Stryker Brigade News

They were riding through the east side of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq and last November the scene of some of the most pitched battles with the insurgency, when a suicide car bomber cut through the median between the second and third Stryker vehicles in the convoy and exploded.

Sgt. J. Robinson, 27, of Altheimer, Ark., was in the gunner position, exposed to the ball of fire and shrapnel. He didn`t have time to duck back into the vehicle when the car bomber veered.

"It knocked me back but I`m a pretty big dude," he said.

Shrapnel took a chunk out of his helmet, and small pieces lodged in his finger and in his lip. This is his third car bomb -- or IED, for Improvised Explosive Device -- two of them in a Stryker and one in an up-armored Humvee.

"Around here everyone wants to ride in a Stryker," Robinson said.

The Stryker, a new, wheeled combat vehicle, is designed to move troops quickly into battle, but it is proven especially useful in Mosul. It can turn more quickly and in a smaller area than a tank, it is faster, and because it has no tracks it doesn`t tear up the streets and curbs -- avoiding inconvenience and expense to local residents.

The vehicle, built by Sterling Heights, Mich.-based General Dynamics Land Systems, was named for two Medal of Honor recipients: WWII Pfc. Stuart Stryker and Spc. Robert Stryker, who served in Vietnam.

It boasts a digitized sensor suite that gives it much better access to intelligence information than older combat vehicles. A newly added steel cage looks ungainly - the Stryker is much wider on top than its wheel base -- but grenades bounce off before they explode.