About 180 troops returning to Schofield Barracks from a 15-month deployment in Iraq were expected to touch down early this morning and be greeted by family members at Wheeler Army Airfield.

The troops had been expected to arrive yesterday, but their plane was delayed at least twice.

About 100 of the troops are the first of 4,300 Stryker brigade soldiers scheduled to return. The other 80 are members of the 728th Military Police Battalion.

All the soldiers are based out of Schofield Barracks, officials said.

The Stryker brigade soldiers are from the team that conducted more than 30,000 patrols, said Sgt. Maj. Terry Anderson of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command.

The soldiers, working in conjunction with their counterparts in the Iraqi Security Force, found more than 1,100 weapon caches and completed more than 150 school projects and 20 hospital projects, Anderson said.

Soldiers from the brigade earned more than 15 Army Commendation Medals with "V" device and 35 Purple Hearts, he said.

The team covered, at one time, an area of more than 1,600 square miles. Most of the brigade's soldiers lived and worked with Iraqi Security Forces at 16 joint security stations and combat outposts.

Its headquarters was at Camp Taji, about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The 728th military police soldiers were based in Multi-National Division-North. They established the first Iraqi police academy for the Diyala province and trained more than 5,000 Iraqi police officers.

The soldiers also led a surge into the city of Mosul last September.

The remaining Stryker troops are expected to arrive in streams of flights through February.