PPT Slide
The U.S. Army without a Cavalry Branch to develop
light tracked AFVs does not have an effective 3D
air-mech maneuver force to compliment its 2D
maneuver forces. The 19-24 ton Stryker armored car
is too heavy to fly by helicopters or fixed wing C-130
aircraft let alone parachute airdrop. Army leadership
in love with the idea of using computers to cherry
pick where and when it fights over mythical linear
battlefields that do not exist, think they can skimp on
physical armor protection by using rubber-tired wheeled vehicles and save money.
Meanwhile, as their Soldiers are getting killed and maimed by enemy road-side
bombs and RPGs on the NLB, the enemy resistance grows as the people see
that America cannot maintain order and protect them. Army officials full of techno
hubris that blinds them to the tracked armored vehicles that work ignore the
thousands of M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs sitting in storage that could be
quickly and inexpensively upgraded to be fully bomb and RPG resistant to move
EVERY Soldier in the Army under superior armor protection and mobility on the
lethal NLB. We could have had a fully light tracked, under full armor protection
U.S. Army ready for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 had we upgraded the
thousands of M113 Gavins we have instead of buying handfuls of inferior,
expensive Canadian-made Stryker armored cars. We can and still should do this,
but judging from Army past history, the only thing that makes the unprofessionally
organized and led U.S. Army change is obvious failures and lots of preventable
deaths that compels the civilian Congress to act.