Stryker Brigade Combat Team. Rethinking Strategic Responsiveness and Assessing Deployment Options

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Stryker Brigade Combat Team. Rethinking Strategic Responsiveness and Assessing Deployment Options

A. Vick / D. Orletsky / B. Pirnie / S. Jones

Historically, to deter and defeat major threats in Europe and Asia, the United States has relied on forward-deployed Army and Air Force forces, Navy and Marine Corps forces afloat, long-range aircraft in the continental United States (CONUS), prepositioned unit sets in key regions, and reinforcing units from CONUS. For short-warning crises in other regions, Marine Expeditionary Units, the 82nd Airborne Division, Special Operations Forces, and Air Force/Navy air would be combined as appropriate to provide a limited capability that has usually been sufficient for noncombat evacuations and other lesser contingencies. The United States has not had the ability to deploy large joint forces globally from North America in a matter of days or weeks: The transportation challenge has been simply too great. Army transformation efforts seek to establish that ability, turning the Army from the Legacy Force made up of well-equipped heavy warfighting forces, which are difficult to deploy strategically, and rapidly responding light forces, which lack staying power against heavy mechanized forces, to, first, an Interim Force of Stryker Brigade Combat Teams' brigade-sized forces equipped with a family of current generation medium weight wheeled armored vehicles--then, 15 to 20 years out, the Objective Force, equipped with the Future Combat System (FCS), a medium weight tank that the Army hopes can be as survivable and lethal as the 70-ton M-1 tank.