And the troops are accomplishing so much!
Posted on 12/26/2003 1:28:20 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
Edited on 05/07/2004 10:06:23 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
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And the troops are accomplishing so much!
Immediate difference? BTR 80 and 90 are much better armed, and have firing positions, including forward firing points, for the passengers inside, unlike Stryker. The original first and second generation BTR 60 and BTR70 wheeled personnel carriers have had their twin gasoline engines replaced with a more powerful and safer Diesel type, and many of the faults and failings found in the first generations of machines have now been corrected or at least improved in the later models- side exits for troops, should the vehicle turn on one side or upside-down, for instance, as killed three Stryker crewmen so far.
Stryker's 40mm grenade launcher system was found to be wildly inaccurate during testfirings in the USA, and live weapons shooting with it was ordeerd halted; once in Iraq, some of the first US casualties aboard a Stryker occurred when a 40mm round fired while the crew was mounting a Mark 19 grenade launcher on the remote weapons mount of a Stryker. The Russian equivalent, 30mm AGS-17 Plamya is battle tested in Chechnya and Afghanistan, and is much safer; the 30mm gun fitted aboard BTR 80 and 90, especially on the new Kliver turret with twin Kornet antitank missile launchers, is even better, and longer ranged.
Going to a war like in Iraq? Send me in a BTR90, any day. But better, an MTLV tracked personnel carrier. Wonderful machine.
I think the BTR vehicles captured from Iraqis were BTR- 70s. Good thing for the Strykers that they got there after the combat had ended, I don't think the 14.5mm automatic gun aboard even the older BTR-70 wiould have had trouble penetrating Stryker's half-inch/13mm armor.
Oh, and BTR 70 is amphibious, of course, probably not a big deal in Iraq. And it also can be air transported or airdroppped; Stryker cannot.
So BTR 80 and 90 are not predecessors of Stryker, but alternates whose performance Stryker cannot match. Predecessor vehicles for Stryker were WWII-era M8 and M20 *Greyhound* 6-wheeled armoured cars built by Ford.
How hard would it be to mount all that combat internet and email and Blue Force Tracker electronics into a BTR-90?
It is cruel to tell motorized rifle types “Damn, that Stryker looks like a BTR!” — particularly when main gun rounds are being uploaded.
Or the German 8-wheel Fuchs, as used for a CBR recon vehicle, also an 8-wheeler. I'm not sure if the BTR-90 has a 24-volt electrical system, but that could be reworked easily enough- we might even want to pull the Russian powerpack [motor/transmission unit] and replace them with something U.S. made, not that there's anything wrong with the Russian powerplant, but for commonality of spares with our heavy trucks. We might even slip on axles from 10-ton trucks or GOERs, too.
But of course neither BTR90 nor Fuchs would be C130 transportable. No more than a Stryker is....
The Russians, wisely I think, have used a mix of 4-wheel, 6-wheel and 8-wheel armored cars, plus a variety of light [BMD and BMP] and heavier [MTLV and reworked T-55] tracked vehicles in Afghanistan and Chechnya. And the more experience they gain, the heavier the mix of the heavy tracked vehicles becomes, much like the WWII Canadian experience, beginning the war with many 4-wheeled armoured cars and light tracked Universal *Bren* Carriers, and ending it with personnel carriers built on a turretless *Ram Kangaroo* squad carriers built from the Sherman Tank chassis.
We were close to that mix of wheelies, at lerast, with the 4-wheel MP ASV, now cancelled, the improvised but brilliant 6-wheel *Alabama Slammer* M113 body/M919 truck hybrid, and the LAVIII/Stryker on the wheeled side, and the Bradley and M113 tracked. Instead we're now putting all our eggs in the Stryker basket, and it's lining somebody's pocket- somebody powerful enough that the lives lost are unimportant.
-archy-/-
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