Ever since the US Army first bought into the LAV-III concept in 1999, there has been a fascinating pathology of Stryker-hating afoot. So I was again reminded today when I received some comments on my last analysis of fatality rates in the Stryker in Afghanistan, and how these might compare to previous experience in Iraq. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the Internet, the comments were a bit off-the-reservation, so I’ll not offer them verbatim. Slightly edited for public sensibilities, brevity, and grammar, he made three claims:
- You ignore the M113 whose up-armored model has a perfect protection record in Iraq.
- Sergeant Rabidou and his peers are dying: this isn't anecdotal; it’s reality. Using the slang "kevlar coffins" refers to the ceramic tiles placed on the outside to try to compensate for the thin steel Strykers are made of.
- Flat-bottomed Strykers cannot accept enough add-on armor to defeat the land mine threat or ever go cross-country at will. Thus, they not effective.
By "perfect protection record" and “up-armored model,” I surmise that he means that no one inside or on an M113A3 has been killed in Iraq to date. That's simply not true. As early as March 2004, five soldiers died in an M113 that encountered a roadside bomb in Fallujah. The whole thing was such a mess that all five were buried in a single casket at Arlington. (See Eric M. Weiss, "5 U.S. soldiers, 2 from Texas, buried as group in Arlington," Washington Post, 19 June 2004.) Including this incident, my research from October 2007 uncovered at least 12 deaths of troops in M113s through September 2006 alone, and in six separate attacks. I cannot confirm that these vehicles were all A3 variants, but they almost certainly must have been. Production of A3s finished up in 1992, and while the Army has over 6,000 of them, it has sent only about 1,500 M113s to Iraq.
Next, the fatalities in Sergeant Rabidou's unit were certainly tragic. I cannot not claim that men in his unit are not dying, nor that they have not died in Strykers. Rabidou's dislike of the Stryker is now a matter of record. It may be heartfelt and based on personal experience, but statistically, it is at best a datum. Without more data against which to compare it, it is thus merely an anecdote, if a colorful one. It may lead us in the right direction, but it is not confirmatory on its own.
Thus, even the spectacularly messy deaths of these aforementioned five soldiers are similarly just a datum. We don't know how big that bomb was; if some crew of insurgents had manhandled a 250-kg aircraft bomb into place for the attack, it could easily have done horrific work on an M113. That still wouldn't provide real comparison to any other vehicle. I do, however, take some direction from the Army's total lack of enthusiasm for M113s in Iraq. According to the US Congressional Budget Office, as early as 2007, M113s were clocking only one-tenth the monthly mileage of MRAPs in Iraq, and one-twentieth that of Strykers. (See "Replacing and Repairing Equipment Used in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Army’s Reset Program," September 2007.) That's a fairly strong indication that M113s are considered too vulnerable to be let outside the wire.
As for the assertion that the Stryker cannot accept enough armor to defeat the land mine threat—particularly if it is to travel cross-country—that’s a matter of comparison and perspective. Even Abrams tanks can be penetrated by bombs and rocket grenades, as at least a few have in Iraq. How much protection is enough protection is a matter of balancing military judgement with technological and economic constraints. I wasn't actually asking that question in my earlier column. I was merely observing that the loss rate for troops in Strykers in Afghanistan this year was not yet clearly higher than the loss rate for troops in Strykers in Iraq several years ago. Thus, whether one finds that loss rate militarily acceptable or not, the referenced article is not news.
As for the point that the Stryker is flat-bottomed, well, that’s a reasonable description. While there is a little sloping on the sides of the current vehicles, only GD's latest concept, the so-called "Super Stryker", shown at AUSA last month, has a v-shaped bottom. All M113s, however, are flat-bottomed. So are all Bradleys, CV90s, ASCODs, and BMP-3s. As I have written repeatedly, it is my view that designing a flat-bottomed armored troop carrier is almost a commercial non-starter today. Only two countries, Germany and Israel, are funding active development programs in such vehicles today, and their respective investments, KMW's Puma and IMI's Namer, are very heavy. What's really bad about the M113 (and the Bradley, for that matter) is that the hull is made of aluminum, and aluminum's shear modulus is less than one-third that of steel. The steel plating on the sides helps, but really doing the vehicle right means building all the structural components from steel ab initio. The prevalence of blast weapons today renders that an imperative.
Lastly, for what it's worth, kevlar is a fiber, not a ceramic. So, Sergeant Rabidou's statement still doesn't make sense to me.
While I do not generally comment on client relationships, I will, in the interests of full disclosure, state that I am not working for GDLS or any parent unit of GDLS on this issue. Of course, if I were, one could expect that I would just keep quiet, at least until enough time had passed that the issues had become fresh again. Rather, I am just an analyst using some of the more basic tools of social science to get at answers about what is working, what is not, and what might in the future. I do have clients who ask about just that, because they're looking to sell kit to armed forces around the world. And I work at this hard because the numbers always matter.
I am with a unit in the Arghandab River Valley, and I see on a daily basis the effects of the Taliban's IEDS against Stryker vehciles. You may believe in these vehicles and their capabilities in southern Afghanistan terrain, however, I have seen how easily these vehicles can be dismantled...
Posted by: Arghandab Soldier | 25 December 2009 at 14:14