Sgt. Rob Saucier watches as Spc. Jeremy Gonzales attaches an M-2 .50 caliber gun onto a remote weapons station on top of his Stryker after their vehicle arrived at Camp Udairi on Wednesday.
Posted on 02/03/2004 7:52:31 AM PST by Calpernia
A change made to the Stryker infantry vehicle has proven itself in combat.
The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division – also called Task Force Olympia after its Fort Lewis, Wash., home -- is replacing the 101st Airborne Division in this city.
The Stryker, an eight-wheeled infantry transporter, is an armored vehicle designed to stop 124.5 mm rounds. Critics said the main threat in Iraq is rocket-propelled grenades, and that the vehicle would not provide protection from them.
Army officials outfitted the Strykers with what the soldiers call a "cage." The slat armor put on the vehicles in Kuwait does look like a cage. It encircles the vehicle and gives added protection to the body of the Stryker. It is slats placed about 18 inches away from the main body. The theory was that an RPG would hit the slat and "defuse" between the slat and the main armor, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the brigade commander.
The theory was exactly right, he said. "A bit earlier this morning there was an RPG attack against a Stryker vehicle in the eastern part of Mosul," he said to reporters traveling with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "It was the second attack against a Stryker, but the first to strike the slat armor.
"It did exactly was it was intended to do," he continued. "When the round impacted on the slat armor, it detonated the warhead. The round defused in that space."
There were no casualties of any kind, he said, and there was "very, very minor damage to the vehicle."
The crew continued its patrol. The patrol was conducting neighborhood engagement, interacting with local citizens.
The crew identified the assailant and tried to call an OH-58 helicopter in on it, but the helicopter crew was unable to regain contact with the assailant.
It was a typical "drive-by" shooting, Ham said. A car drives up about 100 meters away, a gunner pops out of the window or the sun roof and fires the weapon, and the car speeds away.
"We're not surprised the slat armor worked the way it was intended to, and we continue to have great confidence in the Stryker vehicle," Ham said.
All of the 300-plus Strykers in the brigade have this cage.
Your globalsecurity.org stuff posted.
Sgt. Rob Saucier watches as Spc. Jeremy Gonzales attaches an M-2 .50 caliber gun onto a remote weapons station on top of his Stryker after their vehicle arrived at Camp Udairi on Wednesday.
A Stryker Combat Vehicle from A Co., 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, patrols in Albu Sayf on Wednesday.
MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
MOSUL, Iraq - The last time Paul Wolfowitz ventured to Iraq, the guerrillas rocketed his Baghdad hotel.
For the deputy defense secretary's visit to Mosul on Monday, it fell to the Stryker brigade's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment to make sure there was no repeat of the Oct. 26 rocket attack that killed an American officer and injured 15 others.
Mission accomplished. With nearly a company of Stryker infantrymen watching his back (and front and sides), Wolfowitz strolled along several blocks downtown, stopping in to say hello to local leaders at police headquarters, city hall and the courthouse.
But just across the Tigris River, insurgents struck another Stryker vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade. And for the second time in three days, the vehicle took the hit with little damage and no serious injuries.
"On this side of the river we're out in force and there's no trouble," said Lt. Col. Buck James, the 1-23 commander. "Across the river, 500 meters away, a smaller element gets ambushed with small-arms and RPG fire.
"It's still a dangerous, dangerous place."
The attack occurred about 10:45 a.m. as a convoy from C Company of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment patrolled its eastern half of the city.
The vehicle was along a main road leading to the second-southernmost of the city's five spans across the Tigris when it was struck by the RPG in the right front side.
Brigade officials said the grenade struck the heavy metal "slat armor" fence installed around the vehicle as protection against this very threat. It worked, taking the sting out of the round before it could penetrate the vehicle's hull and injure the soldiers inside, officials said.
The Stryker continued moving under its own power. Initial reports were that the RPG was fired by a man who fled with others in a small red sedan. The vehicle and gunmen got away.
The attack occurred out of sight and out of earshot of the Wolfowitz party, which included the deputy secretary and his aides, his security team and a contingent from the news media. On the ground, they followed a script the 1-23 had sketched out over the previous couple of days.
Sketched out, that is, with suggestions from higher bosses at the brigade and the 101st Airborne Division, which for a few days more is still the boss in northern Iraq.
The 101st insisted that the brigade's noisy OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters not hover directly over the area where Wolfowitz would be walking the town.
Orchestrating the battalion's movements behind the scenes was Maj. Adam Rocke, the 1-23's operations officer, at its riverfront command center in the middle of downtown Mosul. They've named it Camp Blickenstaff, after Spc. Joseph Blickenstaff, one of three battalion soldiers killed Dec. 8 when two Strykers fell into an irrigation canal near Duluiyah.
Rocke and his team monitored five radio channels and tracked progress on a checklist of 37 distinct events in the operation.
Once he received word that Comanche Company had loaded up all the VIPs at the Mosul presidential palace compound, Rocke scratched the item - code name Bunny - off his list.
When the convoy crossed the river, he checked code name Christina. And so it went right on through Chloe, Daisy, Daria, Demi, Dixie and Ellen.
Rocke said they give the events code names so that commanders don't have to repeat a whole lot of information that can easily be confused on the radio.
"Instead, they can just say, 'you, this is me, we're at Betty,' and everybody knows what you're talking about," Rocke said.
Out on the street, soldiers from Comanche Company cordoned off several square blocks where Wolfowitz went during his roughly hourlong visit. They allowed traffic through on some routes but saturated the area with well over 100 infantrymen.
They emplaced snipers and kept the Kiowas hovering - discreetly - just a few minutes away.
"This is easy compared to our regular daily mission," said the Comanche commander, Capt. Duane Patin. "I think we did a good job of keeping it under wraps that he was coming this time.
"But we've got a lot of firepower here on the ground if anybody was going to try anything."
After their walk, the deputy secretary and his entourage boarded a half-dozen UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters at the 1-23's headquarters for the short hop over to the next stop: Village of Hope, a new residential area for Iraqis displaced by the war.
The battalion's Apache Company picked up the security mission from there.
Afterward, Apache turned to its next job: recovering a fairly large cache of weapons and ammunition found within the outer perimeter of a U.S. base camp. Local children led them to the find. They recovered a 60 mm mortar tube with a brand new sight and more than 50 rounds, plus another 21 83 mm mortars, 69 grenades, five mines, three battery-operated detonators and other weapons, brigade officials said.
Insurgents fire a mortar or two every few days or so at the base camp, known as Camp Strike, and the U.S. forces at nearby Mosul Airfield.
Wolfowitz's choice of days to visit made things a little easier on the security forces. The streets were a bit quieter than usual as many Muslims stayed at home to celebrate the Eid al-Adha, or feast of sacrifice.
And quieter, for sure, than on Saturday, when a car bomb exploded outside a Mosul police station, killing nine Iraqi police. Or than Friday, when insurgents fired RPGs at Strykers four times, hitting one. That Stryker sustained minor damage to a coolant hose and the vehicle commander suffered a superficial cut on his cheek from flying debris.
"There are days when it's quiet," said James, the 1-23 commander, "and there are days when all hell breaks loose."
Staff writer Michael Gilbert is embedded with the Stryker brigade in Iraq. Reach him at mjgilbert41@yahoo.com.
For regular reports on the brigade, sign up for an e-mail newsletter at www.tribnet.com/registration.
(Published 12:01AM, February 3rd, 2004)
A Stryker vehicle rolls through the streets of Mosul on patrol after members of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), B Co. 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, checked on an Iraqi police station that has been attacked twice.
The reliability. Last I heard you get about 100 rounds out of the .50 cal before it jams. The 40mm hurt two guys down in Kuwait when they tried to clear it.
Can't shoot while moving. Moving, shooting and communicating are pretty important tasks. Not being able to do all three at the same time is like not being able to walk and chew gum.
The theory was exactly right, he said. "A bit earlier this morning there was an RPG attack against a Stryker vehicle in the eastern part of Mosul," he said to reporters traveling with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "It was the second attack against a Stryker, but the first to strike the slat armor.
"It did exactly was it was intended to do," he continued. "When the round impacted on the slat armor, it detonated the warhead. The round defused in that space."
There were no casualties of any kind, he said, and there was "very, very minor damage to the vehicle."
The round struck the front of the vehicle above its slat armor cage, cutting a hose inside the engine compartment. The vehicle commander suffered a superficial cut near his nose, officials said.Uh-huh... so the shaped charge jet of the PG-7 grenades IS getting through. And if it gets to that 40mm High Explosive ammunition, grenades or engineer demolition charges carred on board....
Stowed Ammunition
(32) 66mm smoke grenades
(3200) 7.62mm rounds
(2000) .50 cal rounds OR
(430) MK19 rounds
Four hundred-plus Mk 19 grenades, sympathetic detonating inside a Stryker...I hope the crews have some GOOD earplugs.
Less. twenty to fourty-five. Usually the result of rounds coming unlinked in the feed chute to the gun, between the gun and the ammo box, probably from vibration and/or inertia from starting/stopping.
That's why the problem didn't show up in contractor tests or target practice exercises when the vehicles were parked on ranges.
What aspect is there not to like?
Not big enough for some?
Go off a paved road or street in one- admittedly not a likely problem in cities- especially if one side's wheels are on pavement while the other side gets in sand or mud, and they roll right over, especially if they're travelling at any serious speed involved. They steer with four wheels in front, not just two, and the high center of gravity combined with four wheels lower on one side than the others, especially once the wheels are cut suddenly to try and get back on the pavement, and over she goes, sometimes just on its side, sometimes on its back, as with the two Strykers that went into a canal while along a top bank, drowning the crewmembers inside, whose rear door exit was chained shut. Rescuers from other vehicles couldn't get to them, and upside-down, gravity holds the two-ton rear crew exit ramp shut instead of opening it.
Thank God we're not up agains other hostile vehicles of around the same size, with enemy weapons systems that actually work deployed against the Stryker. We'd be losing ten guys with every vehicle that burns.
I guess you've not noticed the 100mm main gun and 30mm co-ax that Russian BTR-90s have been sporting lately. And even the older BTR 70s and 80s are being fitted with the Kliver turret with 30mm gun and quadruple Kornet-E antitank guided missile launchers.
And, of course, BTR 70s/80s/90s are all fully amphibious and can be air-transported.
That, and the little detail that the PG-7VR tandem warhead rocket that can be used with any RPG launcher can penetrate in excess of ¾ of a meter of armor, about 24-28 inches worth.
Ooops.
That would be the 2A46 Smoothbore Gun/Missile launcher of the T-64, T-72, and T-80 Soviet tanks, capable of launching 9M119 Refleks (NATO designation AT-11 Sniper) anti-tank guided missile system to a range of 5KM or better.
Why don't we just buy a few hundred from the Russkies? They can use the cash, we can use the BTRs. Take a few weeks to get them via rail from Russia.
I know, dream on. I'll say this for Ivan though: he never hesitated to copy a superior weapons system. No "NIH" at all.
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