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CAMP UDAIRI, Kuwait - The Stryker brigade has landed in Kuwait. The last of its 5,000 soldiers were to arrive today, completing a six-day airlift out of McChord Air Force Base and the largest movement of Fort Lewis combat troops since the Vietnam War. They've been showing up day and night at this desert post about 10 miles south of the Iraqi border. They'll spend the next few weeks gathering up all their gear and vehicles before they move up for their yearlong assignment in Iraq. This marks the first deployment of the brigade, and the first battle test for...

PORT OF KUWAIT, Kuwait (Army News Service, Nov. 12, 2003) -- For the first time since World War I, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division has deployed overseas. The brigade’s Stryker vehicles and other equipment arrived Nov. 12 in the port of Kuwait on board the USNS Shughart and USNS Sisler after a three-week voyage from Fort Lewis, Wash., via the Port of Tacoma. The deployment marks the second time that Stryker vehicles have landed on foreign soil though. In August a platoon from the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat team conducted a capabilities demonstration in South Korea. Also on...

The Stryker with soldiers from Fort Lewis in Washington heads for a yearlong test in Iraq of a warfighting plan designed to replace Cold War tanks and heavy infantry. Soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, will begin to leave Fort Lewis this week. The brigade is the first of six designated to become the Army's first medium-weight combat fighting unit. In July, Gen. John Keane, then acting Army chief of staff, said the brigade would replace the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Anbar province. Anbar is Iraq's largest province, stretching from the Jordanian, Syrian, and Saudi Arabian borders...

Stryker Brigade Receives Vote of Confidence from Chairman By Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service FORT LEWIS, Wash., Oct. 22, 2003 – The Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle system received high praise from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers following a test drive here Oct. 21. Mary Jo Myers, wife of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, gets a briefing on the Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle at Fort Lewis, Wash., Oct 21. Photo by Jim Garamone(Click photo for screen-resolution image); high-resolution image available. Myers plowed through standing water and mud and drove on taxiways...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Oct. 15, 2003) -- The Army's newest vehicles are loaded on ships and ready for travel to Iraq in November. Now Soldiers in the Army's first Stryker Brigade Combat Team -- the Fort Lewis, Wash.-based 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division -- just have to wait until early November for their flights to Kuwait on move into Iraq. But waiting won’t be a big deal for Cpl. Jose Chavez because deploying to war is why he and the guys in his unit joined the Army, he said. Chavez is an infantry team leader in 5th Battalion, 20th...

TACOMA -- The Army's faster and more versatile new Stryker brigade, developed at Fort Lewis, yesterday began loading more than 2,500 combat vehicles and equipment aboard cavernous ships bound for a monthlong voyage to Iraq. But some of the troops in this vanguard of the 21st-century Army carry things more personal. Capt. Roy Montgomery's wife, Karen, gave him a special journal in which to record all that the 25-year-old Arizona native's senses will take in. Sgt. 1st Class Michael Hall, a 52- year-old Tennessean who joined the military in 1968 during the Vietnam War, will again take the coin his...

TACOMA, WASH. - The Army's new Stryker armored vehicles are headed for their first operational assignment -- service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Vehicles of the Fort Lewis-based Stryker Brigade Combat Team began rolling onto ships today at the port of Tacoma, Wash. The Stryker vehicles and related equipment will support 3,600 soldiers from the I Corps' 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division who will begin their assignment in Iraq in a few weeks. This week’s move at the port of Tacoma represents several benchmarks for the port, according to the Military Traffic Management Command. It’s the biggest movement of military cargo...

It's fast. It's lethal. And now it's going to Iraq. But is this new US weapon ready for combat? FORT LEWIS, WASH. – "Food!" "Water!" A crowd of irate young men in T-shirts and baseball caps shouts at American soldiers patrolling a dusty street in one of the Army's new, eight-wheeled Strykers. The protesters aren't Iraqis. They are GIs impersonating Iraqi civilians in a training exercise. They stage a violent confrontation between a shopkeeper and a looter trying to draw a reaction - but the US troops drive on by. Watching this training unfold at Fort Lewis, Wash., Maj. Chuck...

National Journal October 4, 2003 Into Iraq, Lightly What Could Stryker Have Done in the Iraq War? By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. Fort Lewis, Wash. -- Dust clings to everything, and the air smells of smoke. It's as if the Pacific Northwest, after one of the driest and most brushfire-prone summers on record, is trying to add a little extra realism to the last big war game before this Army unit deploys to Iraq. For three years, the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division has reorganized, retrained, and re-equipped -- essentially remaking itself from a conventional, tank-heavy mechanized formation...

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...