with just the offending candidate and the driver may have to go.
-archy-/-
That's what the crews are about to find out. But when similar Russian BTR-80 series 8-wheeled armored cars deployed in Afghanistan and Chechnya, with weights of 21,000 kilos and similar crew loadings hit a TM-46 or TM57 antitank mine with around 15 pounds of explosive inside, typically the driver is killed and the vehicle is rolled over on the side opposite of that under which the mine detonates. And when one centers on two mines stacked atop each other [common because one 20-pound mine can be carried in either hand] and sets off a tilt-rod firing device, the vehicles are sometimes flipped over backwards, end-over-end. All fuel tanks and containers are typically ruptured from the shock of the initial explosion, with resulting fires as hot engine components ignite spilled fuel
Mild punch? That’s pretty heavy for a troop carrier!
If it was true, but it's not. The Stryker's Norwegian-designed Remote Weapons System mounts Either a M2 .50 Browning machinegun, common on US troop transports since the WWII M3 halftrack and the M113 tracked APC of the 1960s-'70s, OR the 40mm Mark 19 grenade launcher, not both. A turret fitting both weapons was a feature of the Military Polices 4-wheeled Armored Security Vehicle, [ASV] ordered cancelled lest its success overshadow Stryker's questionable future.
In live-ammunition weapons testing with the RWS, the .50 experienced repeated ammunition belt hangups and stoppages resulting in bursts of 45 rounds or less before the operator had to expose himself and come out of the hatch to clear the jam. One Stryker crewman has told me that the RWS sighting arrangement won't stand up to the recoil of the 40mm launcher, and that re-sighting the unit even when the .50 is used is a daily task.
The problem here may not be the Stryker itself but the weapons subsystem used aboard it, of which several possible workarounds might be possible. One of the most immediately obvious would be the combined weapon turret of the ASV.
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marking.
I actually think the armor and mech inf will eventually redeploy, most likely to prepare for operations against Syria or Iran, or put back into storage in Kuwait, or brought home, leaving Strykers and armored humvees as the primary mounts of the US Army remaining in Iraq. I think one of the six Stryker Brigades is going to be in Iraq pretty much continously for awhile.
We are going to have troops in Iraq for decades, but they need not necessarily be armor/mech troops, or, if they are, the heavy brigades would likely occupy former Republican Guard kasernes and spend most of their time at NTC West while Constabulary troopers run the roads in wheeled vehicles.
The Stryker brigade rolled into Iraq on Wednesday and brought along the Fort Lewis weather.
It rained all morning on the five convoys that pushed north across the border, making it a cold, nasty ride, especially for the soldiers riding in open humvees.
But when they arrived here some 250 miles later at this Army camp south of Baghdad, nobody'd been shot at and nobody'd been hurt."
I just want everyone to make it there safe," said Spc. Victoria Wright, before her convoy pushed off about 4 a.m. at the Kuwait-Iraq border.
She got her wish.
To read more from embedded reporter Michael Gilbert about the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade's first foray into Iraq, read Thursday's edition of The News Tribune.
(Published 10:29AM, December 3rd, 2003)
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