[Steel Wolf]

This article is right on about the field expedient armor jobs. There are so many different funky armor jobs running around here it looks like we're a bunch of rejects from a Mad Max movie.

(On a side note, we're thinking of wrapping some old shopping carts around the outside of our humvees and calling them Strykers.)

Since we don't have to do long slow patrols, our security is speed. Rather than strap on a bunch of unwieldy scrap metal that won't stop jack anyway, we're stripped down and sprinting from point A to point B. Our defense consists of kevlar blankets, sandbags, and size 12s boots stomping on the pedal. These guys are lousy shots, even at stationary targets, and they are also pretty bad at timing their IEDs. So far, so good for us, I guess.

Many guys don't have the luxury of driving like bats out of hell everywher they go, and they're scavenging anything that might at least slow down 7.62 and IED shrapnel. I don't know how effective the home made jobs are, but I wouldn't trust anything besides a real up armor kit. I sure wouldn't want to do a slow patrol through some of these neighborhoods in anything less.

If I get a chance later, I'll get some pictures of our rides to post. That's all for now.

[archy]

(On a side note, we're thinking of wrapping some old shopping carts around the outside of our humvees and calling them Strykers.)

Just don't call them Stynkers. That'll cost you an Article 15 at Knox.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Thanks. I do appreciate your in-put.

Next questions: There are alternatives to the M1114, what keeps us from acquiring and using them? Seems like people are fixated on the M1114.

What use are we making of Saddam's wheeled armored vehicles?

Be careful out there.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

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.