Fate Of Stryker, Army's New Combat Vehicle, Will Be Set In Iraq

Post-Gazette ^ | September 28, 2003 | Jack Kelly

[Ex-Dem]

The Army is scrambling to fix a flaw in its newest armored vehicle -- the already troubled Stryker -- before sending it to Iraq next month for its first test in real combat conditions.

The Stryker is a 19-ton armored car that was supposed to combine the speed and quick deployability of light forces with considerable firepower and armor protection.

[archy]

I can't recall any dismounted troops ever being engaged by a Sagger, for instance. Even the Abrams was found to have weak spots this time. I can think of very few ways to die that would be more violent than being inside an armored vehicle when it is impacted by a round that pierces the hull, purees the crew, and takes their remains out the exit hole. Like what the Javelin does to a tank. (Shudder.....)

Just wait until LOSAT and the ground-launched Hellfire come online. And their equivalents on the other side, as well as the increasingly more common 9M133 Komet-E and 9M123 Khrizantema missile systems. We're approaching the day of the fire-and-forget AT missile with a 10KM range very quickly, and the end of this decade will likely see the first such systems fielded.

And oh, by the way, the Kliver turret is also fitted to the Russian BTR-80 wheeled APC used by the Russians. Wouldn't a combat meeting between a Kliver-turret BTR and A Stryker with its 50-caliber MG be an interesting affray....

The Russians, however, consider the BTR-80 to be too lightly gunned. Oh, and they're amphibious, too.

Want a low cost tank and Stryker killer? Take obsolete T55, T62 and T72 tanks, pull their turrets off, and mount the Russian Kliver turret with a 30mm 2A72 autocannon, a coaxial PKT machine gun, and 4 Kornet laser-guided ATGMs instead, reducing the vehicle weight by 5-10 tons and inproving performance accordingly.

[archy]

2/72 Armor....Firebreathers!

Hello, cousin; 2/70 Armor for my first line outfit; others followed. Strike Swiftly:

[archy]

Sounds like Germany's getting lots of good practice

Wait until you see what the Argentines have fit on top of the chassis and automotive package of the German Marder armored personnel carrier/ Mech Infantry Vehicle....

[archy]

As I've said before, the Stryker concept is good but this vehicle sounds like son of the Crusader.

Crusadeer was reportedly cancelled because *only* two could be carried aboard a C17 aircraft.

Guess how many Strykers can be carried aboard a C-17?

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[archy]

Well, the Crusader was a good concept. ...
It was canceleld largely due to several propagandistic and predatory remarks by some such as this: ...

"It's 60 tons (M1A1 Abrams weight) we don't have anything taht can carry it!" -some moron in congress.

Guess how the Army now plans to deal with that little problem with the Stryker? They plan on having congress buy them their own Navy. And if they can get Shinseki into a senatorial seat, they might get it.

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[Darksheare]

I think I'm going to scream.

We (I'm regressing to my Army days) don't need our own navy transport.
We need to rebuild our maritime transport capacity.
We also need to rebuild our strategic airlift.
Egads, this is monstrously insane..

[archy]

I always take the critics of weapons systems with a big grain of salt. I remember the same kind of things being said about the M1 Abrams, Bradley, Apache, and just about every weapons system used today.

Just so. And the family members of the two dozen US tankers killed working out the *little problem* of fires resulting from Abrams air filter faults would surely ageree with you.

Likewise the wonderous successes of the Apache during Clinton's war on Belgrade offer insights into the probability of its success against a determined and well-equipped opponent, as did the reliability of the engines of the F16 during that period, fully half of which were down for engine replacement.

But the idea is to see that such problems are discovered and worked out or around in the developmental and testing phase, not covered up. And that was done with the ASV-150 [XM1117] armored car developed for the military police, C130 transportable, and equipped with both a .50 machinegun [that works!] AND a 40mm M19 grenade launcher. The Stryker mafia feared it might offer too attractive a picture compared to their favourite 8-wheel kiddycar, co they cancelled funding for it after less than a hundred were built.

http://www.senate.gov/~reed/press108th/RInews/dodUp-armoredvehicle9-4-03.htm

[archy]

I think I'm going to scream.

We (I'm regressing to my Army days) don't need our own navy transport.
We need to rebuild our maritime transport capacity

No problem; they promise us it'll *only* be a fleet of a dozen ships. And hey, look at the good side: we can reduce the US Navy by a dozen ships' worth, including all those officer billets.

Of course, if the Stryker doesn't work out, we can always transfer those TSV vessels to the Marine Corps, and RIF the Army by an equivalent number of personnel spaces, to include both the ship/vessel complements AND the six Stryker brigades. Seems only fair.

The U.S. Army wants to acquire a small fleet of high-speed catamarans, enough to ferry one of its new Stryker brigades. A chartered catamaran performed so well in the U.S. military's 2002 Millennium Challenge exercise that the Pentagon recently sent two of the 300-foot experimental vessels to support forces massing in the Arabian Gulf.

The Army has included 12 such ships, which it has dubbed Theater Support Vessels, in its 2004-2009 Program Objective Memorandum (POM), the annual purchase plan it sends to Pentagon officials, Gen. Jack Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff, said Feb. 26 at the Association of the United States Army's 2003 Winter Conference here.

Millennium Challenge and other experiments convinced Army leaders that theater support vessels will change the way service forces get to combat, particularly the rapid-response brigades built around its eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicle.

The catamarans would move up to twice as fast as sealift ships, and their shallow draft would allow them to use relatively unimproved shallow-water ports.

"Our current estimate is that we can move one Stryker Brigade with 12 theater support vessels in one lift," a senior Army program and budget official said in a Feb. 27 statement.

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[Darksheare]

The more I think about it, the more I feel that Shinseki is a megalomaniacal psychopath who is desperately and insanely jealous of the other service branches.

It's just ridiculous to have built this ship at all.
Yes, it has nice possibilities and capabilities, but it doesn't add anything to our capabilities where it has been fitted in.
The Navy or the Marines would be better off at maximizing it's potential as a warvessel. (Shinseki had his 'peepee spanked and his pride hurt' by having to rely on other service branches I guess.)

RIFing the Army wouldn't efefct the guy who would need to be effected by it, unfortunately. That'd just bone a bunch of soldiers not in charge of this nightmare.
Besides that, it looks like some yacht builder designed it to 'look' cool and be incapable of aiding in it's own defense during open ocean transport.

And going full steam ahead with the ill-concieved Stryker is a bit short-sighted in and off itself.
God I hope something good comes of this insanity.

[archy]

The shockwave from one of those Javelins on the human body must be killer.

The shaped charge from a HEAT warhead offers three effects on those inside: immediate death or stunning from the overpressure of the concussion of the directed jet from a kilo or more of high explosive; the liquified droplets of molten armor and shattered spall of interior armor erosded away in the blast, spall liners notwithstanding. At 8000+ feet persecond those chips and shards sandblast the inside of the vehicle and those inside it to rags. And thirdly, those effects combine to produce secondary explosions, rupture fixed fire extinguishers and hydraulic accumulators and their lines, and worst of all, igniting ammunition propellent, hydraulic fuel, and anything ignitable, including the crewmen.

The effects are reduced considerably in open-topped vehicles, one reason the Israelis found the WWII former US White and IH halftracks so useful for so long, and one reason the M8 turretted *Grayhound* 6x6 armored car in US service was replaced/augmented by the open-topped M20 version. Tank destroyers were also usually open-topped as well; this also helped with crew egress and survival when one did catch a round that penetrated the turret. Of course, you have to survive the initial blast to have the followon problem of getting out of the burning wreck that a moment ago was an expensive fighting machine.

Note that in photos of the Russians in Chechnya, those aboard BTR 60/70/80 series 8-wheel armoured cars and on tracked BMD personnel carriers are usually riding on the outside. Again, there are several reasons, one being a quicker response should the riders be needed on the ground and the horribly hot condition of the interior in summer or early fall. But should they encounter a mine or take an RPG rocket hit, much of the blast and fragmentation will vent upwards through the open crew hatches of the BTR, BMD, or M113. And if the vehicle doesn't roll over them, some may have a chance of surviving.

Count on Stryker crews being told to wear their body armor and helmets, and die inside.

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[Gringo1]

Nice to see all these fellow armor guys!

[archy]

Nice to see all these fellow armor guys!

We're gonna have to start a FReeper *treadheads* ping list one of these days. On the way!

-archy-/-

[archy]

And going full steam ahead with the ill-concieved Stryker is a bit short-sighted in and off itself.
God I hope something good comes of this insanity.

Depends on how it gets used and what for.

New Army Unit Almost Ready for Combat

By ROBERT BURNS FORT POLK, La. (AP) - The Army's newest combat unit, built around an agile wheeled vehicle instead of a bulky battle tank, is about to be declared ready for real-world missions, Army officials said Tuesday.

Known as a Stryker brigade combat team, the force of 3,500 soldiers will be certified as ready for service by the end of this week, Gen. Larry Ellis, commander of Army Forces Command, said.

Eventually there are to be at least four, and possibly as many as six, Stryker brigades.

The new force is the brainchild of Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff. He sees it as filling a gap in capability between the Army's heavy armored forces and its light infantry. The heavy forces sometimes take too much time to ship to a war zone, and light infantry in some situations lack the staying power and lethality of a specially tailored force like the Stryker brigade.

Ellis spoke in an interview while observing the Stryker brigade in the last of a series of exercises intended to demonstrate that it can operate in a full range of combat scenarios - from high-intensity, set-piece battles to skirmishes against small groups of hit-and-run paramilitaries or civilians.

``It's absolutely powerful,'' Ellis said. ``It's all the right things.''

He said he planned to proclaim the Stryker brigade's ``initial operating capability'' - military parlance for a weapon or fighting force's initial readiness for actual combat - by Friday. Normally that would mean it could be used in war, but in the Stryker's case, Congress has required that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld submit a report confirming its combat readiness.

Ellis said he hoped that final step could be taken by mid-August.

The Army managed to field the initial Stryker brigade in less than three years - lightning speed for the military.

The first Army unit to field the Stryker vehicle and to convert to a Stryker brigade formation is the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. Those soldiers have spent the past two weeks at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center, after completing weeks of desert training with the Stryker at the National Training Center in California.

Shinseki and Ellis visited the Stryker exercise in order to get a firsthand look at its progress.

Shinseki said he was convinced it will fulfill the role for which it was intended.

``It's ready,'' he said in an interview on his final official trip as Army chief of staff. He finishes his four-year term as the top uniformed officer in the Army on June 11 and will retire from active duty on Aug. 1.

[Darksheare]

Some would cynically state that the role it was intended for is either to get our boys killed, or to keep us subjects in check.
*snort*

It may be good at running paved roads, but after having been stuck more than once in Fort Drum sand, I often second guess the 'wisdom' of the Stryker based off of that alone.
And this next quote from Ellis doesn't help the notion, especially the end part:
"Ellis spoke in an interview while observing the Stryker brigade in the last of a series of exercises intended to demonstrate that it can operate in a full range of combat scenarios - from high-intensity, set-piece battles to skirmishes against small groups of hit-and-run paramilitaries or civilians.

``It's absolutely powerful,'' Ellis said. ``It's all the right things.'' "

It says civilians, which would make anyone think of nefarious things.
If it gets used as just an extremely bloated and overweight troop ferry and not the IFV that it has been pawned off as, it'd be great, as long as it sticks to roads.

Now I wonder what Shinseki was really thinking when he thought this up.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

The vehicle is made in London, Ontario. It's derived from a Swiss vehicle, the MOWAG Piranha III. The ceramic tiles that weren't 14.5mm bullet proof were made in Germany. General Dynamics Land Systems subcontracted production of the tiles out to the German firm IBD.

[archy]

Now I wonder what Shinseki was really thinking when he thought this up.

Revenge.

[archy]

If it gets used as just an extremely bloated and overweight troop ferry and not the IFV that it has been pawned off as, it'd be great, as long as it sticks to roads.

Except that it still can't swim, rolls over if one side goes onto a soft road shoulder, and can't be moved by C130.

The squad inside sits facing inward, toward each other, not facing out for 360º security.

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[Cannoneer No. 4]

No, sir, that is not an LAV III.

Here is the caption that goes with that pic:

With a tow cable attached to its front end, an eight-wheeled USMC LAV-25 is pulled from the Croatian mud where it had been hopelessly mired. Note the nose up angle, indicating that each pair of tires has dug deeper into the mud than the preceding pair. The LAV-25 is an earlier generation in the vehicle family that evolved into the Stryker, and shares the same basic flaws regarding cross-country mobility.

Found that at Combat Reform

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Are you gonna let 19D's on your Tread Head Ping List?

[archy]

No, sir, that is not an LAV III.
Here is the caption that goes with that pic:
With a tow cable attached to its front end, an eight-wheeled USMC LAV-25 is pulled from the Croatian mud where it had been hopelessly mired. Note the nose up angle, indicating that each pair of tires has dug deeper into the mud than the preceding pair. The LAV-25 is an earlier generation in the vehicle family that evolved into the Stryker, and shares the same basic flaws regarding cross-country mobility.

Found that at Combat Reform

Thanks for the correction, and I appreciate it. But I got the pic from G2Mil's LAV III page, where it accompanied adjoining text describing the LAV III, and I couldn't see enough of the vehicle's rear quarter to tell if it's a swimmer or not.

The following pic at that site, dated 20.02.2001, is also kind of interesting.

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