Soldiers Defend Faulted Strykers

Washington Post (Early Bird) ^ | April 3, 2005 | Steve Fainaru

[SLB]

In Interviews, Costly Personnel Carriers Said Effective in Combat

MOSUL, Iraq, April 2 -- An internal U.S. Army report detailing flaws in a new $11 billion armored personnel carrier known as the Stryker has come under criticism from soldiers who use the vehicle in combat.

The Dec. 21 report cited problems with the Stryker's protective slat armor, remote weapons system and computers. The flaws, it said, placed troops "at unexpected risk" to rocket-propelled grenade attacks and raised questions about the Stryker's development for urban warfare.

But in more than a dozen interviews, commanders, soldiers and mechanics who use the Stryker fleet daily in one of Iraq's most dangerous areas unanimously praised the vehicle. The defects outlined in the report were either wrong or relatively minor and did little to hamper the Stryker's effectiveness, they said.

[SLB]

COL Brown is a straight shooter. If the Stryker was putting his soldiers at risk he would be the first to say so.

[Admin Moderator]

Please, Excerpt only with Washington Post material.

[Wiz]

In fact, the problems were concentrated on electronics and the tire. The survivability is another problem, which have proved its excellence excluding the problems of seat belt. Probably the problem about electronics were a result of engaging too far on affordability to get cheap equipments to decrease the overall price, not because General Dynamics were sloppy on their project of building this vehicle. Regarding current missile systems, the expensive costs is result for the electronics. Electronics for military products often dominates most of the total cost of the systems.

[SLB]

Please, Excerpt only with Washington Post material.

My apology. Hope I did not get FR into trouble with the Post.

[pfflier]

The defects outlined in the report were either wrong or relatively minor and did little to hamper the Stryker's effectiveness,

But that doesn't meet the media agenda. To them success is impossible, they are there to report failure only.

[Valin]

Flawed Strykers still save, troops say

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
Last updated: April 2nd, 2005 08:41 AM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/4740111p-4371493c.html


Soldiers from two Fort Lewis Stryker brigades rushed to the defense of their 19-ton vehicles this week, reacting to broad media coverage of a leaked Army report.
The performance of the wheeled infantry carriers in Iraq was just one part of the report on lessons learned by the Army’s first Stryker brigade. The 120-page document was based on interviews conducted in the six weeks before the unit came home last fall.

But news reports this week that focused on flaws in the $2 million Strykers provoked strong responses from soldiers who spend long hours inside them.

“I have watched this vehicle save my soldiers’ lives and enable them to kill our nations’ enemies,” Lt. Col Erik Kurilla wrote in a letter to The News Tribune this week from Iraq, where he’s serving with the second Stryker Brigade.

“In urban combat there is no better vehicle for delivering a squad of infantrymen to close with and destroy the enemy.”

The Army report covered a wide range of strengths and weaknesses that the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division soldiers identified in all aspects of their tenure in northern Iraq – intelligence gathering, communication networks, radio systems, fixing the local economy, working with interpreters, even dealing with embedded reporters.

A recurring theme was the challenges of a 5,000-soldier brigade taking over from an Army unit four times its size – the 101st Airborne Division – in an area spanning 14,000 square miles.

The goal of the report was to identify what worked and what didn’t, and to pass along solutions identified by soldiers and commanders in the field.

“Military leaders usually acknowledge the things going right, but tend to focus more on what needs improvement so units can learn and improve their combat readiness,” according to an executive summary of the report.

It was compiled by Army researchers who visited the 3rd Brigade in Mosul in September and October.

Col. Bob Brown, who commands the Fort Lewis brigade that took over for the 3rd Brigade in October, said much the same.

“Instead of hiding our heads in the sand and saying the Stryker is perfect, that nothing’s wrong with it,” Brown said Friday from Mosul, “the purpose is to learn from mistakes and to always improve, whether it’s the vehicle, the systems, the people, whatever.”

But it’s what the report said about the Stryker vehicles that made news this week, after it was first leaked to The Washington Post and then released by the Army on Thursday.



The Dec. 21 report by the Center for Army Lessons Learned does not compare the Stryker’s vulnerability to rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs with that of the more traditional military vehicles in Iraq – Humvees, M113 armored personnel carriers, M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

It does outline a number of issues with the vehicle, such as:

• The slat armor cages meant to protect the Strykers from RPGs – the world’s most prevalent anti-armor weapon – are defeating about half the grenades fired at the vehicles. The Army had expected the slat armor would stop about 80 percent.

• The slat armor stops some types of RPG rounds, but doesn’t fare as well against others.

• The Stryker’s four roof-top hatches need to be better protected. Several soldiers have been killed by shrapnel from roadside bombs, RPGs and gunfire while standing in the hatches with their heads and shoulders exposed.

But closing the hatches and having all soldiers ride inside is not the answer, said Brown, who commands the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

“You’re safer the more eyes you have out looking,” he said.

Roadside bombs are hidden. Suicide car-bombers might blend in with heavy traffic.

“You can’t get a feel for what’s going on unless you’re up looking around,” Brown said.

Soldiers from the 1st Brigade have added sandbags and other items to protect them in the hatches. The Army is also working on blast shields that soldiers could see through but that would also protect them from shrapnel, Brown said.

The report recommended that adjustable platforms be installed so soldiers can make sure they’re not standing too far out of the hatches.

Soldiers who talked to the Center for Army Lessons Learned teams had a slew of other suggestions for the vehicle, including:

• Stabilize the Stryker’s gun so that it can be fired more accurately on the move.

• Add an infrared mode to the standard and thermal modes on the camera mounted on the Stryker’s remote weapons station.

• Put more powerful speakers in the passenger compartment so everyone can hear what’s being said on the radio.

• Start an Army Stryker driving school so that new soldiers who arrive at a Stryker unit have already learned how to operate the vehicle.

Many of the issues identified in the report have already been addressed.

For instance, 3rd Brigade drivers had little practice on their vehicles with slat armor until they arrived in Kuwait. Their successors in the 1st Brigade trained extensively at Fort Lewis and at the Army’s training centers in Yakima, Southern California and Louisiana with the armor cages on their vehicles.

The 3rd Brigade was the first of an eventual six or seven Army brigades that will be equipped with Stryker technology. The idea is to create a force with more firepower, mobility and protection than light infantry units but that can be deployed more rapidly than heavy armor units.

Peter Keating, a spokesman with General Dynamics Land Systems, which makes the Strykers, said the company considers the issues identified in the report against what its own technical representatives in the field are saying, as well as different from other sources’ feedback.

The company does its own research and development on vehicle improvements, “but the final decision whether we implement that, or respond to a lesson learned, is really driven by the Army and what they say their highest priorities are.

“And usually that’s safety, security and protection,” Keating said.

Soldiers from Fort Lewis who are in Iraq or have been there with the Strykers said it’s not accurate to view the Lessons Learned report as a condemnation of the vehicles.

Sgt. Douglas Hale, 31, spent a year in Iraq with the 3rd Brigade and rode in his squad’s Stryker for hours and days at a time – 63 hours on one mission, he said. His 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment troops traveled to Samarra, Tal Afar and Najaf.

By the time the 11-year soldier came home, his Stryker had rolled up nearly 20,000 miles. The 44 men in his platoon had weathered numerous firefights and taken no injuries, he said Thursday at Fort Lewis.

“I wasn’t a believer in these when I first got over there, because I’m infantry,” said Hale, a native of northeast Missouri. “But when I go back to Iraq, I don’t want to go in anything other than this.”

Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, who commands the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry now in Mosul, said all but three or four of his 75 Strykers are ready to roll every day. The electronics, computers, radios and cameras are reliable.

One vehicle, he said, has been hit by a suicide car bomb, nine roadside bombs, eight direct hits from RPGs and “countless” attacks with small arms. Six of the 11 men in the squad have been wounded, but none seriously enough to be sent home.

Another Stryker was hit by a suicide bomber who had 52 large artillery rounds in his vehicle. But the soldiers survived without major injuries, Kurilla wrote in a letter to The News Tribune in response to news coverage of the Lessons Learned report.

The 1st Brigade is operating with the 310 or so Strykers that its predecessors from the 3rd Brigade brought from Fort Lewis in November 2003. All told, the fleet has traveled more than 5 million miles across Iraq, officials said.

Brown said 28 vehicles have been damaged severely enough that they had to be sent to depots in Balad or back to the United States for repairs. Three or four have been total losses, he said, but most have been repaired and returned to service.

“There’s no silver bullet, no vehicle that’s not vulnerable out there,” Brown said. “But certainly the speed, the stealth, the situational awareness, the reliability, have all been incredible.”

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921

[joesnuffy]

Cadilac Gage light armor LAV 600

LAV 300

[johnmilken]

Govt project - why wouldn't it be ripped off and shoddy?

Medicare, Social Security or Defense - why should anyone involved in the spending be careful, it's not 'their' money, right, and there's plenty to go round.

[processing please hold]

I wonder who's trying to sabotage the Stryker? Gotta be a rotten politican behind it.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Another Stryker was hit by a suicide bomber who had 52 large artillery rounds in his vehicle. But the soldiers survived without major injuries, Kurilla wrote in a letter to The News Tribune in response to news coverage of the Lessons Learned report.

52 artillery rounds...wouldn't that cause an Abrams a problem?

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Report cites problems with Stryker vehicles

By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Friday, April 1, 2005

Strykers got good reviews

Soldiers were high on the Stryker, Stars and Stripes reporters found last year in Iraq. Troops noted its array of high-tech gadgetry, speed and relatively quiet sound.

For an insurgent, “you’ve got somebody kicking down your door before you know it,” Capt. Thomas Bauchspies, Troop D commander for the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, told Stripes in March 2004.

Strykers are also capable of doing 70 mph.

Capt. Brent Clemmer, assistant operations officer for the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment out of Fort Lewis, Wash., said that’s key.

In combat, Clemmer said, “half the challenge is getting to where you need to be.”

In December 2003, two Strykers were hit a couple of days apart by improvised explosive devices in Samarra. One suffered just a flat tire. The other absorbed a more lethal punch.

“The vehicle was destroyed,” Lt. Col. Joe Piek, then-spokesman for Task Force Olympia in Mosul, said in April 2004, “but it took the blast.”

Only the driver was seriously injured.

Said Clemmer: “It’s much better to be in a Stryker than in a Humvee when an IED goes off.”

— Stars and Stripes

ARLINGTON, Va. — Soldiers assigned to the first Stryker combat brigade have reported numerous problems with the vehicle in Iraq, including add-on armor’s tendency to cause rollovers while not protecting troops from rocket-propelled grenades; nonfunctioning computer systems and wheels that need constant attention, according to an internal Army study.

The study, first reported on Thursday by The Washington Post, was generated by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

CALL officials sent a team to Iraq in September to interview soldiers assigned to the Stryker Brigade Combat Team 1, the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

CALL released the results of the team’s efforts, the “Initial Impressions Report — Operations in Mosul, Iraq,” to an internal Army audience on Dec. 21.

The report covers topics from the effectiveness of the brigade’s Family Readiness Group to the Stryker itself, one of the Army’s centerpiece “transformational” systems.

The Army plans to have six Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, or SBCTs, in place by 2008. Three are already completed: the 3/2 Infantry Division; the 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash.; and part of the 173rd Infantry Brigade in Alaska.

Many of the deficiencies in the report, such as with the add-on “bird-cage” slat armor, seat belts that are too short; and various crew-training issues also came up during a Dec. 20 Stryker roundtable with Pentagon reporters.

Those and other Stryker issues are being addressed, Army officials said.

“I don’t think there’s a single item [in the report] that we weren’t already working on before” the document was issued, Steve Campbell, the Army’s systems coordinator for the Stryker program, said in a Thursday interview with reporters in reaction to the report’s release.

But the report adds details, particularly the armor’s failure to deflect two weapons popular with insurgents: anti-personnel RPGs and anti-tank RPGs.

While the armor works well against high-explosive anti-tank, or “HEAT” rounds, when the other two kinds of RPGs hit, “the shrapnel continues to move through the slat and hits exposed personnel,” the report says.

The armor, which adds 5,000 pounds to the Stryker’s 19-ton basic weight, is also “causing multiple problems associated with the safety and operation of the vehicle,” the report says.

The Stryker is now so heavy that crews must check tire pressure three times a day and mechanics are changing nine tires each day on the fleet of 311 vehicles, the report says.

In fact, the change-out rate is more like 11 or 12 tires for the deployed fleet, Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes, the Army’s director of force development, said Thursday.

But “that’s less than 0.5 percent tires per day” for the entire fleet, Speakes said — not bad, considering the fact that “these vehicles are going 60 miles per hour … and they are not stopping for anything, including curbs” and other obstacles, he said.

Another problem identified in the report is that the Stryker’s computers can overheat. The Army has approved adding air conditioning to the vehicles, but funding has not yet been approved, the report notes.

However, commanders’ vehicles, where the most sophisticated and numerous computers are installed, “already have climate control,” Speakes countered.

Air conditioning units are now being installed in the Stryker brigade’s 16 medical evacuation vehicles, he said.

Another issue identified in the report is the inability of the Stryker’s primary offensive weapon system, which is either a grenade launcher or a heavy machine gun, to hit targets when the vehicle is moving.

The Stryker wasn’t designed to fire on the move, Speakes said, but soldier feedback from Iraq has convinced the Army to add the capability, using a “remote weapons system,” to the Stryker starting with the fifth brigade in the summer of 2006.

Older Strykers will be also be retrofitted with the system, which will allow soldiers to fire the machine guns accurately when the vehicle is moving up to 25 miles per hour, he said.

“Nothing [in the report] surprised me, and all of it was useful,” Speakes said.

But Eric Miller, a military program analyst with the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, said the report’s conclusions were disappointing.

“We’re talking about a $4 million-a-pop vehicle,” Miller said in a Thursday telephone interview. “It should do what it’s designed to do.”

During the Dec. 20 roundtable, Lt. Col. Steven Townsend, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, defended the Stryker’s fielding, problems and all.

“Soldiers know this vehicle is not perfect,” Townsend said. “But they do know and believe it’s the best vehicle available, and they have it to use today.”

Miller agreed that the Stryker has had value in Iraq, despite its flaws.

“It’s obviously safer than driving around in an up-armored Humvee,” Miller said.

To read the complete report, go to www.pogo.org/m/dp/dp-StrykerBrigade-12212004.pdf.

[SLB]

Have you ever seen "The Pentagon Wars"? Good flick about the way Army procurement goes haywire.

[BLASTER 14]

If I had my "druthers" I'd sure rather be riding around in aStryker or even a Humvee instead of an open M151 1/4 ton truck like I did in Vietnam.

FYI: The M151 1/4 ton truck is a jeep.

[archy]

If I had my "druthers" I'd sure rather be riding around in aStryker or even a Humvee instead of an open M151 1/4 ton truck like I did in Vietnam.

FYI: The M151 1/4 ton truck is a jeep.

I'd take the jeep, though I rolled M151 *mutt* gunjeeps twice. But either beats walking in the open.

Working from open thinskinned vehicles doesn't seem to bother these guys, though.

[archy]

The survivability is another problem, which have proved its excellence excluding the problems of seat belt.

That, and for the three who drowned in at least one unfortunate Stryker rollover incident on 08 December 2003. And if that is the case in desert conditions, what happens if Strykers and their crews are sent where it's really wet?

And, of course, there are those who've found that even the *bedspring* anti-RPG screens leave a lot to be desired.

According to figures compiled by The News Tribune, of the 32 soldiers killed from the two Fort Lewis Stryker brigades, no more than 13 were killed while in a Stryker. Of those, at least five were killed by roadside bombs and one was killed by an RPG strike."

[Wiz]

Regarding one that has been said to died from RPG fire, this was a result of the soldier exposing the body out of the vehicle, not inside. So there has been no reports for any soldier killed by RPG in the Stryker so far.

[Wiz]

Regarding those killed by road side bomb stated in the report, there were some who have died as a result of fires caused by the explosion and not directly by the explosion, so their are very few that have died for direct fire.

[LibKill]

I don't know much about this, but if the soldiers really do like it, it must have something good to offer.

Soldiers in combat zones have small tolerance for bad equipment.

[RightOnline]

Ping......and comment?