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The Future of U.S. Warfare

Feb-19-2006 » Filed Under: General Military

Gen. Peter Schoomaker mentions the Stryker Brigade in the following interview.

Link to Full Article
By Julian E. Barnes

For the past two weeks, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, has been defending the Pentagon's budget proposal and the recommendations of the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, a periodic look at the threats America faces and how the military should meet those challenges. After finishing his congressional testimony, Schoomaker sat down with U.S. News to discuss the defense review and the war in Iraq. Excerpts: [...]

Critics said the defense review should have pulled the plug on expensive new programs designed for conventional wars, like the Future Combat System, and used the money to address irregular threats.

I will tell you point blank the Future Combat System equipped brigade will be far more capable in the environment that we are now in than the heavy brigade it replaces. The FCS brigade will be 900 soldiers smaller than a heavy brigade, but it will have twice as many infantrymen. For instance, go to western Iraq--this kind of organization not only has the mobility, not only has the long-range precision, but it has the ability to surveil that area 24-7.

FCS brigades will be the right force to fight both conventional and irregular wars?

Talk to anyone in Iraq, they think the [armored] Stryker brigade is the cat's meow. Well, the Future Combat System is going to be the Stryker brigade on steroids.

When I rode in the Strykers in December, two patrols I was with got hit by roadside bombs. The Strykers weren't damaged and the soldiers didn't blink--they just went after the triggerman.

Exactly. Think about that with increased lethality and increased survivability.


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