An American Lion

Stryker Combat Vehicle

The Department of Defense developed the “Stryker” series of vehicles to make our forces lighter, more flexible, and capable of rapid deployment. These vehicles were intended to give our troops a light tactical vehicle that they could rely upon. As soon as these vehicles began arriving in Iraq, they began saving lives.

Now that our enemies have seen how they work, is it now fair to say that the Stryker is obsolete? Or is it more accurate to say that it is the wrong vehicle for Afghanistan?

On July 5, the U.S. Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade arrived in Kandahar province for a year-long tour of duty. The brigade was equipped with 350 Stryker combat vehicles, an eight-wheeled armored infantry carrier that has proven successful in Iraq and is popular with soldiers. It was the first time the Army had deployed Strykers to Afghanistan, but the country has proven unforgiving to the brigade. Thus far they have lost 21 of theirStrykersto improvised explosive devices (IEDs), at a cost of two dozen killed and more than 70 wounded. On Oct. 27, seven soldiers diedduring the bombing of a single Stryker vehicle.

Why are Strykers seemingly more vulnerable to improvised explosive attack in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq? Iraq has a much more developed road network than Afghanistan. A denser road network provided U.S. mission planners with more routes to choose from, complicating the enemy’s roadside bombing effort. In Afghanistan by contrast, U.S. forces may be lucky to have one usable road to get from an assembly area to an objective. The standard counter-IED strategy is to constantly observe such roads for insurgent bomb-planting activity. Fewer roads would mean less for the Americans to observe, in theory making it easier to find the insurgent bomb-planters. But the level of surveillance assets in the 5th Brigade’s area might not be at the same density that U.S. units have enjoyed lately in Iraq. In fact, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, the brigade commander, has called for more surveillance help.

 

The best solution to the problem of IEDs is to infiltrate, attack, and destroy the insurgent organizations that plant them. While that effort progresses, coalition forces can reduce the IED threat by 1) staying off the roads and 2) dispersing by putting fewer troops in a greater number of vehicles. Obvious solutions, but often impractical to implement.

Given Afghanistan’s vast distances and low population density, movement by vehicles is essential. Helicopters bypass the roads but are expensive, few in number, and have their own risks. Off-road movement by heavy vehicles laden with troops and supplies in impractical. A new all-terrain mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle (M-ATV) may be promising for Afghanistan. An M-ATV carries five soldiers compared with the Stryker’s 13 and may have better off-road capability. Compared to the Stryker, M-ATV would disperse soldiers in more vehicles and avoid some of the risks of being on Afghanistan’s roads. 

That’s all well and good, but it ignores one of the basic realities of why we’re losing in Afghanistan—our reliance on roads and on ground transport hands the enemy the initiative. They can wait for us to move, and then attack whenever they wish to attack. They can build bigger and more lethal IEDs and attack us wherever they feel that they can maximize casualties and minimize risk to themselves.

If you’re fighting a war where two barely-capable insurgents can spend three hours digging a hole where they can put several daisy-chained old mortar rounds, and then remote trigger that IED and kill 7 or 8 of our soldiers in their vehicle, you’re fighting that war the wrong way.

In Vietnam, we moved hundreds, sometimes thousands of U.S. troops by helicopter, and that was forty years ago. You mean to say we can’t find a way to get enough helicopters into Afghanistan to set up ambushes that will take the initiative away from the insurgents? If so, then I guess we really do need to pull our troops out.