Rumsfeld’s New Army Is Getting People Killed
The Army has been looking for a new troop carrier for a while and came up with a specific set of requirements for the vehicle. They wanted something fast with good range, that could be loaded into a C-130 and rolled off ready to fight.
They selected the Stryker light armored vehicle and the fun began. It was too wide to permit the space needed on both sides for the crew chief to walk around it and was at the upper limit of weight. It had to have waivers to be flown.
You couldn’t mount the guns on the vehicle and get it on and off the loading ramp of a C-130, so it wasn’t ready for combat for a half hour after being unloaded as weapons were installed.
The armor wasn’t adequate and had to be upgraded which made it too heavy to be flown on a C-130, etc.
Rumsfeld has based his New Model Army on this failed vehicle. His small mobile brigade force is supposed to move around in these things. Just another failure on the part of the Faith-based and their corporate sponsors.
For more on the Stryker: Global Security’s page, official Army site, and a Washington Post article on the problems.
If they had designed these things to be carried in Ospreys it couldn’t have gotten worse.
