The Stryker

[DanUCSB]

This popped into my head earlier today from something Col. Moroney mentioned in a different thread. It seems like before the Stryker was fielded, all that you could hear was how it was a boondoggle, useless on the modern battlefield, a poor-man's Bradley, too big to fit into aircraft, unsurvivable, so on.

Since Iraq, however, all I've been hearing are the good things. It's quiet, has more mobility than a Bradley, is pretty survivable, etc. However, I have the sinking suspicion that where I'm hearing this all from is the same folks who have a vested interest in making it look good.

So here's the question. Has anyone out there used one of these things? Personal experience? Is this a useful, viable vehicle for a serious battlefield, or, as Col. Moroney said, "just the new gamma goat"?

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have no personal experience with the Stryker but I do have experience with fielding equipment. I had an organization that made stuff for the black community that either contracted for stuff OCONUS, modified stuff in CONUS or stuff within the inventory. What I see happening to the Stryker is that they are adding so much stuff to it that it will no longer meet the original reason for its basic design of being air transportable. Sort of what is happening to the HUMMVEE, adding armor and trying to make it into an APC. The Stryker was fielded very quickly by Army standards but from my understanding has not gone thru all the testing and evaluation needed to validate its design or operational use. I do not have a dog in this fight, but I can almost guarantee that the modifications that are going to be required to make the system meet the military requirements are going to limit its air transportability and use in all terrain and environments for which it is being touted. Definition of requirements for any item of equipment against which its design and production depends takes a lot of vision and forethought. Items like when and where it will be deployed, what environmental conditions must be met, transportation to get it there and how it will be maintained and supported and other mundane items like mean time to failure and of course the treat environment in which you expect to employ it. You sort of saw the same thing when the Bradely was fielded. It was too small to fit the standard 11 man squad so rather than fix the system they downsized the mechanized infantry squad and modified the tactics to suit the technology. The result was technology and not the mission drove doctrine. Just my gut feeling that the same thing is happening to the Stryker.

Jack Moroney

[Air.177]

My question is this:

Why not just use the LAV or the M113? The systems already exist, why not just modify them to do exactly what you need?

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

That was the same question asked by a lot of folks. They even did a "run off" between the M113 and the Stryker and "concluded" that the Stryker had better mobility than the M113 under certain circumstances. However the results of those test have been questioned to death and decision was made by the same person who decided it was more prudent to spent $23 million dollars equipping the Army with black berets rather than other pressing needs.

Jack Moroney

[The Reaper]

I have spent brief periods in the M-113, and would not want to do so again.

The thing is big, barely C-130 transportable, IIRC, undergunned, and is very lightly armored with aluminum. 7.62mm AP will penetrate into the crew and engine compartments.

Guys I know with time in them say that one good RPG hit and you can kiss your ass goodbye.

The Stryker is protected up to 14.5mm, but the tires are admittedly more vulnerable and less mobile that tracks. Lower maintenance, though.

The LAV-25 is a family member of the Stryker. I like it, but it is limited to a recon role, not combat.

Not sure that transforming the entire Army is a good idea either. We need armor, mech, motorized, light, air assault, and airborne, in some mix.

TR

[Air.177]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I have spent brief periods in the M-113, and would not want to do so again.

The thing is big, barely C-130 transportable, IIRC, undergunned, and is very lightly armored with aluminum. 7.62mm AP will penetrate into the crew and engine compartments.

Guys I know with time in them say that one good RPG hit and you can kiss your ass goodbye.

The Stryker is protected up to 14.5mm, but the tires are admittedly more vulnerable and less mobile that tracks. Lower maintenance, though.

The LAV-25 is a family member of the Stryker. I like it, but it is limited to a recon role, not combat.

Not sure that transforming the entire Army is a good idea either. We need armor, mech, motorized, light, air assault, and airborne, in some mix.

TR

TR - I readily admit that you have significantly more experience with these matters than I do, but don't the Israelis use M113s and variants with good results in their military? They have the advantage of not having to transport them by air, which could be why they are able to armor and equip them as they do. Just throwing that out there, not like anything I could have to say would have any impact other than to stir conversation.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Air.177

TR - I readily admit that you have significantly more experience with these matters than I do, but don't the Israelis use M113s and variants with good results in their military? They have the advantage of not having to transport them by air, which could be why they are able to armor and equip them as they do. Just throwing that out there, not like anything I could have to say would have any impact other than to stir conversation.

Not throwing stones, since the decisions to do so are made far above my pay grade, but the Israelis are the recipients of over $7 Billion per year in assorted aid from the US, and since 1949 the U.S. has given Israel more than $83 billion.

Some of that aid is military assistance, which takes the form of hardware. Since they can get surplus equipment like the M-113s at a discount under the military assistance, they take a lot of surplus (and new) US military hardware, like the M-113s.

I am not there, and I am sure that one of our posters who are can correct me, but I suspect that the anti-armor threat in Israeli territory is lower than what we are seeing in the Sunni Triangle. Their security in Israel is a lot better than what we have at this point in Iraq as well.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

[CommoGeek]

.177,

IIRC, the IDF has a lot of bolt-on reactive armor for their 113's. I'm not sure if that helps with 7.62mm, but it will defeat RPG's. The Israeli's have done a great job at taking old gear and making it VERY viable with add-ons and updates. They had upgunned and armored Sherman tanks into the 70's.

[DanUCSB]

This sort of begs a larger question (which Col. Moroney also put into my head with one of his replies). Do we need an army where every soldier needs an APC to go out into public? That is, I completely understand the desire to give every single soldier the best in protection that we can, but it appears to me that we're moving to a force where any soldier that's not hiding behind plate steel is somehow being abused. I mean, we have HMMWVs that were to replace jeeps, but are too big, so we added Gators; we have an IFV that's too small to be a tank but too big to be an APC (in many places), so we bought the Stryker; now we appear to be using HMMWVs where an APC should be used, and so are uparmoring the ones that were never designed to be, adding wear and tear, degrading much-need performance, and shortening the time before they have to undergo overhaul, which merely takes the vehicle entirely out of the motorpool, even more useless than an unarmed one....

The question being, where does it stop? I don't mean it rhetorically; I'm wondering what some of you other folks who may have more experience in mechanized areas (I was always an air assault kid, and it was either walking or flying) think. Do we need a new vehicle for every category? Or should we be seriously working toward finding vehicles that can fit into several roles? (Not to mention a C-130 )

[casey]

I suspect that the anti-armor threat in Israeli territory is lower than what we are seeing in the Sunni Triangle. Their security in Israel is a lot better than what we have at this point in Iraq as well.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR[/QUOTE]

I would agree with the Boss 100% on this.
Remember, those lighter armored vehicles are also utilized in concert/as support to the big ol' D9's on point, that have taken hits from every weight and configuration IED and are still rolling. The Israeli's optempo is also no where near what our guys are seeing in the Sunni Triangle, in some areas a "time is not a factor" approach is often part of the clearence/render safe option that our guys can't use because of the AO. As for Israeli intel.... everyone from police commanders to the security guard outside the bar gets (almost) the same real time intel relative to ongoing threat venues/alerts - sharing is caring - nuf said.

[Airbornelawyer]

One of my concerns is similar to the colonel's. As he notes with regard to the change in squad size to accomodate the Bradley's dimensions, rather than vice versa, there are other tactical, operational and even strategic implications of letting the technology drive the process. The biggest example of this was the hollowing of the Army and other conventional forces when everyone thought nuclear weapons would define the future battlefield.

On Col. Moroney's Bradley point, another thing I'd add is that not only the size of the squad changed to accomodate the Bradley, but also the method of employment of the company. M-113s were "battlefield taxis" - they took you to the fight but you fought as infantry. Bradleys are IFVs - they are intended to be in the fight. As you know from the light side, when infantry platoons fight, it is normally as three squads, bounding and alternating as maneuver (assault, breach, etc.) and base-of-fire elements. In mech platoons, the IFVs acted as the base-of-fire element with the two dismounted squads as maneuver element. It's nice for firepower - 4 Bushmasters beats the hell out of what the rifle squad can carry - but the Bradleys can't really act as the maneuver element with the dismounts covering them. So mech tactics were changed. I understand the TO&E has been changed again in response to these problems and there are now supposed to be three dismounted squads in the mech platoon, but I'm not sure what other tactical changes have been made, or how this translates to Stryker unit tactics.

At the operational/strategic level, my concerns are more profound. As noted, a big concern was that the Stryker would lack survivability and useless on the modern battlefield. Assuming you are right, and everyone thinks the Strykers are performing admirably in Iraq, the next question is, "is this the modern battlefield"?

The Stryker concept was intended to fill a perceived capabilities gap. For the "modern battlefield", as perceived in AirLand Battle terms, we developed heavy mechanized forces organized around the M-1, Bradley, M109 and AH-64 - mobile, lethal, survivable, but heavy and dependent on a lot of supplies. For contingencies, we had light forces organized around the leather personnel carrier. But a series of events - from Somalia 1993 to Kosovo 1999 - showed that the Army lacked a capability between these poles.

Light forces were too light for the increasingly lethal contingency battlefield. Remember the references to the "82nd Speed Bump" in 1990? And in Somalia, the 10th Mountain's and TF Ranger's Humvees and trucks were vulnerable to widely-available anti-tank weapons

But heavy forces were too heavy for contingency warfare. Until Somalia, there was a (bad) political reason for this - tanks and the like were seen as too "aggressive" for peacekeeping operations. But there was also a military reason. Tanks are heavy and thirsty. It takes a lot of effort to move a heavy BCT and keep it moving, even when you can pre-position brigade sets like in Kuwait. And when you don't necessarily know far enough ahead of time where the next contingency is, you are left with the choice of too little or too late.

We saw in Somalia the problems light forces have when the enemy has anti-armor capabilities. The wars in the Balkans also exposed the weaknesses of light forces in the face of warring factions equipped not only with RPGs, but also T-72s, IFVs, heavy artillery and combat aircraft. Given this threat environment, even medium-weight forces like those of the French, British, Canadians and other UNPROFOR contributors were at a disadvantage. The peacekeepers not only didn't look too "aggressive"; they didn't scare the VRS and other warring factions at all.

When IFOR/SFOR deployed, it was a categorical rejection of this political reasoning. The Abrams, Challengers, Leopards and LeClercs might have been "overkill" but they sent a strong political/psychological message to the Serbs and others to not mess with us.

The political obstacle was overcome, but the inability to deploy an armored task force to Kosovo in 1999 showed that the military problems were still there. When 1AD rolled into Bosnia, it was down the highway from Hungary through Croatia and over a bridge US engineers (the "Trusty Seahorse" 36th Engineer Group) built at their relative leisure. But as Kosovo showed, when it comes to an opposed entry situation, difficult lines of communication and political problems, the problem of ports, roads and bridges with the right MLCs, etc. may become insurmountable.

So a medium force - light enough to deploy quickly in any terrain but heavy enough to be both lethal and survivable - became desireable, and the Stryker BCT is the result.

BTW, not that anyone asked me, and I know interservice rivalry and all that, but it always struck me that we already had 3 divisions of medium-weight forces trained and equipped for contingency operations. We called them the US Marine Corps.

The problem that I see is the flip-side of the problem the Stryker BCT solves. We now have a force that can deal with a more hostile threat environment than Humvee and truck-carried light infantry, but not able to deal with the kind of environment Abrams and Bradleys can. If we are right and the modern battlefield is mostly in this part of the spectrum, we will do OK. But since we can't afford everything, choices will have to be made. How many light brigades are converting to Stryker BCTs versus heavy brigades? It seems that we are sacrificing a good part of the heavy capability to get this medium capability. And as seen with the Crusader cancellation, we are also sacrificing to some degree modernization of the heavy capability.

It's a risky gamble if we are wrong and have to face an enemy with a modern armored force (Iraq's was a 1980s force seriously depleted by sanctions). I'm not sure how useful Strykers would be against a second-rate heavy force, like those of North Korea and Iran. If we are worried about whether PG-7s can penetrate a Stryker, what about 125mm APFSDS rounds?

When I say there are operational and even strategic implications, what I mean is that, just as we recast our platoon TO&E and tactics to fit the capabilities of the Bradley, we may recast our operational/strategic options to fit our capabilities. We simply avoid contingencies that our medium-weight forces can't handle, and redefine our doctrine to suit.

France has fallen into this trap already. While it maintained some heavy forces for national defense and NATO missions, France's main military operations after WW2 have been regional contingencies, mainly in colonies and former colonies - Indochina, Algeria, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, etc. France developed rather capable medium-weight forces for these contingencies, equipped with systems like the AMX-10RC (for all intents and purposes a wheeled tank), VAB and Sagaie. But in doing so, the heavy capabilities were neglected. France relied for too long on the AMX-30 as its main battle tank, and developed the LeClerc seemingly more to keep GIAT in business than to upgrade its army's capabilities. But tanks also fight as part of teams, and France's IFV, the AMX-10P, is obsolete (it and Germany's Marder were the first Western IFVs in response to the BMP-1 and belong to that generation; the Bradley and Britain's Warrior came later). In 1990-91, when the French deployed to Desert Shield/Desert Storm, they found they did not have the heavy armor capability to match the UK 1st Armoured Division and the US heavy divisions. By necessity, they were given the cavalry screening mission at the far left of the coalition line. Limited capabilities dictated their operational employment.

BTW, this was not limited to the French. The Marines had a similar problem, and though beefed up with units like 2nd Armored's Tiger Brigade, their mission was more limited than that of VII Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps. I think Gen. Franks' battle plan (i.e. who went on which side of the Euphrates) was also influenced by the differing capabilities of the LAV-equipped 1st Marine Division and the Bradley-equipped 3rd ID.

The fear, in sum, that I have, is that if we develop the perfect weapons systems for a particular type of operation, we will avoid other types of operations. And our enemies might not always be so accommodating as to fight us on our terms.

[The Reaper]

AL:

You give me a choice between unloading a C-130 and having one downloaded Stryker mounting a .50BMG and a short crew, or 54 airborne troopers armed to the teeth, unless I really have to move them long and fast with their own organic trans capabilities, I will take the troopers and have a lot more combat options in the end. Better yet would be a rifle platoon and 3 or 4 Jeeps.

TR

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

The fear, in sum, that I have, is that if we develop the perfect weapons systems for a particular type of operation, we will avoid other types of operations. And our enemies might not always be so accommodating as to fight us on our terms.

And there in lies the problem. What is the threat and what tools do we have to address it. We seem to always come to the dance after the band has started to play. We need to get a whole lot smarter and prepare the battlefield to suit our strategies and competencies. Unfortunately in our society we often do not have the political will to allow such things to happen. It was only recently that the powers that be actually saw UW as an offensive rather than a defensive tool. Now we need to expand aspects of that for preparation of future battlefields. We still have problems identifying our own national interests and even then we seem willing to use the military as the tool of choice rather than the supporting tool to prop up the other elements of national power. Committing folks to stop genocide in Africa might make us feel good but it sure as hell does not meet the acid test of meeting a vital national interest.

Jack Moroney

[Airbornelawyer]

As I alluded to above, my main problem with the SBCT concept was that rather than defer to the Corps in its core area of competence, the Army decided to duplicate a capability the Corps already had, but with typical Army overkill.

The Marines for the most part view the LAV as a useful tool, but recognize its inherent limitations and don't expect it to be more than it is. It seems like the Army wants the Stryker to be like a gryphon - the deployability of an 11B, the survivability of a Bradley and the lethality of an Abrams, all in one 10, 20, 30 or 40-ton package.

The Italian Centauro had this problem. When planned, it was already envisioned as too much - a recon vehicle, tank destroyer and wheeled tank in one. Eight wheels, 21 tons and a 105 mm gun to take on tanks, but armor designed to withstand 14.5mm rounds. Like the AMX-10RC and similar wheeled vehicles, it was viewed as an ideal QRF vehicle for peacekeeping missions. In Somalia, though, they were found to lack sufficient armor protection. Add-on armor was added, I think even reactive armor. So now you had a tank destroyer still too underarmored to fight tanks, better protected against Sammies with RPGs and the like, but much heavier and slower than planned.

Meanwhile, the Italian Army's heavy capabilities have atrophied. The Leopard 1A5 was supposed to be replaced by the Ariete, and the fleet of M-113 variants (VCC-1/2) was to be replaced with the VCC-80 Dardo IFV. Instead, a small number of these supplement the older and lighter systems. Only three battalions - the "Ariete" Armored Brigade's 8° Reggimento bersaglieri and 18° Reggimento bersaglieri and the "Garibaldi" Bersaglieri Brigade's 11° Reggimento bersaglieri - have true IFVs. The rest of the mech infantry force makes do with VCC-1s and VCC-2s.

Not that we expect much from the Italian Army. Like most of our large NATO allies, the best it can reasonably deploy is a brigade-sized force, and even then it has to pull units from all over the peninsula to put together a force package.

When Kerry and others were call out on their criticism of the lack of allies in Iraq, they sometimes defended themselves by pointing out the lack of actual combat forces in the invasion outside of the US, UK and smaller contingents of Poles and Aussies (that Danish submarine was a valuable asset though). I pointed out (usually in vain to people who understand little about the military) that given the fact that the US would have had to move these forces, since these countries lack sufficient organic long-range transport, we had a choice between moving and sustaining in combat a US combat brigade, whose capabilities we knew, or a Spanish or Italian one, with all of the shortcomings that entailed (language problems, increased fratricide risk, poorer equipment, etc.). While politically for us having a Spanish or Italian brigade on our flank would have looked better, militarily for us it would have been a disadvantage while being politically troublesome for Aznar and Berlusconi. In that context, we relied on their political support and took our own troops to the fight.

Was there a point there? Oh yeah, we have to be careful we don't turn our own Army into the Italian, French, Spanish, German or similar ones, where we are forced by our capabilities to define our objectives downward.

[brewmonkey]

My concern with the Stryker is they went back to the battle taxi that the PC was. The stryker lacks a gun system like the LAV, which has the same M-242 Bushmaster that BFV does. Something about having that 25mm as covering fire makes me feel a bit better then having some .50.