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Stryker: Bulky fighting vehicle is winning over once-skeptical soldiers

Nov- 9-2004 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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By Juliana Gittler, Stars and Stripes

MOSUL, Iraq — Ask nearly anyone in a Stryker unit and they’ll say they weren’t too crazy about the eight-wheeled vehicles at first.

Something about rubber tires seemed unlikely to withstand the same beating as a tracked vehicle. The Strykers looked slow and lumbering.

But the naysayers have been converted.

After the Strykers’ introduction to the Army two years ago, and after a year of combat experience in Iraq, the vehicles are almost too good to be true, say those who ride them, fix them or command them.

“I was kind of skeptical,” said Sgt. David Finney, noncommissioned officer in charge of the ground support equipment shop for the 73rd Engineer Company, part of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

“I was used to working on tanks. I saw the tires and thought, ‘what are you going to do with broken tires?’ But it’s surpassed everything I’ve expected,” he said. “It’s definitely saved lives. The Strykers can take a pretty big hit and get back on the road quickly.”

In October, a car bomb packed with 500 pounds of explosives hit a Stryker in Mosul. It killed a soldier and pummeled the vehicle.

The Stryker was back on the road in six days.

“Strykers are extremely durable vehicles,” said 1st Lt. Eric James Joyce, battalion maintenance officer for the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, with the 1-25th.

The vehicle’s heavy armor shelters occupants from blasts and ballistics. Its eight individual wheels have a “run flat” technology that allows them to drive on after being blown out.

“I’ve seen Strykers be hit by an [improvised explosive device] and drive home on eight flats,” said Staff Sgt. Lee Hodges, assistant vehicle commander and gunner for the Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition Squadron of the 14th Cavalry with the 1-25th, who rode a Bradley in the Persian Gulf War.

“I look at it as the ultimate SWAT vehicle — for urban assault.”


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