1st HBCT of the 1st Armored Division along with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment will undergo the transformation in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
This will lighten the Army:
The goal is to have a lighter and more quickly deployable force, focused more toward infantry operations, rather than heavy armor based tracked vehicles. Lighter units have proven more effective and flexible in diverse counterinsurgency environments the past few years.
Funny, I remember the Cold War era Army being pretty equally divided between heavy and infantry (including parachute, light, and airmobile) brigades.
But the Stryker brigades, which I guess will be 7 strong in the active component plus a National Guard brigade, are more of a medium-weight unit that's supposed to be more strategically deployable than heavy units but more tactically mobile than leg infantry.
Keep in mind that the strategic mobility issue isn't solved by the Stryker brigades. Given our air transport capabilities, moving one Stryker brigade from the continental United States across the Pacific, for example, would take about the same time whether by sea or air. So practically speaking they aren't more strategically mobile than heavy forces.
But tactically mobility? Yeah, they beat leg infatnry hands down. And their networked fighting ability is impressive.
Still, they aren't heavy forces capable of slugging it our with enemy heavies unless we have absolute aerial supremacy to use air power against enemy heavy forces the Strykers are up against. Given our current wars, this is wise. I hope we keep enough Abrams and Bradleys stored to convert units back to heavy should that prove wise in the next couple decades.
