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Uncertain changes will affect Fort Lewis

Aug-17-2004 » Filed Under: General Military

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NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF & The ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hours after President Bush announced the largest restructuring of U.S. forces overseas since the Korean War, a high-ranking Army official visiting Fort Lewis said it's undetermined how the changes will affect the local post.

Pentagon officials said Monday that the Army will bring home two divisions from Germany as part of the restructuring and replace them with a much-smaller Stryker brigade.

Fort Lewis has been the hub of Stryker development, with one of the medium-weight, rapid-deployment brigades now in Iraq and another set to replace it this fall. And a cavalry regiment will soon arrive for conversion into a Stryker team. [...]

Cody was at the Tacoma Army post Monday observing urban-warfare training by Stryker soldiers.

Some of the returning troops could end up at Fort Lewis, or one of the Stryker brigades from here could go to Germany to replace soldiers with the 1st Armored and 1st Infantry divisions.

Cody said Fort Lewis is one of about 15 "power-projection platforms" across the nation and could bring in more soldiers, just like the third Stryker brigade that was announced last month.

Fort Lewis could be home to another "battalion to a brigade to something else," Cody said. "Those decisions haven't been made."

He was talking to reporters after watching training by the second Stryker unit: the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

That unit is expected to leave next month for northern Iraq to replace Fort Lewis' first Stryker unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, whose 5,000 soldiers deployed to the region in November. [...]


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