Study finds new Army vehicle too vulnerable.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | 26Aug03 | By Rowan Scarborough

[.cnI redruM]

The Army's new state-of-the art infantry vehicle slated to make its combat debut in Iraq in October is vulnerable to the kind of rocket-propelled grenades now being used by Saddam Hussein's guerrillas, a consultant's report charges.

The Army, which rebuts the report's findings, plans to send 300 Stryker armored vehicles and 3,600 soldiers to Iraq. This first Stryker brigade will help put down the resistance that has killed more 60 American troopers since May 1. It will also be a preview of a lighter, more mobile Army for the 21st century.

[archy]

You can shoot at me, but only after I get to shoot .50 cal rounds at you first while you are sitting in a Hummer.

You particularly mind if I do so with a HUMVEE-mounted Ground-launched Hellfire with circa 10-KM range or a Russian AT-15 Khrizantema with a 6-8 KM operating range and choice of 9M123-2 tandem HEAT charge or 9M123-F2 HE warhead? Or would you prefer a Javelin?

There are getting to be so many interesting such possibilities, many of which can be operated from either a wheeled HUMVEE or commercial pickup truck, all the way up to an obsolete T55 or T72 tank chassis with the original turret removed, and one with a much lower silhouette mounting an autocannon replacing it, offering a swell improvement in power-weight ratio, speed and range as well.

[archy]

I'd rather be in a Stryker instead of a Hummer ANY day of the week.

I would prefer for you to be as well; anyone crewing a particular vehicle should be confident of it's capabilities and happy he's assigned to the particular vehicle to which he's assigned.

I just hope you aren't killed when one overturns, particularly if you're in mine country riding on the outside, or those who put the mine there then follow up their initial success with a turkey shoot at the sitting ducks therein.

[archy]

Back to the Stryker:

External fuel tanks by rear exit door.

Bad idea, the Russians learned from it in Afghanistan.

Possibly better than internal tanks that roast the crew alive if hit by an RPG. But the Stryker also has external saddle tanks in the fender walls behind the tires, subject to penetration and rupture from M203 HEDP rounds or the Russian GP-30 underbarrel grenadelauncher equivalent, much less a RPG or LAW/SMAW/B300.

See the exposed tank behind the missing tire/wheel in a Stryker having a bad day during a training session? Just in the right place to help burn the tires off too, before the external 5-gallon fuel cans, 4 to a side, are even considered.

[archy]

>>I was the one who stood up at the last major Joint Conference on Transformation and asked everyone (including the AF and the DA Staff) why we are letting the Air Force make us design our future combat systems within the constraints of a C-130---in other words why our vehicle of the 21st century must be designed with the major requirement that it fit into the AF vehicle of the mid 20th century. . .<<

I hope the answer was becasue the C-130 is the aircraft we have the most of right now, and for many years into the future.

>>We should design the perfect vehicle to meet the capability requirements of the future and then tell the AF to design their new transport aircraft to match that capability.<<

Perfect world, that would be nice. Real world, limited budgets, long-lead times for aircraft design and deployment (10-plus years), lots of on-again, off-again programs (Sgt York), and you can quickly see the problem with designing an aircraft to perform a specific role, in support of a yet-to-be-fielded single specific piece of equipment.

A senior USAF officer writes:

"Some senior airlift officers had some interesting comments about Stryker. There's 3/4 of an INCH on either side of the Stryker when it gets loaded into a C-130. You cannot carry anything else onboard when it's loaded in its stripped configuration, which means the crew, extra armor, ammo, etc. have to go in another plane.

Here's the real kicker--they couldn't fly the Stryker up to Andrews AFB (the big 'demo' that was supposed to convince the doubters) from Pope AFB in North Carolina because when you put one Stryker into a C-130 it limits the range to under 200 miles! You have to offload so much fuel to get the plane into a safe flying configuration that it can't fly very far at all--certainly not operationally significant distances. But never mind the details--we have some transformation to do!

Our airlifters just roll their eyes at all the Army's antics, but they play along because they know the Army is the only agency who wants more airlift. They don't care how stupid the concept might be (IBCT in 96 hours? A howler! They can't get an IBCT from Ft Lewis to McChord in 96 hours!), they're just happy to have someone generating more airlift squadrons and wings for them. So it goes."

C-130 Overloaded with wheeled vehicles crashes and burns in Afghanistan: how will they be able to fly 19-21 ton lav3strykers?

This article lays out yet another set of sad implications from Army lies. In this case, the Army understated cargo weight and it cost 3 Americans their life, in addition to a MC-130 etc. And this cargo only weighed 25,000 pounds. What are we doing with Styker at over 40,000 pounds? This should be exposed.

Army Times
December 09, 2002

Weight of cargo cited in crash of MC-130H
Three killed in June 12 accident in Afghanistan

By Bruce Rolfsen

The June 12 crash of an Air Force transport in Afghanistan that claimed the lives of a Soldier and two Airmen was caused by the plane being overloaded with cargo, an accident investigation board concluded in a report released Nov. 15. Air Force Brig. Gen. Frederick Van Valkenburg Jr., a fighter pilot and commander of the 37th Training Wing at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, presided over the board. He concluded that a combination of "imprecise information" about cargo weight and a "get-the-job-done" attitude led to fatal mistakes.

Valkenburg faulted the weight-estimating procedures used by the Army - and accepted by the Air Force - for allowing the plane to take off with a load heavier than estimated. He didn't fault any individuals for the accident.

The Air Force Special Operations Command has made five changes to its cargo procedures as a result of the accident but the command won't discuss specific changes, said spokeswoman Maj. Karen Finn.

The accident took the lives of Army Sgt. 1st Class Peter P. Tycz II, of the 3rd Special Forces Group, Fort Bragg, N.C., and two Air Force loadmasters, Tech. Sgt. Sean M. Corlew and Staff Sgt. Anissa A. Shero, both of the 15th Special Operations Squadron, Hurlburt Field, Fla.

The assignment for the crew of the MC-130H Combat Talon II that day was to help ferry 30 Soldiers, their vehicles and their gear to Kandahar from a remote dirt-and-rock landing strip near the Bande Sardeh dam.

The movement required five flights split between two aircraft.

The MC-130H, based in Oman, was to fly three of the hops, while an older MC-130E Combat Talon I, staged out of Uzbekistan, was to handle two trips.

As Air Force special-operations planners worked up the flights' fuel and cargo requirements, they figured the first payload weighed about 17,500 pounds and that the maximum allowable load was 21,000 pounds. The Talon carried a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, a Special Forces gun-mounted vehicle, a trailer and three Soldiers.

The payload's weight was a critical factor for the night operation because the special operations-modified C-130 took off in thin air from a dirt airstrip at 7,200 feet above sea level.

About 45 minutes before the crew members departed their Oman office for the plane, a mission coordinator got word the Army had upped cargo weight to 20,500 pounds, the report said.

The weight estimates came from Army Special Forces team members at Kandahar. And because there was no practical way to weigh cargo at such isolated airstrips, Air Force special-operations crews depended on Army weight estimates.

The mission pilot, a major with 4,721 flight hours in C-130s, was given a verbal message about the change, but he misunderstood and thought the new weight was 19,000 pounds.

But all those estimates were wrong, the accident investigation board concluded.

When the investigators weighed similar gear plus other items in the Army trucks - such as six cases of MREs - the board concluded the cargo weighed between 23,000 and 25,800 pounds.

The first sign of problems came when the Talon had to abort its initial takeoff roll because it hadn't accelerated fast enough. The aircrew thought the problem was caused by a tailwind.

After turning around, the plane made a second takeoff attempt and this time got airborne. But the Talon couldn't reach a speed higher than about 123 mph and an altitude of 200 feet.

The landing gear was pulled up, but within seconds the plane began losing speed and altitude after it lost the lifting effect of being near the ground. Even after the flight engineer began dumping fuel, the plane couldn't stay aloft.

At 30 feet above the ground the pilot announced, "We're going down."

The MC-130H struck the ground tail first and skidded to a halt about two miles from the runway.

Loadmasters Corlew and Shero and Soldier Tycz, all of whom were in the cargo bay, died immediately from head injuries.

The other five aircrew members and two Soldiers escaped from the plane before it caught fire.

Bruce Rolfsen covers Air Force issues.

It looks like Strykers are going to kill a lot more American soldiers, too. Sad.

-archy-/-

[exnavy]

I believe your statement is accurite, nothing missed. It is a perplexing problem that needs the type of engineering input that was put into the space race of the '60s.

[Proud Legions]

I threw you off a bit by changing which vehicles I was talking about. My comment had to do with the FCS, not the Stryker. You are absolutely correct about the Stryker and the C-130, because the Stryker is a limited production vehicle for use in only 10% of our combat force and only for the next few years.

But the FCS is a whole other story. The plan is to design a vehicle that covers the entire gauntlet of combat vehicle requirements (1 chassis with different varients), to start fielding in sometime around 2010 and continue through 2018 or beyond. Oh, and by the way, instead of spending a few billion on it as we are the Stryker, we are talking hundreds of billions to reoutfit the entire Army.

With that it mind, I almost fell off my chair when the senior AF and Army Generals got up and told the over 300 contractors and others there to ensure they kept in mind the diminsions of the C-130 when they design this vehicle. I think the military can come up with a bit more imagination than that...perhaps the AF needed to take a more active part on the design team and that perhaps changes to their aircraft also had to be encorporated as part of the solution. For instance, if the optimum vehicle that will outfit the entire Army from 2010 to 2050 should be 22 tons, is there no way the AF can start coming up with improvements in its C-130s so they can handle that much weight, given the fact they would have 7 years to do so? I understand budgets and POMs, etc, but again it seems the entire DoD needs to transform their thinking. The bottom line is it is still a bit bizarre that our system of product development and distribution makes us design the most important vehicle of the next 50 years based on transportation technology that was developed 50 years ago. And I like the C-130 by the way.

But maybe I am wrong.

Serious question...how much does a C-130 cost?

[Proud Legions]

Some good points, but one key fact missing. Eveyone on this thread is getting hung up on the Stryker vehicle. It is actually just a small piece of the concept of an SBCT, and only a part of the money. Much of that money is going for non-Stryker equipment, especially information technology. Having said that, I do not deny the Sytrker is expensive.

[Proud Legions]

Can't argue with these comments. Somehow you have me painted as a defender of Shinseki...which I hardly am. I think he pretty much fumbled Transformation. As a strategic leader, he actually did phrase the questions right in some ways..."what type of force do we need in order to fight in the future, considering the need for more rapid deployment with something more lethal and survivable than just our exceptionally good light forces"? But after that, he clearly did not set out a clear vision, ensure everyone understood that vision, and then set the conditions to reach that vision. Few in the Army have any idea what the Army is really doing with Transformation, the Stryker issue clearly was not handled correctly, the FCS timelines are not realistic (we should be testing the vehicle soon if we intend to meet the timelines established and reuqired yet we have not even designed the thing yet), and the Institutional Army needs to change as much as the Field Army, yet that is not happening very effectively nor efficiently in my humble opinion.

I think we need to look at transforming how the Army (and military) do business, and then takemore time to design our next vehicle so we get it right. Just one man's opinion.

[Proud Legions]

Gee, I just said I liked the C-130, but you are quickly convincing me it is an obsolete piece of equipment...this one crashed carrying a HUMVEE! Seriously though, the crash you cited involved an MC-130, not a C-130...which as you know has different weight allowances and missions and flies in much different conditions than a C-130.

Again, I ask you guys, what is the purpose of a C-130? I thought it was to carry required payloads for combat forces. But now it turns out it can't do that except with very light forces.

So the AF came up with a C-17. But wait, it has trouble landing at most of the airstrips the ground forces need to go to, so it too can not handle the required mission.

Hmmm...and somehow you then say the Army guys are stupid and are developing the wrong equipment. What is wrong with this picture?

Not that I am against the AF...I actually think they are a great service. But again, if neither the C130 nor the C-17 (nor the C-5) can handle the required missions for this nation in the coming decades, does anyone else see a problem with the logic being expoused here. Is the only solution to go with even lighter armored vehicles? Most on this thread have already stated emphatically they think the Stryker is too light to start with. Where do we go from here? Again, no insults on my part intended, evryone is bringing up great arguments; I am just expressing some of the frustration those of us working around the program have felt.

[ExSoldier]

"OK. Here's the problem: you have to cross about 4km of FASCAM minefield ca. 2020."

This sounds like a system we came up with. Who that resides in our threat index and whom we are likely to face in future armored warfare has GOT this? And anyway, that's why the term "combined arms" was invented, to help deal with these kinds of situations. Minefields (no matter how "smart") can be neutralized.

[Gunrunner2]

Understood. Like I said, in a perfect world we should be able to do some sort of co-production of ground stuff with airlift stuff.

Budgets, production scheduling, dream designs that will be (or not), all that is going to be a hard sell. It would be an awful hard nut to crack, to design an aircraft based upon projected airlift support needs that are undefined.

How much does a C-130 cost? Good question, as the price variers considerably between model and age. In fact, Excess Defense Article (EDA) C-130B cost nothing but the bucks needed to get them out of mothballs in the boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ. (And State Dept approval, DoD approval, in accordance with political-military priorities). When involved in EDA transfer of two C-130B's from the boneyard to Botswana, ran about$3M total to get them running again.

The new C-130J models, now those are high end.

Price break down per aircraft (in round-about dollars): C-130E, $11.9, C-130H, $30.1, C-130J, $48.5 (FY 1998 constant dollars in millions).

Wanna make a deal?
;-)

[Poohbah]

This sounds like a system we came up with. Who that resides in our threat index and whom we are likely to face in future armored warfare has GOT this?

In 2020? EVERYBODY. Moore's Law works for everyone, not just the US of A.

[Proud Legions]

You make some good points, but remember there is NO push to take the armor force out. There are NO plans to replace any Armor or Bradley units, nor Armored Cavalry Squadrons or Regiments, with Strykers. The only one mentioned was the 2CR, which currently has no armored vehicles.

Everyone thinks the M1 tanks are great. The guidance has been to NOT even plan on removing tanks or Brads until the day comes along (many years from now) that new technology permits us to make a lighter armored vehicle that is just as survivable and just as lethal. Most of us think that will be a long time from now.

There are 30+ combat brigades in the army, and 3 or 4 of them (most of us don't think we will field 6 Stryker Bdes)will eventually become Stryker Bdes to give the Combatant Commanders some additional force mix choices. Those Stryker Bdes will eventually go away when the future combat system is finally fielded. They are a relatively short term fix to what the CSA thought was a gap in our current force capabilites...a quickly deployable medium armor force.

Everyone should legitimately argue if the Stryker vehicle is the right vehicle for this very small interum force, or if the SBCT is organized correctly, or if we should spend the few billion dollars required to field this force, especially considering it is a short term fix. But that argument should not be confused with any non-existent plans to get rid of tanks anytime soon. The heavy force will always be around. The only hope is that some day technology will permit us to make it not quite so heavy. Right now the technology does not exist, so we are keeping the heavy force just as it is.

[Proud Legions]

Ha. I guess I could sell my car!

[colorado tanker]

There are NO plans to replace any Armor or Bradley units, nor Armored Cavalry Squadrons or Regiments, with Strykers

True. The plan is to replace them with the Future Combat Vehicle. The FCV will probably be a tracked vehicle but will weigh about as much as a Stryker. The initial promise was that it would be at least as lethal and survivable as the M-1. The problem is that the technology to do that in a light weight vehicle hasn't been invented.

The heavy force will always be around.

I hope you are right.

I'm not as worred about the Stryker now that procurement plans have been scaled back. It's a nice little armored car to use on peacekeeping operations. I question using Stryker in Iraq because it's vulnerable to RPG's and bombs, but they're more survivable than a Humvee and lots of them are on patrol in Iraq.

The concern is that when "transformation" and the FCV were announced it was made quite clear that the M-1's and Bradleys are to be junked when the FCV is deployed. Rummy's housecleaning of Army generals and bringing the new Chief of Staff out of retirement seems to be a signal that the Army was not sufficiently "transformational." So, we are proceeding headlong down a path to "transform" away from the most potent heavy force in the world to a light weight tank that can't be built to original parameters because we haven't invented the technology.

I'm with Rummy that we need to think ahead and will not fight in the future the way we did in Gulf War I. I thought the GWII plan was brilliant and I wasn't saying we needed more troops or tanks. The new over the horizon precision weapons look to be awesome. Air power using precision munitions can take over some of the artillery function. So, I'm not one of the old dinosaurs. But I do look at reality and what I see right now is an FCV that won't be much more than a high tech Stryker.

[Proud Legions]

I totally agree with your comments about the FCS. It is a great idea, but we are not even close to the technology needed to 'transform' a 70-ton vehicle into a 20-ton or less vehicle and still maintain the same capability. It is something to keep the techies working on, but way off in the future. That is why I for one think the Objective Force will hardly be ready to field by 2010. Keeping in mind DoD/Congressional acquisition cycles, we would have to start letting contracts in the next few months to reach that goal...how do you do that when you are not even close to designing it?

I never bet against technology, but I do bet against unrealistic timelines to achieve that technology!

[colorado tanker]

I for one think the Objective Force will hardly be ready to field by 2010

I agree with you. I would swag a 15 to 20 year timeline rather than the original 10. The original timeline was overly ambitious given that we have to develop new technologies.

So, my guess is we'll be nursing along old M-1's and Bradleys for the next 15 to 20 years while the next generation fighting vehicles are invented.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Does anyone have an example of a battle we've lost because we didn't ship our armor fast enough to the theater???

Bataan, 1942.

You did ask.

[Gunrunner2]

Must be one HECK of a car!!

;-0

[Gunrunner2]

Some might say Somalia. . .ala Clintoon years.