Stryker brigades face key test in Iraq
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
The Stryker Brigade will soon make its combat debut with the first unit of the speedy, eight-wheeled vehicles heading to Iraq from Fort Lewis, Wash.
Army leaders and politicians from Hawai'i to Washington, D.C., will be watching — nervously.
The 20-ton armored vehicles representing the Army's first step toward its vision of a lighter, faster, more lethal force, have come under fire from critics who say they are too lightly armored, and face a serious threat from widely available rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs.
Defense experts say that as the Fort Lewis Strykers go in Iraq, so goes the rest of the program.
Perhaps also at stake is the Army's controversial move away from a half-century's emphasis on heavy tanks and a Cold War mentality to a "Future Combat System" of lighter troop carriers using leap-ahead technology and advanced weapons still in design.
The Stryker, championed by Kaua'i native and former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, is seen as an interim step toward that goal.
"It (the Iraq deployment) is going to be watched very closely because the whole Stryker interim brigade combat team business has been very high profile within the Army and controversial," said John Pike, a defense analyst with Virginia-based GlobalSecurity.org. "There's just an awful lot riding on it."
Stryker brigades for Hawai'i and Pennsylvania — the last of six planned and the only two yet to receive final approval from the Defense Department — face extra political vulnerability, Pike said.
"Whether (Hawai'i and Pennsylvania) are ever going to get them I think is going to get decided on the streets of Baghdad in the next couple of months," he said.
The 25th Infantry Division (Light) issued a statement saying its leadership "will monitor the deployment and activities of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, to Iraq with great professional and personal interest."
The 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division (Light), which will deploy to Afghanistan next year in the first of two consecutive six-month rotations of 3,500 Schofield soldiers, could be operating Stryker vehicles in Hawai'i in 2007.
The Defense Department late last year decided to provide money for a fourth Stryker brigade for Fort Polk, La., but deferred money for the Hawai'i and Pennsylvania units.
An aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had suggested cutting the last three brigades, and Pentagon officials asked the Army to come back "and define with a little more specificity" plans for a remodeled Stryker with greater combat capability.
After that, the Pentagon said, a decision would be made whether to finance the fifth and sixth brigades or use that money for improvements to the other units.
Members of Hawai'i's Congressional delegation have given repeated assurances that Hawai'i is on track for one of the $1.5 billion brigades of 291 Strykers, which would be an economic and militarily strategic boon for the state.
A draft environmental impact statement for the vehicles details 28 projects expected to cost $693 million, including the construction of 49 miles of private trails on O'ahu and the Big Island for Stryker use, six new ranges and two airfield upgrades.
"A lot of the controversy over Stryker is just a stalking horse for the controversy over (the Future Combat System), because the whole idea behind FCS is the Army is going to get rid of all of its heavy systems," Pike said. "It's not going to have any (heavy) tanks anymore." Pike said one option the Pentagon may be considering is skipping the last Stryker brigades and focusing on Future Combat System designs. Or if the Stryker performs poorly, military planners may become convinced that the Future Combat System, as presently conceived, is a bad idea. If Strykers get shot up in Iraq, they could be relegated to something less than a front-line role, Pike said. But he believes at least the first four brigades will come to fruition.
"I think that's a done deal," he said. "They (Hawai'i and Pennsylvania) might get shut out of them down the road, but I think the first four are pretty much a done deal."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
