Stryker brigade ready for Iraq duty
By Robert Burns
Associated Press
FORT LEWIS, Wash. — Cool mountain air whispers through a window in Col. Michael Rounds' office at this Army post in the shadow of the Cascades. The setting could hardly be more unlike what Rounds' soldiers will face shortly in hot and chaotic Iraq.
Associated Press library photo
Rounds commands a newly formed Stryker brigade combat team — the first of its kind, intended as a model for the Army of the future and scheduled to make its combat debut in Iraq within two months.
Soldiers with the Army's first Stryker brigade underwent intensive training at Fort Irwin, Calif., last spring to prepare them for their first combat mission. The unit, formed from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis, Wash., learned July 23 that it will be going to Iraq as part of a troop rotation plan.
"The brigade is ready to go," Rounds said.
Rounds' unit, formed from the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, has trained intensively this year in anticipation of being certified combat-ready by October. It was not until July 23, however, that the soldiers learned they will be going to Iraq as part of a troop rotation plan.
Although President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat was over, commanders in Iraq have said repeatedly that they still are in a war zone, one in which the advantage they prize most — timely information about the enemy — is the very one that Rounds' soldiers are equipped to provide.
The Iraq mission is a milestone for the Stryker brigade, which itself represents a first step in the Army's effort to become a force more relevant to 21st-century missions.
It may one day be recognized as the most telling legacy of Gen. Eric Shinseki, who retired this summer after four years as the Army's chief of staff. In October 1999, Shinseki outlined a plan for remaking the Army by 2010 into a more versatile force that can move quickly onto distant battlefields, armed with unparalleled ability to dictate the pace of fighting.
Coincidentally, it was the Army's experience in the Persian Gulf in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and seemed poised to grab the oil fields of eastern Saudi Arabia, that led to the Stryker model.
Shinseki often recalled that the Army's only answer to Iraq's threat to those Saudi oil fields was to send the 82nd Airborne Division. The division, while quick to respond, was too lightly armed to sustain an effective defense if the Iraqi army were to have crossed the Saudi border and raced for the oil fields.
It was that gap between light and heavy forces that Shinseki and others realized must be closed.
Army officials are still waiting for a final decision from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on whether to proceed with plans for a Hawai'i Stryker brigade.
The plan is to convert a Schofield Barracks brigade into a fast-strike Stryker unit, equipped with about 300 eight-wheeled, 19-ton armored vehicles. Tentative plans call for six such brigades around the nation.
Lt. Gen. Edward Soriano, commanding general of Fort Lewis and the Army's I Corps, said Friday that he has no doubt that Rounds has prepared his soldiers for the challenges of Iraq.
"They are pumped up," Soriano said. "They are psyched up."
The Stryker, the Army's first new combat vehicle in two decades, actually is intended as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal: a high-tech family of fighting systems known as the Future Combat System, which still is on the drawing board and is expected to include unmanned ground and aerial vehicles.
One Stryker can be flown aboard an Air Force C-130 cargo plane, which is designed to land on short, substandard airfields in remote areas. Thus the Stryker brigade is capable of reaching areas, including the deserts of western Iraq, that units built around tanks could not reach by air.
Gen. John Keane, the acting Army chief of staff, announced a plan last month to maintain troop strength in Iraq while allowing those who have been there longest to go home. To do that, the Army is calling on the National Guard as well as active duty units such as the Stryker brigade.
Asked what gave him confidence that the first Stryker brigade is ready for combat, Keane pointed to the training sessions that the Strykers underwent last spring at Fort Irwin, Calif., and Fort Polk, La.
"We put it through its paces against the toughest opponent our forces have ever faced," Keane said, referring to competitions at the training centers. "They are ready to go."
The Stryker is a 19-ton, eight-wheeled armored vehicle built in the United States and Canada. It comes in two variants — an infantry carrier and a mobile gun system. The infantry carrier, in turn, has eight configurations, including a reconnaissance vehicle, a mortar carrier and a vehicle for the brigade commander.
