Stryker snippets

[GSX]

I thought Id dig out some info on the beast, apologies if its been done already.

http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Stryker2,,00.html

And loads here:

http://www.combatreform.com/lavdanger.htm

[ October 22, 2005, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: GSX ]

[Midnight Warrior]

Interesting links.

I wonder if CM:SF will include M-113A2's and A3's?

Also, I wonder if it will model the Stryker's turning radius and the limitations it has in negotiating 90 dgeree turns on narrow streets for MOUT?

[panzermartin]

Capable of speeds over 62mph? This thing is gamey. It will cross the whole battlefield in a single turn.

[hellfish]

Combatreform.com is one of the most disgustingly biased sites I've ever been to. It pretty much just spouts lies and distorts the truth.

[GSX]

Sorry all I did was hit Stryker in my search engine.

It may be biased I suppose, but some of it, if you wade through it rings a bit true.

[GSX]

For example, once the tires are out, does that mean it has to withdraw?

[gunnergoz]

Hard to get past the first sentence when a site describes its contributors as "an elite group." Later on in the Stryker section it poses the question if "The Army may have gotten confused with the LAV-III being 14mm THICK in its construction and it being 14.5mm heavy machine gun protective."

I suppose there are military leaders somewhere that are that stupid, but rooms, committees and task forces of them?

On the other hand, if Rumsfeld is in some way making money off the Stryker through one of his myriad investments, there may be something to all this...I don't trust him any farther than I could throw him.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by gunnergoz:

[snips]

I suppose there are military leaders somewhere that are that stupid, but rooms, committees and task forces of them?

What, you think people get cleverer when they work in committees?

All the best,

John.

[gunnergoz]

From actual experience, I think communal IQ drops significantly for each half hour spent in committees and meetings...however, I think you got my drift. I suspect there are enough technical weenies in the military to spot such an obvious goof, if it ever indeed happened, and would have straightend out the "old man" in a hurry.

On the other hand, if we're talking about congress...well, anything goes. Intelligence was never a prerequisite for public office.

[Kwazydog]

Hehe, yeah that second site has been floating around for a long time, you only have the read the first paragraph or so to conclude it certainly its written by an impartial third party...actually I think most of it was even written before the Stryker was even in service.

Bottom line is that many of these concerns were real concerns, but have be proven pretty much invalid by actual combat experience with the Stryker. There are many articles coming back from Iraq that show the Stryker is actually performing very well for the guys using them...I did a quick search and found the example below for instance.

Stryker Crews Find New Vehicles Can Take A Punch

By Michael Gilbert, The News Tribune

SAMARRA, Iraq - Like many soldiers in the Stryker brigade, the crew of Charlie 1-4 had their worries about how their vehicle would hold up if it were struck by a roadside bomb.

Count them as big believers in the Stryker after their encounter with an improvised explosive device on a dirt street a week ago.

"If it had been a Humvee, we'd all be dead," said Sgt. 1st Class Mike Farnum, the senior man aboard Charlie 1-4 when it was struck by the IED the afternoon of Dec. 13.

Only the driver, Pfc. Chris Hegyes, 21, was injured, suffering a broken right foot and ankle. The rest of the crew was unharmed.

Their vehicle was destroyed - not by the blast, soldiers said, but by a fire in the engine compartment that spread throughout the vehicle and ignited their ammunition.

A second Stryker was hit by an IED on Saturday en route to a raid in Samarra, not far from the location of the Dec. 13 attack. Soldiers said it knocked off the left front wheel and damaged the hub, but no passengers were hurt and the vehicle continued on under its own power.

An OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter crew spotted a pickup driving away from the scene and radioed its direction of travel to other Strykers in the raiding party.

They maneuvered on the truck, surrounded it and detained five men armed with four AK-47 assault rifles, said the brigade spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Piek.

That the Stryker was able to continue after the bombing, and that the others could move quickly to catch the pickup, demonstrated the vehicle's agility and ability to take a punch, Piek said.

"That's very good news for us," he said.

In the Dec. 13 strike, the crew from Crazyhorse Troop of the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment were at the end of a seven-vehicle convoy. The scouts were showing infantrymen around town in preparation for the brigade's Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, which was to begin in less than 48 hours.

As it turned out, the news the next day that Saddam Hussein had been captured postponed the start of Blizzard by two days.

The convoy had been riding around the city for a few hours when they headed out at 1 p.m. to return to a staging area outside the city.

"We caught some slit-your-throat signs, but that was about it," Farnum said.

They were passing by a dirty two-story brick house - like all the other dirty mud-brick houses in Samarra - when the blast occurred directly under the center front section of the vehicle, crew members said.

"That was the loudest damn explosion I ever heard in my life," said Sgt. Johnathan Vines, 23, who was standing in the rear right-side hatch.

Soldiers said the front of the vehicle lurched upward, then bounced back. Farnum, 37, who was riding across from Vines in the left rear hatch, said a great cloud of dirt and smoke instantly flew up around them.

They didn't know whether it was a bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade, but immediately the soldiers opened fire in all directions. They call it suppressive fire, and it's meant to kill or chase off anyone who might be waiting to follow the first explosion with another attack.

Inside, their medic, Pvt. James Nguyen, a 20-year-old from Seattle, went to work right away on Hegyes. The blast occurred almost directly under the driver, whose compartment is at the left front of the Stryker.

"I kept yelling at him. I thought maybe he was unconscious," Nguyen said. "I heard him making these moaning sounds, and I knew he was hurt."

Hegyes managed to crawl over his driver's seat but then stopped moving in the tight space between his compartment and the rest of the vehicle the soldiers call "the hell hole."

So Nguyen grabbed him and pulled him through.

"Then I put him on the floor and laid on top of him because I thought we were under fire," he said.

Instead, he saw his teammates laying down suppressive fire in all directions.

"Then I took him to the nearest building, found a corner and put him down and told him to stay there. I was pointing my weapon out in the street. I fired three or four times.

"Then Tillotson (Spc. Cody Tillotson, 20) came over and helped me pick him up and take him to another Stryker."

Spc. Clayton Womack said Nguyen began treating Hegyes right away.

"He had his boot off and ankle and foot wrapped in like 30 seconds," Womack said.

Womack said he used the fire extinguisher on the flames that were licking from the engine compartment, but to no avail.

The fire spread and set off secondary explosions when it reached the two antitank rockets, 40 mm grenades, 15-pound shaped charges and other ammunition.

All the crew members' belongings were in there, too - their clothes, their personal photos, all their snacks, a PlayStation, everything.

"We lost all the things that make us comfortable and remind us of home," Farnum said.

Soldiers from their unit and the 296th Brigade Support Battalion rounded up replacement clothes, some poncho liners the soldiers call "woobies," and sleeping bags.

They haven't had a chance to tell their families back home about their ordeal and put in orders for care packages.

Likewise they haven't been able to send best wishes to their driver Hegyes, a Sacramento native who they said served as the crew's deejay, serving up everything from Sinatra to rap.

"He's a good kid, a great soldier," Farnum said. "He was all worried that it was his fault when it happened."

Crew members were cheered, though, by the news that their comrades in the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment on Saturday bulldozed the house where the IED had been set. After the blast the crew found wires running from the crater to the house and up to the rooftop, Farnum said.

Their only regret was that they weren't there to watch, the soldiers said.

Farnum said the crew did a great job reacting to the explosion, getting everyone out of the vehicle and getting medical care for Hegyes. If there's a next time, he said, they'll be better at catching or killing whoever sets it off.

"Oh, we'll get the guy," Farnum said. "Unless he's a world-class Olympic sprinter, he won't get away the way we've got it set up."

And for the folks at the Stryker factory, he said, "Tell 'em thanks. They did their homework."

Dan

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

All the crew members' belongings were in there, too - their clothes, their personal photos, all their snacks, a PlayStation, everything.

Oh wow, they lost their PlayStation? Bummer.

:eek:

Michael

[Battlefront.com]

Oh yeah, Combatreform.com isn't worth the time spent reading. There are some articles on the guy behind it, and they aren't pretty. The guy has zero objectivity about anything. For example...

A Stryker can lose several and still move under its own power. A single, tiny break in a tracked vehicle leaves it stuck on the battlefield. This is of course not mentioned in his staunch support of the Gavin.

The turning radius of a Stryker with cage is not all that great. True. But I've seen Bradley and Abrams crew members state that they don't pivot in place because the chance of throwing a track is too great. Also, in MOUT environments backing up is usually the better thing to do because it leaves the frontal armor pointed at the threat. Again, these things are not mentioned.

He makes no mention of the logistics and "up time" benefits the Stryker brings to the table. These apparently mean nothing to him, yet the need for rapidly deployable units that don't need massive logistics to remain functional is clearly needed.

The tripe on that website was also written before deployment to Iraq. Much of the negatives he wrote about have either been over come, or more often, proved to be wrong. Which is not surprising since the guy doesn't feel objectivity is important.

I haven't fully read that other article. But two things struck me right away... the M113 family is just as vulnerable in MOUT as the Stryker, more vulnerable when on the move in the open. The other is that tracked APCs are also vulnerable to other types of attacks. For example, the British APC that was brewed up during the prison break fiasco.

The author of the article also made this bad argument:

An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) can, if it is big enough, and placed appropriately (particularly directly underneath) blow off a wheel or a track, leaving the crew immobilized in their vehicle. However, in at least one instance in Iraq, a Stryker has continued to maneuver on the remaining seven wheels. We are talking here about increasing the odds of surviving, not eliminating the risk altogether. So where should the Army spend $3.3 million? Buy one Stryker, convert eight M113A2 Gavins to M113A3, or up armor twenty-two Humvees?

This type of thinking doesn't take into account logistics. This sort of thing makes it seem like there is no difference between fielding one Stryker and eight Gavins. It is not that simple. The logistics of keeping one Stryker operational is probably less than one Gavin. But assuming they are the same, this line of argument then means having to spend eight times the amount on logistics support for those 8 Gavins. That would require more air and sea lift capacity, more fuel stocking, more spare parts, more maintainence crews, etc. So if the the author is saying that the Army should instead have redundent swarms of Gavins instead of Strykers, then I'd say he had better figure out how it is practical. From what I've seen of the logistics end of things, it isn't.

Overall though, the article is in stark contrast to the dribblings on the Combatreform website. At least the author discusses the pros as well as the cons of the Stryker and the Stryker vs. the Gavin.

Steve

[Renaud]

But I've seen Bradley and Abrams crew members state that they don't pivot in place because the chance of throwing a track is too great.

aka the neutral steer!

Only a problem in deep soft sand or other stuff that can push the roadwheels away from the centerlink, thus allowing the track to slide away and eventually come off the sprocket if you keep doing it.

ha, the m1's problem in a city is fitting in the streets, not banging the gun on something, and not smashing a building or crushing a car or pedestrians. Or torching stuff with the exhaust.

[Battlefront.com]

Renaud,

Only a problem in deep soft sand or other stuff that can push the roadwheels away from the centerlink, thus allowing the track to slide away and eventually come off the sprocket if you keep doing it.

I think the quotes I've seen were a combo of rubble, curbs, and other urban features and...

ha, the m1's problem in a city is fitting in the streets, not banging the gun on something, and not smashing a building or crushing a car or pedestrians.

...this stuff. I'd also guess that since friendly troops tend to be to the sides of AFVs so when one backs up or moves forward there isn't a problem. When one spins in place all bets are off

I've also heard some Stryker critics talk about the Stryker w/slat armor not being able to get down narrow streets. Yet they fail to explain why that is relevant since Bradleys and Abrams can't get down those same streets either IIRC, the size of the Stryker is nearly the same as the Bradley and smaller than the Abrams. I also heard a Dutch LTC MOUT expert (in charge of MOUT training) say that he had to break the bad news to the higher ups that the new Leopard 2s that they bought should have their neato extended guns cut down because they'd be useless in an urban environment. He also said that they weren't happy with his opinion

Steve

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Renaud,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />ha, the m1's problem in a city is fitting in the streets, not banging the gun on something, and not smashing a building or crushing a car or pedestrians.

...this stuff. I'd also guess that since friendly troops tend to be to the sides of AFVs so when one backs up or moves forward there isn't a problem. When one spins in place all bets are off

I've also heard some Stryker critics talk about the Stryker w/slat armor not being able to get down narrow streets. Yet they fail to explain why that is relevant since Bradleys and Abrams can't get down those same streets either </font>

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

I did a quick search and found the example below for instance.

Stryker Crews Find New Vehicles Can Take A Punch

(...)

sorry, but all this article really says is that the Strykeout can absorb more punishment than a Humvee.

Their vehicle was destroyed - not by the blast, soldiers said, but by a fire in the engine compartment that spread throughout the vehicle and ignited their ammunition.

...LOL.

well, true enough, my Shermans rarely get destroyed by the 8.8cm hole itself in their front plate either.

its the fiery explosion afterwards, the ignition of fuel and ammo, thats the problem.

[gunnergoz]

Maybe the Stryker needs a halon fire extinguisher system? Seems to work well enough in the Abrams...

[Kwazydog]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

sorry, but all this article really says is that the Strykeout can absorb more punishment than a Humvee.

Hehe, true, thats one way to look at it but my main point was to actually comment on their survivability as the above articles (mainly the second) go out of their way to criticize this. There are actually a lot of articles out there which tend to show the vehicle has proven itself quite sturdy when need be...here is another I came across yesterday I thought may be of interest here...

The picture is of a U.S. Army Stryker that was hit by a 500 pound roadside bomb in northern Iraq on October 8th. The Stryker was hit on the right side while travelling down the road at about 60 kilometers an hour. The bomb was in a car parked by the side of the road, and went off as the Stryker drove by. The Stryker flipped over one and a half times and skidded about 30 feet. This bomb was so powerful that it knocked out lights in the rooms of soldiers at a base 2400 meters away. There were four soldiers in the Stryker, and none were hurt (aside from a ringing in the ears...). When the Stryker was flipped back upright, it was still able to move under its own power.

Dan

[ October 24, 2005, 02:34 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

[Sgt Joch]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

The Stryker flipped over one and a half times and skidded about 30 feet.

will that be modeled in the game?

[Peter Cairns]

Couple of points.

No one has pointed out the loss of MBT's and even tracked IFv's while on the back on transporters. the need to use these for a lot of long distance travel makes them vulnerable ito guerilla tactics.

Then there is fuel, i am not sure of the exact figures but if a Bradley is using five times the fuel of a Stryker, then thats five times as many tankers for the enemy to shoot up.

I haven't looked at the Combatreforum web site, but I have in the past came across a tendency on some US sites to go for the heavy solution and the heavier the better.

I remember one that post BHD in Somalia, was advocating fitting Humvees with Recoilless rifles.

Given that anything up to 1,000 Somali's got killed or wounded in one night, god knows what would have happened if they had been charging around in M1's and Bradleys.

Peter.

[Battlefront.com]

Hof,

well, I guess that if push comes to shove, then the latter would have a better chance to push against any mud cottages or walls and shove them out of the way, thats the only thing I could think of

For Hollywood perhaps Otherwise it is a classic strawman argument. Theoretical advantage staged to make one side look better when in practice the advantage is not practical or for whatever reason not all that relevant.

this anecdote shows me that this MOUT LTC seems to think that heavy tanks are essential for MOUT and strykerstuff just wont do (otherwise it would be irrelevant whether or not the Leo2 barrels pose a problem in MOUT).

Ah... wow... talk about taking a comment completely out of context. This logic would be like me saying someone thinks Coke is better than Pepsi and you saying that means there is no market for beer Not even remotely logical.

No, the LTC was simply stating that the new Leos are not very good for urban environments due to the long gun. Plain and simple.

Again, tanks are seen as an important part of MOUT combat. Few would argue against that. However, just because something is seen as good doesn't mean that it is seen as superior. Or at least superior in all situations all the time. That's why there is a little thing called Combined Arms tactics

Steve

[stoat]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Again, tanks are seen as an important part of MOUT combat. Few would argue against that. However, just because something is seen as good doesn't mean that it is seen as superior. Or at least superior in all situations all the time. That's why there is a little thing called Combined Arms tactics

Sure, sure. But as the old adage states: "How do you stop a Syrian tank?

Shoot the guy who's pushing it."

[M Hofbauer]

Steve:

Again, tanks are seen as an important part of MOUT combat. Few would argue against that. However, just because something is seen as good doesn't mean that it is seen as superior. Or at least superior in all situations all the time. That's why there is a little thing called Combined Arms tactics

yes, but we will miss out exactly on this piece of the jigsaw puzzle called combined arms, since, to my understanding, we will not be given MBTs, right ?

[MikeyD]

I believe that wrecked Stryker in the photo is a turreted TOW Stryker, which should suggest how many parts got removed in the explosion. It may be listed as rebuildable despite looking rather... bent. Makes you wonder how much 'creative interpretation' is going on to make the stats appear better by officers looking to keep their jobs.

Stryker's performing well in-theater, though I'd like to have the profits from the replacement tires. Between being some ten tons overloaded and being shot at all the time I hear they're going through a LOT of tires a $1,000 a pop.

[ October 25, 2005, 01:05 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Battlefront.com]

Hof,

yes, but we will miss out exactly on this piece of the jigsaw puzzle called combined arms, since, to my understanding, we will not be given MBTs, right ?

Err... wrong. I think I made that pretty clear even in my announcement post. (goes and checks) Yup, couldn't have made it any clearer when I said:

The primary force under the command of the player is a task force from a US Army Stryker Brigade. At times other forces, such as US Mech Infantry and US Armor, are involved and under player command, however the core organic units are from the Stryker based task force. Air support and off map artillery support are of course a part of the battle as well.

I've reinforced this in many other threads.

Mikey, you might be correct about this being the ATGM variant or perhaps the MC (Mortar Carrier). The only clue I see is the rear hatch. It appears to be a single hatch that is hinged at the back. The ICV has two hatches that open to the sides of the vehicle.

Yeah, tires are ridiculously expensive in general speaking as someone who had to replace a bunch of tires due to road damage. I might not have IEDs around here, but it is amazing what drywall screws and nails can do!

Steve