Stryker Vehicle Destroyed

komo news ^ | 13 December 2003 | KOMO Staff

[11th_VA]

TIKRIT, IRAQ - A roadside bomb destroyed a Stryker vehicle with the Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade.

A scout platoon on a reconnaissance mission south of Tikrit ran over what the military calls an improvised explosive device.

The soldiers inside got out safely but the 19 ton vehicle caught fire and burned out of control.

"There was a small explosion, and the engine caught fire. The soldiers inside got out and tried to put the fire out but it got out of control and started setting off the ammunition," said ABC news producer in Iraq, Mike Gudgell.

One soldier in the vehicle was slightly injured, he suffered a small hairline fracture in his leg.

The vehicle burned for several hours as the soldiers set up a perimeter to ward off any further attacks. There were none.

Three Fort Lewis soldiers died in Iraq last week when their Stryker vehicles rolled over and landed in a canal

[archy]

I still have doubts about the STRYKER based on what a lot of the armor guys here at FR have told me (I admit that this is not my expert subject.)

Still, the crew lived and I'm REAL happy about that. Anytime a US serviceman survives is a good day.

It's an improvement over the three guys who were drowned when their Strykers went into a canal. Padlocked inside, they couldn't get out when the vehicles landed upsidedown atop their closed roof hatches.

Thank God these guys weren't locked inside their Strykers and left to be burned alive.

-archy-/-

[OneTimeLurker]

Ha. That kind of stuff doesn't happen not that "the adults" are back in charge!

Oh wait, nevermind. Forgot about prescription drugs and and and....

[archy]

In an interview with The News Tribune, the driver said fire engulfed the engine compartment as he crawled from his driver's seat through the narrow passageway known as the "hellhole" and escaped the burning vehicle with the other crew members.

I bet there'll be orders and threats to force the troops from calling it that anymore, at least when journalists are around. Just like they were ordered to stop calling the vehicles *Stynkers.*

-archy-/-

[RobbyS]

They intend that Stryker replace the Hummer, so you better be damn sure that it won't get more people killed because people think they can hid in it. No vehicle, including the MIAI is going to survive a well-timed IED.

[gatorbait]

I'm extremely pleased that the crew was saved, but $2 million complete writeoffs every time some wacko out there puts a pipe bomb or whatever in the street adds up. I wonder why they can't either make them cheaper or make them more robust.

Two million bucks is pocket change if the crew is saved. Warfare cannot be done on the cheap, not then, not now, not ever.

[archy]

I'm extremely pleased that the crew was saved, but $2 million complete writeoffs every time some wacko out there puts a pipe bomb or whatever in the street adds up. I wonder why they can't either make them cheaper or make them more robust.

The same 12 dollar Russian TM-46 or TM-57 or AmericanM15 or M19 20-pound antitank mine that can cripple an Abrams tank is going to do a lot more than a minimalist terrorist's pipe bomb. And if command detonated by wire or radio, especially if two mines [20 pounds each, one in either hand] are stacked atop each other, the blast is even more likely to kill the 2-million dollar vehicle, if not the crew. And if the external fuel tanks rupture, particularly while the crew is under fire, someone's really in trouble.

For less than $25, somebody can kill a 2 million dollar vehicle. And eventually, they'll learn to add a couple of Claymore antipersonnel mines for when the crews bail out. I hear the going bonus rate for so killing a vehicle load of Americans is around a thousand bucks.

Maybe someday we'll learn to pay a decent bounty for the terrorist sappers....

-archy-/-

[185JHP]

Ike was right about the "military-indusrial coplex." They need close scrutiny, lest their greed and selfishness result in ripoffs - like fighter planes that have less range, can't fly as fast, and can't carry as much ordnance as the planes they replace.
"Lots of shady characters, lots of dirty deals. Payoffs, ripoffs, and things nobody saw." Dreck like the Crusader - thankfully killed - and the Osprey - still wasting $$$.

[archy]

Viehicles like the Stryker have minimal aluminum armor that is easy for an RPG rocket to penetrate. The RPG burns a small hole on the side and sends the melted aluminum in side that bounces around and through people starting fires. Puting GPS and hight tech electronics on it, does not make it "safe".

The armor on a Stryker is half-inch hardened armor plate, with add-on composite blocks to reduce the vehicle's vulnerability to fire even from AK47 ammunition, which could pierce a Stryker's bare armor if fired from the longer 24-inch barrel of the RPK or RPD Squad Automatic Weapons.

Unfortunately, the hardening process for that armor also makes it brittle, and during live fire testing, Stryker armor cracks or shatters when explosive charges detonate atop or beneath it, the most likely places for damage from a mine or a satchel charge tossed from an upper-story window.

Next question: will the *slat armor* cage now surrounding the Stryker's lower body work provide a sufficient standoff distance to prevent damage from PG-7 grenade shaped charge warheads, or will a dual-charge PG-7VR round with a half-meter penetration ability in solid steel be used against a Stryker...or just a shot from above on the unprotected top. The Iraqis have several options to try; which will be first....

-archy-/-

[LPM1888]

As long as politicians can take a bribe, no matter how it may be disguised, campaign contribution, trade in kind, trips to Bermuda, prostitutes, etc. without facing life imprisonment, they will continue to take us as fools. The taxpayers and soldiers are only the suckers paying the bill in lifes and dollars.

[upchuck]

Oh, are you back? I was waiting up to make sure you got back safely. Now I'm off to bed.

[Travis McGee]

Would you want to be part of an ambush squad attacking those paras? I wouldn't! Anyone not killed would jump out and hunt you down like rabbits for sport.

[Travis McGee]

#26: Exactly. The enemy will always be able to come up with clever ways to attack our million dollar platforms with $100 command detonated or otherwise initiated IEDs.

The real war has to be fought after midnight, taking these guys out in their homes based on intell. If we can't do that, we're going to be ground down in the long run. We have to make being an "insurgent" a hopeless calling. This can be done, but only if we are sufficiently ruthless.

[archy]

Ike was right about the "military-indusrial coplex." They need close scrutiny, lest their greed and selfishness result in ripoffs - like fighter planes that have less range, can't fly as fast, and can't carry as much ordnance as the planes they replace.

After WWII we had hearings and criminal trials for charges of *war profiteering* for several WWII defence contractors; Howard Hughes was one at whom such charges were levelled, refuted when he took the *Spruce Goose* transport it had been claimed could never fly on its one and only flight, which served the purpose to prove his point. But there were others charged with more and better evidence, and convicted and sentenced.

It might be time for such charges to be made again. Unfortunately, they'd probably nail as many corrupt Republican supporters and officeholders as Democrats. During WWII, it was a fairly obscure Missouri congressman who had investigated several such cases who was picked by Franklin Roosevelt as his Vice-Presidential candidate in 1944. His name was Harry S. Truman. It could happen again.

-archy-/-

[Jeff Chandler]

There ought to be ways to ...pre-detonate ...

Hoist them on their own petards?

[upchuck]

Lordy, lordy! Please have pity on those of us that are DSL/cable impaired and must live with 56K dialup. You posted over 1 megabyte of photos. You know how long it takes to download 1MB on a 56K line? A damned long time!

[archy]

Would you want to be part of an ambush squad attacking those paras? I wouldn't! Anyone not killed would jump out and hunt you down like rabbits for sport.

Not to mention their pals in follow-up helicopters, who fast rope or parachute jump from a couple of hundred feet, using specialty PAID fast-opening chutes. Suddenly what was an escape route for the bombers becomes an ambush for them. And even if the response squads don't get there in tiome, the snipers may be waiting.

The Brits have been doing this sort of thing, more or less successfully, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, for the last half century.

They've developed it into a fine art.

[archy]

Lordy, lordy! Please have pity on those of us that are DSL/cable impaired and must live with 56K dialup. You posted over 1 megabyte of photos. You know how long it takes to download 1MB on a 56K line? A damned long time!

Sorry about that. But at least be grateful that I reduced them considerably. See just one example *here*.

-archy-/-

[archy]

There ought to be ways to ...pre-detonate ...

Hoist them on their own petards?

*Work accidents* is the preferred Israeli term. Said to involve all sorts of interesting techniques, including no-delay time fuzes, high-powered electronics jamming transmitters directed at nonshunted lead wires of electric blastic caps, and small shaped charges used to promote sympathetic detonations among larger demolition charges.

If you've got a particularly sadistic streak crossed with a bit of the practical joker, there's a place for you in certain circles. For the right sort of character, it's great sport.

-archy-/-

[Jeff Chandler]

you've got a particularly sadistic streak crossed with a bit of the practical joker

Sounds like a character from Shakespeare.

[archy]

"Lots of shady characters, lots of dirty deals. Payoffs, ripoffs, and things nobody saw." Dreck like the Crusader - thankfully killed - and the Osprey - still wasting $$$.

I'm not so certain about the Crusader, since the Russians seem very pleased with their similar 2S19 MSTA 152mm self-Propelled artillery piece, as the Germans do with theirPanzerhaubitze 2000. The Czechs even have an eight-wheeled 152mm SP gun version, the 152mm SP ShKH gun *Dana* and 155mm ShKH version *Zuzana*

There may well have been more bells and whistles than required, particularly the Abrams tank turbine power pack, intended to give us all-weather artillery support that can keep up with tank column advances.

But it begins to appear that those who did away with the Crusader did so as a way to begin consideration of elimination of the main battle tank as well. And some of them are stockholders with considerable personal and career investments in the Stryker.