Stryker vs Bradley

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Another likely issue with the Stryker in the Ukraine/Eastern European Theater is the wheels v tracked issue, In summer Ukraine and Russia are prone to heavy thunderstorms with torrential downpours which turn that rich Ukrainian soil to very nasty mush. The Germans found this was a severe problem. most famously during Operation Citadel. In fact the frequent thunderstorms during the battle were one of the reasons for the German failure.

 

Tracked vehicles are also going to have problems but it will be far worse for wheeled vehicles like the Stryker and of course the BTR series Again, for me the Bradleys and BMPs win out

Plus of course the Stryker is not designed for the high intensity armoured battle  and the infantry passengers, like 18th and 19th Century dragoons needf to dismount some distance away and advance on foot supported by the anti tank variants. However the high intensity armoured battlefield which means the SBCT may not always be able to do so as early as commanders may wish resulting in potentially heavy vehicle losses

I prefer the HBCT and the M1A2/Bradleys combinmation over the Strykers any day :-). Strykers are fine for your low intensity COIN but that is not the kind of war we would see in the peer level combat of a NATO v Russia war in Eastern Europe 

 

Edited April 3, 2018 by LUCASWILLEN05

[LUCASWILLEN05]

[Rinaldi]

Good God.

[sid_burn]

1 hour ago, LUCASWILLEN05 said:

Plus of course the Stryker is not designed for the high intensity armoured battle  and the infantry passengers, like 18th and 19th Century dragoons needf to dismount some distance away and advance on foot supported by the anti tank variants. However the high intensity armoured battlefield which means the SBCT may not always be able to do so as early as commanders may wish resulting in potentially heavy vehicle losses

I prefer the HBCT and the M1A2/Bradleys combinmation over the Strykers any day :-). Strykers are fine for your low intensity COIN but that is not the kind of war we would see in the peer level combat of a NATO v Russia war in Eastern Europe

 

Well 🇮  don't think you would have much luck in an argument 🤔 with a T90 when all your Stryker has is a 🅱achinegun or a 🅱renade launcher. Hopefully the guy with the Javelin is able to deal with the threat but maybe having the extra 🇦 TGM capability like the 👅  🅱radley 👅 🍆 💦  have might possibly be quite helpful when you go toe to toe ⚔ ⚔ ⚔  with Russian 🇷🇺  🅱eavy armour units which is obviously going t be the case. So, what reasons might here be NOT 💯   to add ATGM capabilty to all the Strykers assuming the budget were available to pay for  the work?

[Kinophile]

What happened, are you having an emoji stroke?

Re BTRs - I'm building a series of large scenarios, ref a UKR battlegroup attempting to escape encirclement.

Trouble is (amongst EVERYTHING ELSE) the weather is wet, misty - and BTR 4Es are terribly prone to bogging, especially in open fields. 

For UKR its a bloody nightmare

But there's hope, theres hope...

[sid_burn]

32 minutes ago, kinophile said:

What happened, are you having an emoji stroke?

 

I assumed that based on @Rinaldi's reaction that Lucas was making a (bad  ) joke post, and jokes are always funnier with emojis. 

[DerKommissar]

I always saw the Stryker as a well-armed, well-armoured, truck. They seem to be designed to take advantage of 21st century road systems. On road, a wheeled vehicle can get a much better liter per kilometer than a tracked one. More range means more strategic mobility. A Stryker can zoom back and forth with passengers, supplies and wounded. No tracks means less maintenance, which saves time and money. They've got lots of room for stuff and make a tall target. Yet, they're quiet and fast -- perfect for dropping infantry off and getting out before contact.

If you want an off-road Stryker, just use one of these:

[LUCASWILLEN05]

1 hour ago, DerKommissar said:

I always saw the Stryker as a well-armed, well-armoured, truck. They seem to be designed to take advantage of 21st century road systems. On road, a wheeled vehicle can get a much better liter per kilometer than a tracked one. More range means more strategic mobility. A Stryker can zoom back and forth with passengers, supplies and wounded. No tracks means less maintenance, which saves time and money. They've got lots of room for stuff and make a tall target. Yet, they're quiet and fast -- perfect for dropping infantry off and getting out before contact.

If you want an off-road Stryker, just use one of these:

Awful things would happen to Stryker and other wheeled vehicles in Ukraine if you get heavy rain. If you think what happened to that M113 was bad what will happen to a wheeled vehicle is worse, If you read detailed accounts of Kursk and for that matter during other summer 1943 battles heavy thunderstorms and awful ground conditions stemming from this are a significant feature. Some of the fighting in our modern Ukraine scenario could well take place in similar conditions. Just set the ground conditions accordingly and try to run your Strykers through the mud. Watch the bog! :-)

[MikeyD]

I recall reading a report saying one problem with wheeled vehicles is if they get bogged spinning the wheels just digs them in deeper. There's a reason why tracked vehicles were invented. This doesn't just apply to Stryker. Let's remember the game's got a lot of BTRs and BRDMs too. I recall reading about the first Marine operation in Afghanistan, a LAV-25/Humvee task force set off across country with the objective of cutting a major road. Every single vehicle got bogged and had to be extracted, sometimes multiple times. Humvees suspension broke and needed to be airlifted back to base for repair. That was a rough debut operation.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I suppose a big part of the problem is that un-ditching tricks that work efficiently with tracks (log/beam) just can't be done with wheels. 

[DerKommissar]

1 hour ago, LUCASWILLEN05 said:

Awful things would happen to Stryker and other wheeled vehicles in Ukraine if you get heavy rain. If you think what happened to that M113 was bad what will happen to a wheeled vehicle is worse, If you read detailed accounts of Kursk and for that matter during other summer 1943 battles heavy thunderstorms and awful ground conditions stemming from this are a significant feature. Some of the fighting in our modern Ukraine scenario could well take place in similar conditions. Just set the ground conditions accordingly and try to run your Strykers through the mud. Watch the bog! :-)

I assume the roads have improved in Ukraine, since Kursk. I think the entire concept of the Stryker is that it is mostly meant for highways. There are plenty of other vehicles that can handle the less-kept country roads.

1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

I recall reading a report saying one problem with wheeled vehicles is if they get bogged spinning the wheels just digs them in deeper. There's a reason why tracked vehicles were invented. This doesn't just apply to Stryker. Let's remember the game's got a lot of BTRs and BRDMs too. I recall reading about the first Marine operation in Afghanistan, a LAV-25/Humvee task force set off across country with the objective of cutting a major road. Every single vehicle got bogged and had to be extracted, sometimes multiple times. Humvees suspension broke and needed to be airlifted back to base for repair. That was a rough debut operation.

Wheeled vehicles have more ground pressure, and are inherently worse traversing soft ground. You are absolutely correct that it applies to BTRs and BRDMs. BRDMs even have weird belly-wheels installed, specifically to alleviate this problem. Wheeled vehicles should be traversing roads, and tracks can handle off-road. It takes two to tango.

[IMHO]

Give me Abrams' 65 tons...

PS By the way these are pics from standard Russian tank training facilities.

Edited April 3, 2018 by IMHO

[IMHO]

29 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:

Wheeled vehicles should be traversing roads, and tracks can handle off-road

A rule of thumb is below 10 tons of Gross Vehicle Weight wheeled vehicles have acceptable off-road mobility and wins big in O&S costs and reliability. You should not forget that caterpillar system weighs many times more than wheeled one and it requires more powerful - hence heavier - engine and transmission. And the latter will be bigger in volume as well so it will require additional weight in armour if we are talking about armoured vehicles.

Edited April 3, 2018 by IMHO

[Kinophile]

Re Stryker = highways, I suspect a better description would be Hard Surface - ie Urban. They are excellent for that - fast, (relatively) quiet, maneuverable, well equipped and great capacity. With the Dragoon variant they are finally well rounded enough for FISEC. 

I love the BTR 4Es for those same reasons, and am constantly frustrated by their overeager willingness to bog off-road. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

8 hours ago, IMHO said:

PS By the way these are pics from standard Russian tank training facilities.

Bogtastic! 

You should go back to the old ways.....In Soviet Russia:

Now that thing had some floatation! 

[IMHO]

5 hours ago, kinophile said:

I suspect a better description would be Hard Surface - ie Urban

If you recall the original idea was that Stryker would replace HMMVW. Namely would provide tactical and operational mobility without compromising the deployment time. It's just because Stryker turned out to be such a success it comes across now as "bad Bradley". But in reality it's a just a "better Humvee".

[IICptMillerII]

11 minutes ago, IMHO said:

Namely would provide tactical and operational mobility without compromising the deployment time.

This part is true. 

11 minutes ago, IMHO said:

If you recall the original idea was that Stryker would replace HMMVW.

This part is not. 

11 minutes ago, IMHO said:

It's just because Stryker turned out to be such a success it comes across now as "bad Bradley". But in reality it's a just a "better Humvee".

No to both. 

Roads, off-roads, it really doesn't matter. Before the Stryker, the Army had two types of forces: very light, and very heavy. Very light forces can be deployed extremely quickly (anywhere in the world with only 24 hours notice when on alert status, etc). The downside of light forces is they have little to no offensive combat power (operationally speaking). Heavy forces take a long time to deploy, generally 3 weeks is the earliest heavy forces can be moved to a new theater. However, heavy forces are where all of the decisive offensive combat power (operationally speaking) lies. 

During the Cold War, the Army had all of its heavy forces already in country, thus did not have to redeploy them to counter the Soviets. Everything else that happened in the world was essentially left to the light forces to take care of, or at least take care of long enough for the heavy forces to arrive. So, for roughly 45 years, the Army had no issue operating light and heavy forces against the threats they were arrayed against. 

This changed in the 90s with the fall of the Soviet Union. With new threats popping up in other locations of the globe (Iraq 1991, Bosnia 1990's, etc) it was apparent that the US Army needed to be able to rapidly deploy all of its combat power (both light and heavy) around the world quickly. However, they found they could not do this, because heavy forces are called heavy for a reason. They are hard to strategically relocate, and they have a large logistical tail that must be set in place to keep them functioning as well. (Note: ALL heavy forces, regardless of the country they are from, suffer from this.) 

Enter the Stryker. The entire idea behind the stryker is to have a 'medium' force. Essentially, light infantry with operational mobility. The stryker as it is excels at this role. It does what heavy and light units both cannot (deploy rapidly while being able to be operationally mobile in theater with a smaller logistics tail than a heavy unit while still packing a tremendous amount of organic firepower). There are other benefits the Stryker brings to the table as well, such as increased C2 capabilities, etc. 

The point is, the stryker has a specific job to do, and it does very well at its job. No vehicle is perfect. No a stryker isn't great at climbing a mountain off road, but then again neither is a humvee or a tank. Again, the thing has flaws, plenty of them. But the main point is that it achieves its operational (read: most important) goals, and it achieves them very well. 

[IMHO]

3 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

No to both.

@IICptMillerII, certainly your description is better! I was just trying to oversimplify the Objective Force in half a line  Please correct me if I'm wrong: certainly Stryker provides capabilities that didn't exist before but they provide these capabilities to the forces that heavily relied on HMMWV before. This wording is accurate?

[IICptMillerII]

1 minute ago, IMHO said:

certainly your description is better! I was just trying to oversimplify the Objective Force in half a line

I understand, I've done the same myself on a number of occasions. 

2 minutes ago, IMHO said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong: certainly Stryker provides capabilities that didn't exist before but they provide these capabilities to the forces that heavily relied on HMMWV before. This wording is accurate?

The story of the humvee is another rather long one, but I'll try to be brief. 

It was introduced in the 80's as a logistics vehicle. Essentially, it was designed to ferry commanders around, and bring ammunition to tanks during the night/during a lull in fighting. This is the main reason it had plastic doors and such. Like every military vehicle, someone decided to slap a weapon system on top and used it outside of its main role. Some of this was good, such as the TOW humvee, other ideas weren't so good like sticking a .50 cal on the roof for anything other than close in defense. As a side note example of this, many LMTVs (a purely logistical truck similar to a WWII 2.5 ton truck) have a turret ring with a .50 cal on top. This doesn't mean anyone is riding logistics vehicles into combat. Its meant as a defensive thing. 

Essentially, light units were never married with the humvee in any real combat role. The closest the humvee came to a combat role was as a TOW carrier in the weapons company of light units. You can see this for yourself in CMSF if you load up a US Army light infantry battalion. All the infantry are dismounted, and the weapons company (and recon element) have humvees. The humvee was never meant to be used as a front line combat vehicle by line infantry in light infantry units. 

However, when Iraq (and to a much lesser extent) Afghanistan became urban based (again mostly Iraq) counter insurgency operations, the humvee was pressed into service as a patrol vehicle. Similar in concept to a police car. Motorized transport allows you to get places much faster, and carry more gear (ammo, food, water, equipment, etc) than you can on foot. Add in the 120F temperatures and you can see the appeal of not having to walk everywhere. Then of course, the insurgents started targeting the humvees, and then the whole up armor craze began. The humvee was basically used to fill a role that was missing from light/occupation forces in a specific theater. But the humvee was never added to the TO&E of light infantry units (that is, the line infantrymen). For example, if 10th Mountain ( a light infantry division) was deployed to Poland in 2008 after a surprise Russian attack, the infantry would have been dismounted just like in WWII. Any motorized transport would have been non-combat, such as trucks and the like. 

Light units today (10th Mountain, 101st, 82nd, etc) are all still primarily dismounted infantry. After driving/heloing/parachuting onto the battlefield, they walk everywhere else. 

[IMHO]

17 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

But the humvee was never added to the TO&E of light infantry units

Fascinating! So it's somehow similar French paras of the 1st Indochina war - quickly deployable, but stuck forever once deployed. Certainly they didn't have helos but I still believe they can be compared. I was kind of surprised somewhere deep inside that pics and vids of light infantry maneuvers remarkably lack Humvees. Helos - yes, but not Humvees. But I somehow assumed it was just due to (rather poor) choice of cameramen.

Edited April 4, 2018 by IMHO

[IMHO]

21 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

The story of the humvee is another rather long one, but I'll try to be brief. 

Just as a side note - you don't need to explain much if it's old stuff. I had to read a lot up to year 2000 - that was a kind of job of mine. Very particular angle - not from a fighting point of view - but I still had to read most of TRADOC stuff, all information related to weapons programs etc. Airforce and Army.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

13 hours ago, DerKommissar said:

I assume the roads have improved in Ukraine, since Kursk. I think the entire concept of the Stryker is that it is mostly meant for highways. There are plenty of other vehicles that can handle the less-kept country roads.

Wheeled vehicles have more ground pressure, and are inherently worse traversing soft ground. You are absolutely correct that it applies to BTRs and BRDMs. BRDMs even have weird belly-wheels installed, specifically to alleviate this problem. Wheeled vehicles should be traversing roads, and tracks can handle off-road. It takes two to tango.

The main roads maybe. Secondary roads maybe not so much. Cross country however still the same. And yes, I agree BTRs etc will have the same problem. However, judging by accounts of the 1943 summer campaign (Nipe Blood Steel and myth as well as his Decision in Ukraine) summer thunderstorms can be very intense with torrential downpours. Given the nature of Ukrainian soil even a short thunderstorm lasting perhaps 30 minutes or so is enough to turn the ground conditions to deep mud. In Combat Mission terms we would set the ground conditions to the worst available option - muddy. With a strong possibility of our AFVs bogging down and moving far more slowly than normal. We both I think understand that in those conditions wheeled vehicles are going to have even more issues than a tracked vehicle. Even on dirt tracks. Metaled roads however will remain useable for any armoured movement - except for being covered by enemy ATGM teams of course :-)

[LUCASWILLEN05]

13 hours ago, IMHO said:

Give me Abrams' 65 tons...

PS By the way these are pics from standard Russian tank training facilities.

Some of those tanks seem to have joined the Russian navy (submarine arm :-) )  Seriously though these photos prove the point in regard to just how bad it can be even for tracked vehicles. If tanks end up like this wheeled vehicles like BTR and Stryker have no chance :-)

 

[Kinophile]

However, these are pics of a training facility? - ie well used road corridors, regularly travelled by heavy vehicles. I'm assuming a combat situation would encourage getting off the road and crunching through the undergrowth to the left/right?

[IMHO]

47 minutes ago, kinophile said:

I'm assuming a combat situation would encourage getting off the road and crunching through the undergrowth to the left/right?

1. Like on this pic? 
2. Except for the second pic there trees next to roads. My guess it would be even more difficult if not outright impossible to try to break though the forest. Tankers with hands-on experience are welcome to correct me.