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WASHINGTON, July 21, 2006 – Large-scale sectarian violence as displayed by Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad has seemingly bypassed Nineveh province in northern Iraq, a U.S. military commander told Pentagon reporters today. "We have been fortunate in that we've not seen that level of sectarian violence in Nineveh province," said Col. Michael Shields, commander of the U.S. Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. Shields gives credit for this positive state of affairs to the efforts of Gov. Duraid Mohammed Daud Abbodi Kashmoula and the senior Iraqi military and police officials serving in the province. "They have great outreach to...

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich., July 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has placed a $127 million order for 103 additional Stryker wheeled combat vehicles from a unit of General Dynamics Corp. The order increases the Army's fiscal year 2006 Stryker procurement to a total of 409 vehicles, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Work will be performed in Anniston, Ala.; Lima, Ohio; and London, Ontario, Canada, by existing General Dynamics employees. Additionally, the U.S. Army awarded General Dynamics a $9.5 million contract modification to procure additional parts for Stryker vehicle battle damage repair. Work will be performed in Sterling Heights,...

Wheeled armored vehicles have become the hot item everywhere on the planet, especially in the last five years. The new American Stryker vehicle is just part of the trend. However, the success of the Stryker in Iraq has encouraged more orders for these vehicles, which are faster on roads, and cheaper and easier to maintain. The main manufacturers are Patria (Finnish), Steyr (Austrian, but owned by General Dynamics), Mowag (Austrian [Swiss], also owned by General Dynamics) and the BTR line (an old series of Russian vehicles, currently built by two Russian firms.) There are other manufacturers, but the above firms...

1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada of Honolulu is expected to announce Wednesday that he will not be going to Iraq with his Fort Lewis Stryker brigade. Watada’s father, former Hawaii campaign spending commission executive director Bob Watada, made the announcement. Local anti-war groups working with the younger Watada previously would not release the man’s name to The Olympian. “My son has a great deal of courage, and clearly understands what is right, and what is wrong,” Bob Watada told the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper. “He’s choosing to do the right thing, which is a hard course.” Ehren Watada, 28, is not...

OLYMPIA, Washington — Police fired pepper spray as about 150 anti-war protesters tried to enter the Port of Olympia as part of ongoing demonstrations against the shipment of Army equipment to Iraq. Protesters chanted "Out of Olympia, Out of Iraq" as they rocked a chain-link gate to the port late Monday, and at least three tried to use wooden boards to pry the gate open, The Olympian newspaper reported. A 50-ton piece of equipment was moved to reinforce the gate on the other side. Police and sheriff's deputies clad in riot gear fired at least four rounds of pepper spray...

All the major training is done. The vehicles will be loaded onto ships later this month at the Port of Olympia, and by the end of next month, the Army’s first Stryker brigade will be on its way back to Iraq. Nearly half the 4,000 soldiers in the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division were with the unit the first time it went over in November 2003. Their experience, and that of the two Stryker brigades that succeeded them, have informed preparations different from the last time, the Fort Lewis-based soldiers say. “Before, we went over thinking we knew what was...

Stryker ramps up to unveil Mobile Gun System By Annette FournierMay 9, 2006 FORT BENNING, Ga. (Army News Service, May 9, 2006) – The newest version of the Stryker vehicle, designed to provide fire power to Infantry units, will be unveiled May 15 at Fort Knox's Armor Warfighting Symposium. The development of the Mobile Gun System is being managed by Fort Benning's Training and Doctrine Command System Manager-Stryker/Bradley. The system was developed to meet the infantry’s need for a highly mobile support vehicle to supply rapid, direct fire, specifically during close assaults, said Dave Rogers, a TSM-Stryker senior analyst....

The Trophy active protection system creates something equivalent to a hemispheric "force field" around the protected vehicle. It has three elements providing – Threat Detection and Tracking, Launching and Intercept functions. The Threat Detection and Warning subsystem consists of several sensors, including flat-panel radars, placed at strategic locations around the protected vehicle, to provide full hemispherical coverage. Once an incoming threat is detected identified and verified, the Countermeasure Assembly is opened, the countermeasure device is positioned in the direction where it can effectively intercept the threat. Then, it is launched automatically into a ballistic trajectory to intercept the incoming threat...

<p>The deployment of federal troops along the U.S.-Mexico border in October netted a 60 percent increase in apprehensions of illegal aliens by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, a congressional report says.</p> <p>The report given this month to the Senate Armed Services Committee says a Texas-based Stryker-armored reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition squadron helped CBP agents capture 2,000 illegal border crossers in New Mexico and Arizona.</p>

WASHINGTON, March 7, 2006 – More than 150 police recruits and a company's worth of Iraqi soldiers graduated from training in Iraq in recent days. A graduation ceremony was held for Iraqi soldiers of the newly formed Headquarters and Support Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, at the Al Kindi military compound in Mosul, Iraq, March 5. The company is made up of three specialized platoons. The scout platoon, the medical platoon and the maintenance platoon were individually tasked to complete their specific skills training, U.S. officials in Mosul said. U.S. soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade...

More and more European armies, whether in NATO or not, are going over to wheeled armored vehicles. Some are likely to abandon tracked armored vehicles entirely, given current mission requirements (i.e., the increasing demands for troops trained and equipped for "peace and stability" operations). Among armies that have adopted or have announced that they will adopt wheeled armored vehicles are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Span, and Switzerland. In addition, a number of other armies outside of Europe are taking this route, either wholly or in part, including Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S., as...

The use of the new Stryker wheeled armored vehicle in Iraq has accelerated the development of the new "Land Warrior" equipment for the infantry. The Strykers were using a partial set of the "Mounted Warrior" equipment. Put simply, the Land Warrior gear is a wearable computer/GPS/radio combination, plus improvements in body armor and uniform design. The original, 1990s, Land Warrior concept was a lot more ambitious. But this version had a science fiction air about it, and was not expected to appear for two decades or more. The brass eventually got more realistic, especially since September 11, 2001. That, plus...

FORT GORDON, Ga. (Army News Service, Feb. 21, 2006) -- Engineers conducting show-and-tell with a 20-ton robot on the last day of two weeks of trials on Fort Gordon were cautiously optimistic. Karl Murphy, a software engineer from Robotic Research, said there was a new principle of “Murphy’s Law” at work on the test field Feb. 10. "One of my professors reminded us that we have 'sight-ons' present whenever an experiment is being viewed,” Murphy said. “The more 'sight-ons' you have, the greater is the potential for something to go wrong." Tongue in cheek, he continued explaining that sight-on fields...

<p>If you found your hilltop house on fire, would you (A) put out the flames, or (B) buy flood insurance? If your answer is "B," you're suited for a job in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).</p> <p>At a time when our Army and Marines bear by far the heaviest load of our nation's security burdens, OSD proposes reducing the number of soldiers to free up funds for wasteful Cold-War-era weapons systems.</p>

Yet another European nation is replacing its Cold War era armored vehicles, with wheeled vehicles similar to the American Stryker. Belgium has ordered 241 Piranha IIIC vehicles. This vehicle is based on the Piranha III LAV, long used by the U.S. Marines. These vehicles were designed by Mowag of Switzerland, a company now owned by General Dynamics. The 14 ton, 8x8 vehicle has a maximum road speed of 100 kilometers an hour. Belgium is getting several variants of the vehicle, (99 infantry carriers, 32 armed with a 30-mm autocannon, 40 with a 90-mm cannon., 24 command vehicles, 12 ambulances, 17...

General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights, MI received a $128.3 million firm-fixed-price contract for Light Armored Vehicles (LAV) and Supporting Logistics and Engineering Products. According to General Dynamics, this is increment of a $257 million contract for 130 new eight-wheeled LAV-A2 vehicles in armored personnel (LAV-PC), anti-tank (LAV-AT), command & control (LAV-C2), logistics (LAV-L), and mortar (presumably LAV-EFSS) variants for the U.S. Marine Corps. Note that these are improved variants of the the LAV Gen II models used by the Marines et. al. since the 1980s, rather than LAV IIIs which are called Stykers in the USA. These eight-wheeled...

General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights, MI received a $24.5 million contract for spare parts that are unique to the two newest Stryker variants: the M1128 Stryker Mobile Gun System (MGS) and the M1135 Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV). This contract funds procurement of initial unique spares for the first-time fielding of these two variants, and has a total potential value of $50 million if all options are exercised. So, how does this fit into the evolution of the USA's Stryker vehicle family, and future production plans? The Stryker MGS and NBCRV variants entered low-rate initial production...

Editor’s note: A clarification to this story has been issued since its original publication. HEIDELBERG, Germany — The first U.S. forces to rotate into the future training facility in Romania will likely be from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Stryker), probably some time in the summer of 2007. The Stryker brigade is expected to relocate this year from Fort Lewis, Wash., to Grafenwöhr. One of its battalions plus a few other units are expected to go to Romania for the initial rotation, according to Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, the U.S. Army Europe deputy chief of staff for operations. In the summer...

On Lt. Damon Armeni’s last trip to Iraq, they weren’t sure he’d survive the medical evacuation flight home. Shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade had ripped into his abdomen. He lost his spleen and sections of his colon and intestines. He spent long stretches in the hospital to fight infection. Doctors broke four of his toes and fused the bones together to counter the nerve damage that was causing them to curl up like a claw. And now he’s getting ready to go back to the war zone. He wants to do it. Ever since he was a little kid, he’s...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 26, 2006) Amidst the 800 shiny new cars at the 2006 Washington D.C. Auto Show, the Stryker stands out like a sturdy green oak in a flower garden. “We’re here in support of recruiting command and basically to show the taxpayers what they’re getting for their money,” said Randall R. Rankin, spokesperson for the Stryker display. “It’s big, it’s green, it’s got a gun on it, and it draws a crowd.” The purpose of the display is to showcase the Army’s newest capabilities, the Stryker family of vehicles being one of the newer vehicles in...