Too-Heavy Metal
Babbin, Jed
T he Pentagon changed in the Clinton days. Social experimentation had the most visible impact on our armed forces. As important—and less visible—was the Clintonistas' dedication to the UN's...
...And the RSGs (Real Smart Guys) at Randsay that Stryker's size and weight make it impossible to achieve the army's goal of deploying a Stryker brigade in four days...
...So why are we buying something that is no improvement over what we already have...
...Black ones at that...
...OT&E, as it's called, is independent of the services and obligated to report to Congress on real-life testing of all major weapons before they're bought in quantity...
...Stryker isn't designed for fighting a war...
...M-113, yes...
...The army's new "Stryker" combat vehicle is the best example...
...What they didn't realize was that a Clinton-created Pentagon transformation was already well under way and would prove very hard to reverse...
...Those laws say a lot about how tires disperse weight and how they slip and slide on wet or icy surfaces...
...The army has a split personality...
...It's an armored troop carrier designed to keep the peace in places such as Bosnia, not to fight wars...
...Can the vehicle travel off road in all weather...
...Stryker is the centerpiece of the army's "transformation" to something called Interim Brigade Combat Teams...
...and it's too heavy to fly on the C-130 Hercules, the only tactical airlifter the Pentagon has in enough numbers to move Stryker to and around the battlefield...
...OT&E's director, Tom Christie, is a level-headed guy who has been there for many years...
...But their leaders want them to keep the peace, not win it...
...Shinseki, a West Pointer, had been wounded in combat in Vietnam...
...Three decades ago, when Congress believed it wasn't getting the straight scoop on weapons purchases from the denizens of Fort Fumble, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation was born...
...Last September, under Christie's observation, Stryker was tested at Fort Lewis, Washington, against an upgraded M-113A3...
...Stryker, no...
...The troops are superb and ready to fight...
...Stryker's design includes severe operational limitations that the Fort Lewis comparison didn't test...
...Soon after Shinseki's appointment, he and Cohen agreed to transform them to better fit the Clinton peacekeeping model...
...Those light vehicles—and the snappy berets some of the Europeans wore—quickly became his vision for the army of the future...
...Only peacekeepers and social engineers could thrive...
...The Clintons inherited Bush 41's Pentagon, which had run Sad-dam out of Kuwait and fostered the careers of some warrior-intellectuals...
...Shinseki's love for the peacekeeping mission focused on two things: those baby-blue berets the UN troops wore and the lightly armored vehicles they zipped around on...
...Shinseki admitted as much when he said, in April 2002, "We realized it took us a long time to get heavy forces into the field...
...But the details about Stryker are even worse...
...Since World War II, army rangers—some of the Real Tough Guys—wore the black beret as their trademark...
...In Bosnia, Shinseki became enamored of the peacekeeping mission...
...By the time this debacle broke in the news, it was too late to stop...
...They also say that tracked vehicles—tanks or the M-113A3— disperse weight differently, don't slide as much, and can suffer much greater damage without failing...
...These new tools of war wouldn't just improve on old designs: they would aim at transforming the battlefield—and the air and space over it—to enable America to win its new wars decisively and quickly...
...M-113, yes...
...One college professor of fond memory, who tried vainly to teach me second-year physics, said time and again, "The laws of physics are the same wherever you go, and bad things happen when you try to break them...
...They didn't waste time...
...Measured against the things warriors need, Stryker comes up short: Can the vehicle roll off a C-130, ready to fight...
...Though Cohen is, thankfully, long gone, Shinseki remains, dedicated to transforming the army to perform the two missions he believes in: peacekeeping and refighting World War II...
...The IBCT idea is a very sound one...
...Pentagon leaders—even many who didn't agree with the Clinton agenda—had to march down that road...
...M-113, yes...
...A devout multilateralist, Mr...
...M-113 can, Stryker can't...
...Can the vehicle swim or ford a deep stream...
...If the army reorganizes into mobile combat teams that can be deployed in three or four days, it can be a tremendously powerful weapon...
...Stryker, almost 40,000 pounds...
...It formed his view that the army is suited only for high-profile peacekeeping or for war of massed armies, like World War II...
...Angry, insulted rangers...
...First, they would revive investment in defense, buying the tools our warriors need to face the new threats...
...Spending badly needed funds on a peacekeeping truck is a bad decision that will haunt the army—and reduce its war-fighting capability—for many years to come...
...For much less money, you get a war-fighting machine, not a peacekeeper such as the Stryker...
...How can anyone think that in the context of the war on terrorism something that doesn't fit on a C-130 is going to be of any use...
...Clinton's military had to remake itself to suit UN peacekeeping missions...
...Stryker is a "medium armored vehicle," a heavy truck sitting high on "run-flat" tires and designed to be configured as everything from a troop carrier to a platform fora 105 mm cannon...
...Not if you believe Tom Christie or the Rand Corporation...
...Can the C-130 carry crew and ammo, as well as the vehicle...
...Unfortunately, Stryker fails on both counts...
...For years, the army has relied on the combat-tested M-113 for this...
...At $3 million each—though the final total could balloon to twice that—they're not cheap...
...According to Christie's memo, the M-113A3 does better in cross-country maneuvering, has a greater cruising range, a smaller turning radius, and a swim capability that Stryker lacks...
...This presumes that the air force has more C-17s than it does, and that none of the other services need C-17s to get their guys and supplies to where the bad guys are...
...But if General Shinseki has his way, billions of dollars will be spent on the "Stryker...
...In the Reagan days, some true warriors—the inspirational leaders—flourished...
...The army needs every penny of the procurement dollars sent its way...
...But it is failing itself if it buys an armored vehicle that's not designed to fight...
...Only other specially assigned troops wore berets, and none in the army (other than rangers) wore black ones...
...Some, like the Kennedys, favor the flashy types who look good in front of the television cameras...
...If you add the RPG-resistant armor, that inch disappears...
...One of the ways theychose to conduct this transformation was to invest in "generation-skipping" weapons...
...But Mr...
...Which raises the obvious question: What the heck is the army thinking...
...M-113, yes...
...Chief of Staff Shinseki is the principal proponent of Stryker and is rushing to get it under way before he retires in June...
...Weight with armor sufficient to protect against rocket-propelled grenades (one of the terrorists' favorite weapons...
...Then-defense secretary and former senator Bill Cohen (RINOMaine) decided that the army had to be reformed to fit the new peacekeeping role...
...Second, they decided to transform the Pentagon from its frozen-in-time Cold War posture into a modern, flexible force to face the New World disorder...
...Army's tanks could...
...The army old-thinkers just don't seem to get it: you can't build weapons and vehicles that can't get there by air if you want to have them in the fight...
...If [the IBCT] had been ready September 11, it would be in Afghanistan today...
...In the Clinton Pentagon, warriors and weapons were unwelcome...
...A January 2003 Defense News report quotes Rand analysts as saying, "This would be a heroic achievement under the best of circumstances," and is "unlikely when considering the quality of airport infrastructure in much of the world...
...Can the vehicle be carried by helicopter...
...But if you do, no C130 can carry it...
...E ven without the RPG-resistant armor, Stryker is probably too heavy to get to the battlefield...
...Bush and Rumsfeld recognized that the lack of investment in people and weapons had reached a critical level...
...Soon after becoming chief of staff, he ordered the whole army to convert from service caps to berets...
...The rangers got over it by changing their beret color to tan, which nobody this side of the Pond wears...
...The regular army still takes months to prepare for any battle, which is one of the reasons that forces for the Iraq campaign were built up for several months...
...Army sources tell me that when you load a Stryker onto a C-130, there's less than an inch clearance on either side of it, preventing the aircrew from moving around it in flight...
...In other words, even if the whole C-17 fleet were dedicated only to Stryker deployment, too few airports can support that kind of heavy air traffic at all...
...Stryker, no...
...Stryker is an enormously expensive program...
...Stryker, no...
...Can the Stryker and the air force C130 work together...
...As Christie wrote, "The Stryker and M113A3 demonstrated equal operational effectiveness...
...The results must have been a shock toStryker proponents, because—according to Christie's draft memo—the comparison tests showed that the multibillion-dollar Stryker was no improvement over what the army already had...
...The ubiquitous RPG was last seen on every Afghan hill and street—the sort offashion accessory every Taliban just had to have...
...M-113, yes...
...But the regulars couldn't get there in time to be engaged...
...For troops to get to the battlefield quickly—and to move around once they get there—you can't expect them to travel by shank's mare...
...But if you equip the IBCTs with Stryker, they still can't get there in time, measured by the standards the army has set...
...In a recent report, Rand concluded that moving a Stryker brigade overseas in four days would require the air force to load and launch four enormous C-17 aircraft each hour around the clock for four days...
...Can the vehicle be dropped by parachute for assault landings...
...Christie's memo on the Fort Lewis tests says that "the Stryker cannot be loaded with a full basic load of ammunition or fuel" on a C-130...
...By contrast, Stryker's tires are suited best to roads and city streets where "peacekeepers" go...
...There's a big reason that the Afghanistan fight began without the regular army...
...Refitting 3,000 of the M-113s the army now has in storage to the upgraded A3 version would cost about $400,000 each, or about $1.2 billion...
...Results...
...In 1999, when General Eric Shinseki was appointed armychief of staff, Cohen saw an opportunity...
...Shinseki saw the quick, light armored vehicles of other nations move faster on the roads of cities and towns than the U.S...
...Rumsfeld, the president, and Congress should all prevent that from happening...
...It makes little sense to buy the Stryker without armor sufficient to protect against rocket-propelled grenades...
...Special operations troops were there in great numbers—as they are now in Iraq...
...There are millions of them around the world, too many in the hands of groups such as Abu Sayyef in the Philippines and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria...
...You have to put them in an armored vehicle and drive them over whatever terrain lies between them and the enemy, so they can jump out and start putting metal on the target...
...We knew we had to fix that...
...T here are two big problems with Stryker: It's not designed to go where warriors need to go, or to fight when it gets there...
...It's simple: they're not thinking...
...Stryker, no...
...Both completed all missions successfully and suffered equal losses...
...Congress, I have to admit, sometimes interferes with the Pentagon in a way that actually helps...
...As important—and less visible—was the Clintonistas' dedication to the UN's incoherent "peacekeeping" agenda, which changed not only military doctrine, but also the development of weapon systems...
...M-113, 23,000 pounds...
...Because Shinseki insisted that the berets be on every army noggin by the army's birthday, they had to be specially ordered from the only supplier capable of producing by the required date: Communist China...
...But expense—within the realm of reality—shouldn't be an object to a system that both is badly needed and provides a greatly enhanced capability...
...T he beret story is almost funny...
...Every White House influences the selection and promotion of generals, and each has its own criteria for choosing them...
...But it's not so funny that the army is also designing a very expensive new armored vehicle, as only Al Gore could want them to...
...If the army buys enough for six brigades, that's about 2,100 vehicles and a cost of anywhere from $4.2 to over $12 billion...
...And tens of thousands of troops who sometimes look like out-of-work sous chefs...
...Clinton, ever-fearful of the military, wanted loyalists not warriors, so he focused on converting generals to his ways, or simply replacing them with some more to his liking...
...The army has pressured the air force into giving flight safety waivers for Stryker demonstration flights, but it's not at all clear that Stryker will ever be able to ride to the battlefield on C-130s...
...But between Vietnam and the Bosnia "peacekeeping" days, Shinseki's only real experience was as a staff officer in a garrison-oriented army...
...Its weight—at almost 40,000 pounds without all the fuel and ammo—is simply too heavy to carry any distance that would be useful in battle...
...When the Bush administration inherited the Clinton Pentagon, Messrs...
...Before 9/11, they decided two things...
...It can't go where war fighters go: in deep mud, jungles, over rocky terrain, and across rice paddies...
...Stryker, no...
...Some look for warrior-intellectuals, recognizing that they are invaluable because they are always devising new ways to kill people and break things...
...Defense systems aren't bought in a vacuum, and each service has concerns about what the other services are buying...
Vol. 36 • March 2003 • No. 2
