STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. – Adding a 30mm cannon to the top of a few dozen Stryker vehicles is the first of many steps to transforming the troop carrier into a much more lethal, capable combat vehicle than it was when introduced in 2002.
The first of 81 Stryker armed with a Kongsberg remote weapon turret and an Orbital ATK [OA] 30mm cannon rolled off General Dynamics‘ [GD] production line here on Thursday. After manufacturer and government testing, the vehicles will be sent to Germany where the 2nd Cavalry Regiment will put them into action deterring Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern flank.
When introduced, the Stryker was meant to be transported by C-130. The new cannon-carrying variant cannot fit inside that aircraft, but for that vehicle’s specific mission in Europe, it doesn’t need to, said Col. Glenn Dean, the Army’s Stryker program manager.
The Army made a deliberate decision that the up-gunned Stryker would not have to be transported by C-130, Dean said. Because Europe is relatively small landmass, the Stryker’s 63 mile-per-hour sustained road speed makes much of the continent readily accessible on the ground.
“Because it is going into Europe, the 2nd Cavalry, they drive everywhere they go. They can actually get to a position faster driving than they can loading onto an aircraft and flying,” Dean said.
Soldiers of the 2nd CR have been intimately involved with the development of the upgunned Stryker, dubbed the Dragoon, and will become the test case for whether similar armaments should be extended to the Army’s entire fleet of Strykers under a more comprehensive lethality upgrade program, said Stryker Program Manager Col. Glenn Dean.
“There is an intent to provide cannons to all the Stryker brigades, but we’re going to pause, field this to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, we’re going to look at what they learn from their experience and then allow them to direct what changes might need to be made in the layout of the vehicle, the concept of operation, before we move through,” Dean said following the rollout ceremony here. “It is very powerful to be able to take that sort of feedback and iterate because, generally speaking we don’t get it quite right the first time. There is always a little bit of adjustment or improvement we can make and this allows us to cycle through that process more quickly.”
The Army is hailing the up-gunned Stryker as an example of “rapid acquisition” where the service has “bent the acquisition process to its will,” as Maj. Gen. David Bassett, program executive officer for Ground Combat Systems, is fond of saying.
But when the vehicles reach Europe in May 2018, three years will have passed since Army commanders there called urgently for more mobile infantry firepower to counter a perceived Russian threat. Bassett dismissed such criticism and said the basic engineering and manufacturing required to build the turrets and cannons, then install them and other components on each vehicle, takes a certain amount of time.
“I’m really pleased with some of the innovations the PMs have brought to bear on this effort, to be able to do it faster and make sure that, in doing it faster, we actually get the soldiers trained faster,” Bassett said. “This is a pretty big revision to a vehicle like this.”
There are 5,000 unique parts in the turret, each of which has to be cut and cast, Bassett said. The structure adds about 5,000 pounds to the vehicle, so its entire suspension system needed replacing. Because work was already done to beef up the suspension for the heavier double-V hull Stryker, the Army was able to tap that non-recurring engineering work and use it for the 30mm cannon-carrying variant.
“By choosing an existing suspension, we didn’t have to go develop a new one,” Bassett said. “We were able to pull together things that were already largely mature and that way we were not starting from scratch.”
Other aspects of the program will allow future Stryker designs and their crews to field faster, Dean said.
The Army will field the new Strykers in virtual reality before they ever reach Europe so that the troops that will fight with them will already have a handle on the concept of operations. The Joint Multinational Simulation Center, headquartered in Grafenwoehr, Germany, is equipped with the Virtual Battlespace III system that will allow soldiers to train as a unit with new and legacy Strykers, Dean said.
“Normally what we do is show up with the hardware and train soldiers how to use it, then they go out to the field and learn how to employ them as a group,” he said. “In this case we are going to invert that paradigm. We are going to let them train collectively in a virtual environment and then we are going to follow up with binging in the hardware. … We hope that shortens the amount of time it takes them to become fully proficient as a unit.”
Attaching the 30mm cannon is one of several concurrent projects under way to improve various performance aspects of the Stryker, from automotive and speed to lethality and crew protection.
Another is the ongoing retrofit of battle-damaged Strykers with a blast-mitigating double-V hull, which also entails replacing the suspension, other automotive improvements and interior upgrades like blast-attenuating seats.
Also in the works are upgrades to the Stryker’s overall capability with a broad lethality improvement program that includes troop protection, added weapons and active protection systems, among other emerging technologies. The Army has begun the first two elements of the Stryker Fleet Lethality strategy: providing an under-armor Javelin missile capability and improving the capabilities of the Stryker Anti-Tank Guided Missile vehicle to better locate and engage targets via networked fires.