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Pioneering Stryker unit preps for Afghanistan

The 2nd Infantry Division’s 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team will mark a series of firsts when it deploys to Afghanistan this summer from Fort Lewis, Wash.

It will be the first Army brigade to deploy to Afghanistan with Strykers. It will be the first full combat brigade to deploy with Land Warrior. And this will be the first combat tour for the Army’s newest Stryker brigade.

But Col. Harry Tunnell, commander of the 5th SBCT, downplayed the firsts.

“We’re trained, we’re ready [and] we’re anxious to do our duty,” he told Army Times on April 8.

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• At a glance: The 5th SBCT

The 5th SBCT was scheduled to deploy to Iraq this summer, but on Feb. 17, it was announced that the 5th was being diverted to Afghanistan along with 8,000 Marines and 5,000 combat support and combat service support troops as part of a buildup to help squash an increasingly complex and stubborn insurgency.

Since then, an additional 4,000 troops, including those from 4th BCT, 82nd Airborne Division, of Fort Bragg, N.C., have been called to serve in Afghanistan, marking an increase of more than 21,000 American troops there by the summer.

The 5th SBCT and its more than 330 Strykers will deploy to southern Afghanistan, where the terrain more closely mirrors conditions in Iraq — that’s where the Army’s SBCTs have regularly been deployed.

Senior commanders on the ground in Afghanistan intend to use the SBCT’s unique blend of fast-moving firepower and light infantry structure to help tame the hundreds of square miles of open country that make up portions of southern Afghanistan.

SBCTs have forged a reputation in Iraq for moving fast and attacking enemy strongholds all over that country’s densely populated cities as well as its vast desert frontier.

These lightweight, armored fighting units often have been used as a quick-reaction force because of their flexibility to quickly prepare, travel several hundred miles and fight on arrival. The vehicle’s ability to carry a complete nine-man infantry squad also has been cited as an advantage.

Work to build the 5th SBCT began in 2006, and Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Prosser, the brigade’s top enlisted soldier, was there from the start. Prosser and a team of fewer than a dozen others began building the brigade from scratch.

By early 2008, the brigade had built up to about 90 percent of its 4,000 soldiers. Prosser added that 70 percent to 80 percent of the brigade’s younger soldiers were fresh out of basic and advanced individual training.

“[The Army] got them to us early enough that these soldiers have been with us for almost a year and a half to two years,” he said.

The mix of new and seasoned soldiers is beneficial, Prosser said.

Resetting for the ’Stan

When the 5th SBCT received orders to go to Afghanistan instead of Iraq, Tunnell talked to the chains of command and then tried to personally speak to as many of his soldiers as possible, Prosser said.

Tunnell, who has commanded the brigade since January 2007, said the soldiers adjusted in a variety of ways.

“We refocused our programs that deal with the human dimension to incorporate information about the specifics of Afghan culture,” he said.

For example, about 50 of the 120 soldiers from the brigade who had been training in college-level Arabic are now taking a crash course in Pashto, a language widely used in Afghanistan.

Another advantage Tunnell is counting on is Land Warrior, a wearable, command-and-control kit that recently returned from a year of combat in Iraq with a battalion in the 4th SBCT, also of Fort Lewis.

“The main advantage is we’re fully networked, from team leader to vehicle systems and command posts all the way back to the [tactical operations centers] and fixed facilities,” Tunnell said.

The 5th SBCT is scheduled to deploy with about 1,000 sets of a newer, lighter version of Land Warrior, one that weighs about eight pounds, compared with the 11-pound system used in Iraq by 4th SBCT’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment.

“Land Warrior is a great system,” Tunnell said. “You get battlefield communications, it also has a digital eyepiece that’s compatible and is integrated with the rest of the Army’s battle command systems.”

Soldiers will be able to display and update maps and graphics, execute command-and-control functions, alter their routes, determine where enemy and friendly forces are and send all types of reports back to their commanders, Tunnell said.

The Strykers also have a sophisticated communications package that consists of Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Below, the Army’s tactical Internet, and GPS and radio systems, giving leaders multiple ways of communicating on the battlefield.

“The capabilities of the Stryker are immense,” Prosser said. “The fact that we’ve been blessed with the ability to be equipped with Land Warrior really enhance it.”

Going into Afghanistan, Tunnell said he has “substantial” concerns about connectivity.

“We’re concerned about being able to analyze all of this potentially robust information as low as the company level ... but I think we’ve got solutions,” he said.

Tunnell, a veteran of the war in Iraq, said he anticipates the brigade’s biggest challenges to be sustaining training on the brigade’s network and learning the evolving tactics, techniques and procedures unique to the war in Afghanistan.

Prosser, who earned a Silver Star during his previous deployment to Iraq, said it will take some time for his soldiers to get to know the local population. He said he is more concerned about the human terrain than Afghanistan’s notoriously rugged physical terrain.

“I’m not comfortable with the locals, I don’t know their ideologies,” he said. “It’s more than just the language, but how we get to the information and how we process it.”

The brigade’s success will depend on how it executes counterinsurgency operations, Prosser said.

“It’s getting out there, battling the Taliban, protecting the local population, working with the security forces there in Afghanistan,” he said.

Soldiers are ready, Tunnell said.

“It’s an infantry brigade, and they’re trained as an infantry brigade, so we are able to conduct Stryker infantry operations wherever we go,” Tunnell said.