Amry's 'ghost riders': Stryker units win over skeptics.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: GROUND COMBAT - Cover Story

THE NATION'S FIRST TWO STRYKER BRIGADES EACH have completed a year-long tour in Iraq. Their combined combat experiences have taught the Army and critics much about the effectiveness of the Stryker vehicle as well as the brigade, itself.

"The Stryker, as a vehicle, has proven its worth. It has saved lives," said Maj. Nicholas Mullen, rear detachment commander of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, which is known as the second Stryker brigade combat team.

Since the Army first announced the establishment of a new medium force of fighters in 1999 and selected the Stryker vehicle as its platform in 2000, the Stryker brigade has been under constant scrutiny. That attention has focused almost exclusively upon the 19-ton, eight-wheeled armored vehicle for which the brigade is named.

"We were getting all the attacks about why the Stryker is too heavy, too big, too tall, too wheeled," said Col. Michael Peppers, director of the G37 Division at Fort Lewis, Wash., where the two brigades are based.

Early on, the Government Accountability Office questioned the Stryker's transportability aboard a C-130.

"It does fit on a C-130. I've flown in one with it," said Lt. Col. William James, deputy commander of 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, also known as the first Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

The vehicle, designed to carry a nine-man squad and two-man crew, has shown that its survivability, agility, mobility and technology is effective in an urban combat zone where the enemy strikes at any time in numerous ways, said Peppers.

"It is the vehicle of choice from what we've seen [in Iraq]--incredibly robust, can take a lot of punishment. I've seen it hit with multiple rocket-propelled grenades and keep going. I've seen it hit with vehicle-borne bombs that you wonder how anybody could have survived--and everybody walks away," said Mullen.

During a recent visit to Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, soldiers and officers who fought in Iraq defended the vehicle with passionate praise.

"I'm going back for a second year in Iraq, and I'm damn glad I'm going in a Stryker," said James of 3/2. The first Stryker brigade is training for deployment next summer (see related story).

Not only did the Stryker vehicle have to contend with outside critics, but it also had to win over the soldiers as well, especially those who had been in heavy units before joining the brigade.

"We were all thinking, is this going to work or not?" said Jeffrey Du, brigade command sergeant major for 3/2.

"I was a skeptic a couple of years ago," said Maj. Doug Baker, executive officer of the 5th Bat talion, 20th Infantry Regiment, one of the three infantry battalions in 3/2. He worked in the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk before being assigned to the brigade. "When the brigade came through its Joint Readiness Training Center rotation, you saw platoons and companies using Stryker in different variations. Some tried to fight it like a Bradley, others dismounted way back, didn't use it to really close in to the objective and moved in several clicks. And others, in between," he said.

"If you were off-road in Louisiana, there was a tendency to get stuck. You really couldn't get the Stryker through some areas where a Ford F-250 would get through." On the other hand, "once you were on a highway, you're going 70 miles an hour very easily," he said.

Once he was on the ground in Iraq doing missions with the battalion, it didn't take long for him to become a Stryker convert.

"When you rolled out the gate, you were fairly confident that that vehicle was going to take care of you," said Baker. "I'm familiar with what a Bradley can do. It's a fantastic vehicle, but I would take a Stryker over it in Iraq any day."

The vehicle, which is produced by General Dynamics Land Systems, has protected the troops against numerous threats in Iraq, including improvised explosive devices (IEDs), car bombs, rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), mines and small arms fire, according to soldier accounts.

"During our year there, not a single soldier died inside a Stryker vehicle. There were a couple of soldiers riding who were hit, but nobody died inside a vehicle. And there were penetrations that were fairly catastrophic," said Lt. Col. Barry Huggins, commander of the 2-3 Infantry Battalion, who served as the first Stryker Brigade's executive officer in Iraq.

Stryker Brigade combat teams, designed as an earlyentry force that fills the gap between light and heavy forces, are infantry-centric units composed of three infantry battalions, a cavalry squadron, an artillery battalion, a support battalion and four companies--military intelligence, engineer, signal and anti-tank. Approximately 310 Strykers support each brigade.

The Stryker's armor protects against 14.5 mm rounds. Before deploying to Iraq, the first Stryker brigade acquired slat armor that could be added to the vehicle to protect soldiers from RPGs. The 5,200-pound armor wraps around the sides of the vehicle and deflects RPGs, which then explode away from the vehicle.

"I was here [at Fort Lewis] when they came up with the slat armor. Everybody's like, 'oh, it's a birdcage. It'll never do anything,'" recounted Mullen. A month into operations in Iraq, his unit was doing a cordon-and-search operation with the Iraqi army at a mosque in Mosul. "We'd gotten a tip that insurgents were holding a meeting in one of the rooms off the mosque. I'm 50 feet from a Stryker that got hit with three rocket-propelled grenades. And everybody's okay. One kid got a little shrapnel from a mortar round," he said.

But the Center for Army Lessons Learned released a report in late December 2004 that suggested the slat armor was only effective against half of the RPG attacks that the first Stryker brigade soldiers faced. It also found the additional weight compromised the maneuverability of the vehicle.

"There were physically very few places that we couldn't go within that urban terrain," said Mullen. "If there was blocking on one side of the street, you'd just jump the curb and drive down the other side of the street. Well, you can do that in a Stryker, and it doesn't destroy the infrastructure that's there. With a tank or Bradley, you're crushing things when you do that," he said.

The 1/25 has put 5 million miles on its Stryker vehicles.

"We just drive them all over the place. And they have really held up well under that kind of constraint. I don't think any of that was foreseen by the Army when it purchased the vehicles," said Mullen.

The Stryker operational readiness rate was in the high 90s routinely, which is way above Army standard, said Huggins, of 3/2. "That's in part a function of the vehicle, in part it's a function of the tremendous contractor support it came with. They put in place a very effective system that did a tremendous job of keeping our combat power available to us," he said.

Powered by a 350-horsepower engine, called the Caterpillar, that is found in other Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTVs), the Stryker can travel more than 300 miles at speeds in excess of 60 miles an hour on one tank of gas. Despite such power and heft, the vehicle comes with an unexpected bonus.

"Strykers are incredibly quiet," said Mullen.

So quiet that some...