Army brass hint at more Stryker brigades - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Army brass hint at more Stryker brigades

As the Army redesigns its future ground combat vehicles program, senior leaders told Congress on Thursday that the service will likely add more Stryker brigades to the force.

The Army’s fiscal 2010 budget request of $142.1 billion plus an additional $83 billion for ongoing operations overseas doesn’t include money for more Stryker vehicles.

But that may change once the Quadrennial Defense Review is complete next year, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey told lawmakers at a budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.

“We are looking at the future of the force mix, examining what it is going to look like in the years ahead, and it’s possible at the end of this process the decision will be made that some of the heavy brigades will become Stryker brigades.” Geren said, adding that the Stryker concept “has been an extraordinarily successful program.”

Since 2003, the Army has fielded seven Stryker brigade combat teams, each equipped with about 300 Stryker wheeled vehicles built on common chassis. Stryker units have spent most of their time in Iraq, but the Pentagon announced in February that the 5th Stryker BCT would deploy to Afghanistan for the first time.

The prediction of more Strykers came as the Army is revamping its plans for future ground combat vehicles after Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the service to start over on its manned ground vehicle portion of Future Combat Systems.

“I was not able to convince the secretary of defense that we had incorporated enough of the lessons learned in the current operations” into the FCS vehicles, Casey told lawmakers.

The new vehicle concept design, slated to be complete by Labor Day, “will be full spectrum. It won’t necessarily be optimized for major combat operations like the tank and Bradley, but it will be able to do that,” Casey said.

He also said “as we look to the future, one thing we know is we never get it quite right, and so we want to have available for every rotational cycle a mix of capabilities, Strykers, heavies, lights … and I agree with [Geren] that it is highly possible that the Strykers will have an increased role” in the future force.