Continuing his series on Stryker accidents (see Sunday's piece about the Dec. 8, 2003 incident in Iraq that trapped 19 U.S. servicemen underwater, three of whom died), Mike Gilbert of the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) reports that despite seven rollovers in the 3rd Brigage, 2nd Infantry Division's year-long deployment to Iraq, the U.S. Army doesn't see a problem: "We don’t believe that the Stryker is more of a risk for rollover than any other vehicle with have in our inventory," says Col. Peter Fuller, the Stryker program manager. -- BACKGROUND: Mike Gilbert doesn't explain in his piece what a "Stryker" is. -- It's the military's name for a variety of 19-ton wheeled armored vehicles that serve as most of the combat and combat support vehicles of the brigade. -- The goal of the Stryker brigades is, the Army says, to make it more "strategically responsive" in a world marked by the "rise in global instability and uncertainty in the post-Cold War world." -- The development of the Stryker brigades (at the initiative of now Army Chief of Staff retired Gen. Eric Shinseki) was announced only in Oct. 1999; they now constitute three of the army's 34 combat brigades. -- By 2007, the Army plans to have five Stryker brigades (a National Guard Stryker brigade is being planned for 2010). -- Each Stryker brigade consists of about 4,000 soldiers and is organized into a headquarters company, a signals company, a military intelligence company, 3 Stryker motorized infantry battalions (each with with one headquarters and 3 Stryker motorized infantry companies), a reconnaissance and surveillance battalion, an artillery battalion, an engineer company, an anti-tank company, and a support battalion. -- The army considers a Stryker brigade a "medium force," designed to be fast and thanks to its high-tech nature able to exploit its high degree of "situational awareness." -- (Sources: Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) and Andrew Feickert, "U.S. Army's Modular Redesign: Issues for Congress," a Congressional Reference Service report dated July 19, 2004, available on the Federation of American Scientists web site.) ...
Local News
ARMY DEFENDS STRYKERS AFTER AT LEAST SEVEN ROLLOVERS
By Michael
Gilbert
News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
February 21, 2005
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/military/stryker/story/4617213p-4288984c.html
The two vehicles that plunged into a canal Dec. 8, 2003, near Duluiyah, Iraq,
weren’t the only Strykers to roll over during the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry
Division’s deployment to Iraq.
The Army investigated at least five other rollover accidents involving
Strykers during the brigade’s year in Iraq, according to the U.S. Army Safety
Center.
They include the July 14, 2004, accident near Tal Afar that killed the
driver, Pfc. Jesse Martinez, 20, and Cpl. Demetrius Rice, 24. Officials said
Martinez swerved to avoid an oncoming water truck and rolled his Stryker down a
roadside embankment.
The Army says rollover accidents occur with all its combat vehicles.
“We don’t believe that the Stryker is more of a risk for rollover than any
other vehicle with have in our inventory,” Col. Peter Fuller, the Stryker
program manager, told reporters during a recent news briefing on the vehicles.
The 3rd Brigade was the first to use the Army’s new armored vehicles in
combat.
Officials at the Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., said their
investigators’ reports of the Stryker accidents are not yet available for public
release. The agency released a list of its investigations and a brief synopsis:
The cases include:
• Dec. 16, 2003: Eight days after the Dec. 8 rollovers, a driver ran off an
unimproved road and rolled into an irrigation pond. A soldier was thrown from
the vehicle but wasn’t seriously hurt, and there were no other injuries.
• Feb. 20, 2004: A Stryker driver swerved to avoid hitting a dump truck and
rolled his vehicle, causing undisclosed injuries and damage.
• March 28, 2004: A Stryker driver and a passenger were injured when their
vehicle rolled while going down a trail.
• July 15, 2004: A Stryker swerved to avoid an oncoming car. Three soldiers
suffered unspecified injuries.
Lt. Col. Karl Reed, commander of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment,
said two of his Strykers rolled over in Iraq, including the one in which Rice
and Martinez were killed. He said he’s served in units that ride in Bradley
Fighting Vehicles and others that ride in Humvees.
“I don’t see anything that I can pinpoint to say the Stryker is more
vulnerable than any other vehicle,” Reed said.
He said driving in Iraq is difficult, with wadis and canals and other terrain
hazards. In addition, the civilian drivers are notoriously reckless and pose a
hazard, he and others said.
A total of 123 U.S. soldiers have been killed in vehicle accidents in Iraq,
many of them rollovers.
Among recent cases, three drowned Feb. 13 when their armored Humvee rolled
into a canal near Balad, and an Air Force staff sergeant drowned trying to
rescue them.
Five soldiers were killed when their Bradley rolled over Jan. 24. Another was
killed Nov. 28 when his 5-ton truck rolled and pinned him underwater.
Two weeks before the 3rd Brigade’s first accident in 2003, a 4th Infantry
Division soldier drowned when his Humvee slid off the road into a canal near
Balad.
“There have been far too many soldiers across the Army who have died in the
canals,” said Col. Mike Rounds, who commanded the 3rd Brigade in Iraq.
The additional weight of slat armor that was installed to protect the
Strykers from rocket-propelled grenades does not make the vehicles more likely
to roll, officials said.
The 3rd Brigade’s investigation of the Dec. 8 accident made no finding as to
whether the added weight of the improvised armor played a part in the tragedy.
It concluded that the vehicles rolled mostly because the drivers failed to
steer them clear of the weakened left side of the dirt track that ran between
two canals, and that they fell when a portion of the road collapsed underneath
them.
Rounds, in an interview following the brigade’s return home in October, said
in retrospect that there was no tactical advantage to be gained by traveling
down the trail between the canals that day.
“In my view it was less about the Strykers,” he said, “and more about us not
dominating our surroundings, letting our surroundings get away from us.”
--Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921
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