Posted on: Sunday, July 25, 2004
It's show and tell for Strykers on Big Island
By Karin Stanton
Associated Press
WAIMEA, Big Island — Big Island residents got a first look yesterday at the eight-wheeled armored assault vehicles at the heart of the Army's transformation of one brigade of the Hawai'i-based 25th Infantry Division (Light) into a Stryker brigade.
Associated Press The 20-ton armored vehicles will be on display in Hilo today before going back to O'ahu, where the public will have three separate chances to see the Strykers up close.
Marine veteran Michael Okunami of Honoka'a said he was impressed.
"It's very solid," he said. "I'm glad they have something like this. Go for it."
The Stryker brigade is key to the Pentagon's goal of making the Army a quicker, more versatile force. Hawai'i's brigade of 291 Stryker vehicles would be the fifth of six planned nationwide.
The eight-wheeled vehicles can carry up to nine troops and travel faster than 60 mph, meaning troops have the advantage of arriving faster to a battlefield.
The vehicles on display yesterday stretched 22 feet in length and stood 9 feet high — about 2 feet wider, 8 feet longer and seven times heavier than the Hummer H-2 commercial sport utility vehicle.
The Stryker made no more noise than an average pickup truck, and there was no visible exhaust.
"It's awesome," said Sgt. Benjamin Herman of the Fort Lewis, Wash.-based 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, who spent eight months with a Stryker team in Mosul, Iraq. "It's saved a ton of guys' lives. We can ride right up to the bad guys' front door without them even hearing."
Although most of the three dozen Big Island residents who saw the Stryker yesterday said they were impressed, at least one disagreed.
Lynn Nakkim, who said she represented several groups opposed to basing a Stryker brigade in Hawai'i, said the military has other, more remote areas it can utilize, and should be sensitive to the environmental impacts on the Big Island.
"Hawai'i isn't big enough for a Stryker unit. It's just not suitable," she said. "It's right in our yard, our front yard and too close to the Kohala Coast resorts. If you were on your honeymoon and spending $500 a night, would you want to have war games going on while you sat on a balcony looking out at the moon and the stars?"
Wearing a T-shirt printed with the words "Axles of Evil," Nakkim said she was not being unpatriotic, but she still was angry.
"This is not a done deal," she said.
Army spokeswoman Capt. Kathy Turner said officials wanted to give Hawai'i residents an opportunity to see the vehicles and to meet some of the troops to ease some of the environmental and cultural concerns that the Strykers will cause more air and noise pollution and inflict irreparable damage to the land.
"We want the community to touch, see and hear these vehicles," she said. "We want to show the community that this is a work in progress."
Two of the Stryker vehicles were on display, and about a dozen soldiers on hand to talk about them, at Kohala-Waimea Airport, not far from the Army's Pohakuloa Training Area where the vehicles will operate after being phased in on O'ahu in 2006.
Staff Sgt. Robert Wilson holds a hatch open so Jacob McCafferty, 7, can check out the driver's seat of the U.S. Army's Stryker vehicle. Two of the vehicles were on display yesterday on the Big Island.
