Troops install cagelike armor to fend off attacks
MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
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, 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