General: Stryker plan on schedule

THE OLYMPIAN ^ | Tuesday, September 23, 2003 | Christian Hill

[Cannoneer No. 4]

The commander of I Corps and Fort Lewis said Monday he's confident the Army's first Stryker brigade will have a successful deployment when it leaves for Iraq next month.

Lt. Gen. Edward Soriano said work continues to shore up the types of armor plates that military live-fire tests recently found were defective on the unit's namesake vehicles.

Teams from the vehicle's general contractor, General Dynamic Corp., are reinforcing the plates with more steel. They're scheduled to finish the job by month's end, a timeline that doesn't interrupt the brigade's planned deployment, Soriano said.

"I'm not going to let them go without it, that's a given," he told a roomful of Olympia Rotarians.

The discovery of the flawed armor plates has added fuel to the debate over the Stryker brigade.

The Army developed the program to fill a gap between its light and heavy forces by providing units that are more fleet-footed than tanks but more lethal and better protected than foot soldiers.

Critics say the Stryker is too heavy and vulnerable to attack, an assertion Army officials deny.

The brigade, the first of six planned by the Army, also represents a departure from traditional combat strategy that depended on seeing an enemy before engaging it. Equipped with electronic messaging and other high-tech reconnaissance tools, the Stryker brigade is able to size up a foe before a shot is fired.

"We think it's the bridge to the future in regard to the force," Soriano said.

The 19-ton Stryker vehicle is protected by 132 separate armor plates that are supposed to stop bullets up to 14.5 mm, slightly bigger than a .50-caliber bullet. But recent tests concluded that some of the vehicles were failing that test, making them vulnerable to machine-gun fire.

Once the 309 vehicles are retrofitted, they and the brigade's other vehicles will be shipped to the Middle East next month. The brigade's 3,600-plus soldiers will follow by air later in October.

The brigade is being deployed to Iraq as part of a rotation plan to relieve battle-weary soldiers already there.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Define "successful." I expect the vehicles themselves will be fairly useful convoy escorts, though I suspect the infantry squad and their battle taxi will be separated more often than not.

[jdege]

The armor is so much cheese against a $10 RPG.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Stryker Brigade Combat Team Bump

[.cnI redruM]

No matter how many times the back door falls off at NTC, or the pointing device loses boresight every time one of the gun/mortar variants gets fired. No matter how many times soldiers fill out surveys describing this think as a lightly armored Yugo with way too large a sillouhette, the Stryker stays right on schedule. The testing must be done, the results just flat-out don't matter.

The Stryker will get our soldiers killed.

[Poohbah]

Have you heard about "electric armor?"

Recently, a UK Warrior, fitted with armor against 14.5MM and a prototype electric armor system, had several RPG-7s fired at it.

Not one RPG penetrated the armor.

And it also killed every damn 'skeeter that landed on it (c8

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Ultimately the best protection from enemy fire is range and concealment. The function of infantry is local recon and local force; if the recon could be performed by small, slow, cheap UAVs, and the local force can be performed by precision aerial munitions, your need for putting people in harms way would be reduced. Maybe we could all sit in our rocking chairs and study data-link video to try to detect the bad guys in our spare time.

I hope as much attention is paid to that sort of approach as to new concepts of big iron.

[FreedomPoster]

ping

[xrp]

Stryker, eh?

[Ringman]

Anyone know how the mortar variant is configured? Are we talking a 120mm turret mount or something?

[Darksheare]

World's most mobile bug zapper?

[.cnI redruM]

Soltam 120mm. Fills up the whole crew compartment so they can't cut and stack the rds for a max rate of fire mission. About as bright as a burned out lightbulb.

[.cnI redruM]

Soltam 120mm. Fills up the whole crew compartment so they can't cut and stack the rds for a max rate of fire mission. About as bright as a burned out lightbulb.

[xrp]

Our "foot soldiers" need Robotech Cyclones:

[Poohbah]

Actually, just think of the fun you can have with this toy...

Angry mob around the vehicle? Turn on the armor! ZOT!

[Sloth]

No, it's this guy:

I just hope he doesn't still have that drinking problem.

[xrp]

Did he ever get over Macho Grande?

[Cannoneer No. 4]

They are supposed to relieve 3rd ACR in March. Wonder how they will do in Al Qaim.

“There’s gunfire every night,” a British major warned Dolan before the colonel’s men arrived. “Don’t go in there without armor.” Maybe when they come back from the Syrian border we can find employment for them on the Mexican border.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

The mortar cannot fire from the vehicle. The mortarmen have to dismount and set it up on the ground just as if they were riding in a deuce and half.

[TADSLOS]

Yes, but he lost George Zipp there.

[Darksheare]

Actaully, that sounds like fun.
"Hey Sarge, watch THIS one!"
*Bbbizzat!*