The Japanese are now in country, and brought a number of nifty light armoured vehicles with them. It'll be interesting to see how they perform, particularly their Type 87 6-wheeler- if they use it.
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Posted on 01/31/2004 10:23:42 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
MOSUL, Iraq - The Army's new Stryker vehicle had its first combat encounter with a rocket-propelled grenade Friday.
The round struck the front of the vehicle above its slat armor cage, cutting a hose inside the engine compartment. The vehicle commander suffered a superficial cut near his nose, officials said.
But the Fort Lewis crew was otherwise unhurt and drove the vehicle out of danger, their company commander and 1st sergeant said.
It was one of four RPG attacks on Strykers on Friday in Mosul. The other three rounds missed.
Soldiers throughout the brigade had figured it was only a matter of time before a Stryker was hit by an RPG, one of the most widely available anti-armor weapons in the world.
Commanders said the attacks are proof that local insurgents are finished with merely observing the new vehicles moving about the city streets.
"You need to tell your soldiers this is still a very, very dangerous environment," 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment commander Lt. Col. Gordie Flowers told his troop leaders after the day's events. "They need to know that they need to have their 'A game' on every time they go out the gate."
All four attacks were against vehicles from the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry.
Battalion officials gave these details:
•A few minutes before the Stryker was hit at 8:30 a.m., gunmen attacked the same vehicle with small-arms fire and an RPG from about 750 feet away. The round fell short.
•About 7:30 a.m., in a neighborhood in northeast Mosul, insurgents fired an RPG at a Stryker parked near where soldiers had discovered a weapons cache. The attackers got away.
•Attackers tried to hit the same vehicle just before 3 p.m. as it was parked along the eastern shore of the Tigris River, near where dive and boat teams were looking for one of two soldiers missing in the river since Sunday.
The attackers fired the RPG from the west side of the river, from at least 750 feet away, officers said. The grenade struck hanging lines above the vehicle and caused no damage.
Soldiers saw the attackers on the other shore. They returned fire, and a squad searched the area moments later but found no sign of them.
Depending on the type, RPGs are capable of boring through a Stryker's armor and spraying hot shrapnel all around the interior of the vehicle.
The threat prompted the Army to install bulky, 5,000-pound slat cages around the Strykers while RPG-resistant armor is still being developed.
Friday's strike didn't answer the question of whether the slat armor will work as advertised and diffuse the impact of the RPG before it strikes the body of the vehicle.
But at least on this day, the RPG strike wasn't the deadly event that many feared.
The grenade was fired from close range - less than 300 feet - and struck above the cage at the front of the Stryker, battalion officials said. Photographs of the damage showed finger-sized holes near the hinge of the armored hatch that covers the engine compartment.
Crew members had headaches after the blast, but drove the vehicle out of danger, said 1st Sgt. Mike Hurtado of the company.
"The vehicle was drivable. We drove it around in an attempt to pursue the enemy," said company commander Capt. A.J. Newtson.
It was another half-hour or so before they realized one of the engine hoses had been cut, so they stopped driving it to avoid further damage and later towed it to their base camp in central Mosul, he said.
When they were fired at the first time, the soldiers were on an early morning patrol in search of roadside bombs set overnight in the southeast section of town.
After the grenade fell short, the soldiers tried to seal off the area. A resident of the neighborhood told soldiers where they might find the insurgents who shot at them, battalion officials said.
They searched the area on foot, recovering a 155 mm artillery round from the yard where the tipster had told them to look. But they didn't find the gunmen and were reboarding their vehicles when the second attack came.
The same shooters, they believe, moved in closer, fired the RPG and climbed into a car and drove away.
Newtson said the attackers used the dense urban setting to blend in with civilians and escape. Mosul is one of the largest cities in Iraq, with some 1.8 million residents.
Newtson and Hurtado said their injured soldier from the damaged Stryker had returned to duty and would likely be back out on roadside bomb patrol this morning.
They said the expected repairs to the vehicle wouldn't take long and that it would be returned to service soon.
"It worked the way it was supposed to," Flowers said. "To take the hit and still get you out of the attack zone."
Battalion officials said they figured sooner or later their search operations along the Tigris would be attacked. The mission to find two missing soldiers is tying up one of its infantry companies as they provide security coverage for the divers and boat teams working in the water.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Bunda, 29, a squad leader with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, was lost in the river when a boat he was in capsized Sunday afternoon. Lt. Adam Mooney, 28, and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Patrick Dorf, 32, disappeared after their OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter crashed into the river about an hour later as they searched for Bunda.
Navy divers recovered Dorf's body Thursday afternoon.
Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com
(Published 12:01AM, January 31st, 2004)
Brain fart
Which can take on an equally equipped similar-sized vehicle, which a Stryker can't do. And which can swim, at least in relatively slow-moving rivers, which Stryker can't do.
The good news is, those attributes are likely not needed for the Stryker's current task. What would be useful would be an RPG-proof multiple MG turret. Even the current RWS, fitted with a couple of 7,62 M240s or SAWs [better: four] would do. And if one gun suffers a feed stoppage as a result of the flexibility of the RWS mount, no problem so long as the others work. And fired in pairs, that'd help alleviate the need for the gunner to come out from under armour to reload every 105 rounds, about 10 seconds worth from an M2 .50.
Agreed, no more than the mounting of the M55 .50 multiple gun mount, or the similar twin .50/37mm autocannon Maxon mount in the WWII M20 armored car did.
And just as the Stryker platoon needs to be accompanied by a vehicle capable of long-range engagement of similar hostile vehicles equipped with kornet or khrizantema AT guided missile system [probably a TOW-equipped Bradley] or at least keep the infantry squad's Javelin gunner aboard one vehicle in the team, probably only one Stynker in 4 or one in six should have the quad-gun mount. The rest should carry the 40mm/.50 turret of those Military Police XM1117 ASVs. That'd require less reworking than the fitting of the *bedsprings* anti RPG slat armor did.
The Japanese are now in country, and brought a number of nifty light armoured vehicles with them. It'll be interesting to see how they perform, particularly their Type 87 6-wheeler- if they use it.
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IMHO, the ASV is a superior vehicle to the M1114 in nearly every application I can think of.
I wonder if we have any Freepers who have experience with both vehicles?
They call it the *Light Armoured Combat Vehicle * apparantly- amazing the Japanese *self defence force* would use a vehicle with the word *combat* in its name. You'll find a profile pic and some tech info *here*. Note a lot of similarities to the French/Chrysler PVP series.
Their 8-wheel wheelie prototype is the *Type 96*; their Humvee versionis the Toyota Mega-Cruiser, and their Jeep/VLTT equivalent is the *Type 73 Pajero.*
I'm not sure about its ability to be sling-loaded and transported via UH60 Blackhawk. I know that's possible with a Tow Hummer if the ammunition load and crew is carried in a second helo, though likely not with an armored Humvee version.
And unlike the now slat-armored, 23-ton Strykers, the ASVs can indeed be transported, with crews and at least some ammo load, aboard USAF C130s. If a lightly armored, well-armed reaction force is called for in Iraq, capable of being moved to a hotspot and landed on a nearby airfield or quarter-mile stretch of straight highway, there are two vehicles very suitable for the task: ASVs and M113A3s
Field expedient fighting vehicles like the Alabama Slammer don't make anybody any money and provide no lucrative career opportunities for retired generals.
Which can take on an equally equipped similar-sized vehicle, which a Stryker can't do. And which can swim, at least in relatively slow-moving rivers, which Stryker can't do.
The good news is, those attributes are likely not needed for the Stryker's current task. What would be useful would be an RPG-proof multiple MG turret. Even the current RWS, fitted with a couple of 7,62 M240s or SAWs [better: four] would do. And if one gun suffers a feed stoppage as a result of the flexibility of the RWS mount, no problem so long as the others work. And fired in pairs, that'd help alleviate the need for the gunner to come out from under armour to reload every 105 rounds, about 10 seconds worth from an M2 .50.
I reckon that they've got the bugs out of the M 85s by now. I seem to remember there was a lot of problems with them in the early 70s.
Question: on your lowboy tractor trailer/old tank combo, is the tank fixed in place on the trailer, or ready to roll off into the battle when attacked?
Didn't the Army do this in the 60s with APCs on 10 ton trucks? I seem to recall that but don't know if they were 59s, 114s or most likely 113s.------------Or else maybe I got too many senile rocks in the ol' pile :}
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