Very interesting story on whether Strykers are the ideal mobile platform in Afghanistan. It would seem that you have a lot of competing peronsalities with different biases along the way. It makes sense that no vehicle is going to protect you from a 2000 pund explosive, and that we need to go after the bombers with more troops needed.

Kevlar Coffins?

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

I have never heard much good about the Stryker. It does not seem to so any of the things it was meant to do very well. Why not just stick with the Bradley? Can anybody clue me in?

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"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it." - H.L. Mencken on Warren Harding

Well, as the articel states, Bradleys cant cross ravine bridges very well. Theres actually a lot good about the striker. It cant withstand most of what Afghanistan throws at it, from small arms fire, to rpgs, to most IEDs. The article was partly saying the negatives are exagerated by the media, but that maybe the troops would be better off out of them and visible to the people anyway.

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

The hardest part of war is finding the tactics to match the machine to the mission. The point of the article is that the MSM, and by extension, quite possibly the administration, doesn't get it.

If I had one criticism of the Stryker, it would be that despite being derived from the LAV-25, it is not amphibious.

I think our biggest issue is a lack of political will and post fighting humanitarian support. Without the will to take responsibility for the territory we conquer and the engineering units to pick up after ourselves, the military has no choice to use the same old blitzkrieg smash and move on tactics, allowing the enemy to either put down their arms and blend into the woodwork, or retreat, only to re-infiltrate at a later date. What we need to do is encircle the settlements, tighten the noose, make sure no one can get in or out, dismount and then move in on foot, backed up by columns of armor and direct fire platforms and indirect fire from outside crisscrossing city limits, going house to house, clearing weapons caches. We can't be afraid to level a building or two. Afterwords you have be willing send in the engineers to clean up the town, fortify it, garrison it, and go to whatever passes for locak leadership, and tell them how its going to be. Bring in freshly trained Afghan Army and police.

Thats how you turn red territory blue.

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January 21, 2013: The End of an ERROR.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
---Benjamin Franklin

They didn't have anything good to say about the Bradley, either. That thing had an absolutely piss-poor reputation when it came out. It was an amphibious armored personnel carrier that wasn’t amphibious, had shoddy armor and barely held more personnel than crew members. It wasn’t until we heard field reports from the troops a decade later that it was able to salvage any kind of reputation. But if we go by what the soldiers in the field have to say, they have a lot of good things to say about the Stryker.

It does have a number of things going for it; it’s fast, quiet, relatively comfortable, relatively very low maintenance, holds half again as many troops as the Bradley, and it considerably lighter (although at 16+ tons, there are a bunch of little bridges it wouldn’t be able to cross around where I live, so I can’t see it not being a problem somewhere as backward as Afghanistan). On the minus side, it sucks cross- country, and it lacks a gun and laser-rangefinder like the Bradley’s 25mm Bushmaster. The armor on both seems about equal.

They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and their place on the battlefield, although with Afghanistan’s lack of infrastructure, I don’t know effective the Strykers will be.

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

To be fair to the Stryker, it was designed as an APC while the LAV-25 was designed as an infantry fighting vehicle. As such it (the Stryker) was not designed for direct combat.

I am pretty sure the Stryker has fording capability. Obviously it doesn't need to be able to go from ship to shore like a Marine LAV-25 does.

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance

Wow. I got to ask what years those where….I didn’t think they were that bad.I got shafted from Rgr. Batt. to being a mech. grunt in the 3rd ID in Germany. They had just gotten Bradley’s, the transmissions where shit, but they swam fine, yes the barrier was a bitch and I would not want to swim under small arms fire but, it did the job. It was a good vehicle…but then again it was built with the Soviets on mind, TOW armed, air burst resistance etc. The port , cut down m-16s were a joke.

The Bradley is much more labor intensive for sure. The theatre calls the shots, if the styrker brgd’s get the job done than so be it.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

The early 80's, when they were first fielded. They weren't that bad, but the criticisms were.

TBH, my best friend in high school enlisted as a Bradley driver in '85, and he was ... underwhelmed.

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

The Pentagon Wars spotlighted the early criticisms of the Bradley.


Check out from about 4 minutes in;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYbjk...eature=related

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

All this talk about the Bradley being too heavy, reminds me of (yeah I know this makes me sound old) when i was in Korea in 1980 - the army's main battle tank at the time was the M-60. It was deemed too heavy for Korea's mountainous terrain, so the armor units there used M-48 A5's, a hopped-up version of the same tank deployed there during the Korean war 30 years prior. Nowadays they use the M1 Abrams there, which makes me laugh, as it is twice the weight of the M-60 if not more...

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"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it." - H.L. Mencken on Warren Harding

thx, I had never seen that, ”we aren't trying on a pair of levis Colonel”… that was good..

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

yup, thats a classic.

my favorite is when we did a complete camo re-paint of every piece of equipment in USAEUR, oh it was 86 I think, they removed "sand" from the camo scheme...it took the army 35 years to figure out there was no sand in Germany..

Only in the armed froces can shit like this happen I swear.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

My favorite line was;

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

Kinda like the med helicopters they fly in afghanistan that have a big red target on the side (and thus cant carry heavy weapons).

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

I think where IED's are prevalent, there's not much better land transport.

They cost money, but they save lives. If I recall, the military wanted these things a long time ago and they were slow to arrive.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's