From TransFormaTion To CombaT The First stryker brigade at War

loaded trucks north while the other guarded empty vehicles returning
south. A third element composed of engineers and infantry would clear
obstacles from the route. Depending on the amount of civilian traffic
and the strength of the enemy’s resistance, Reed figured that each trip
between scanIa and anaconda would require at least four but sometimes
as many as ten hours. He calculated that he could achieve adequate
coverage if he paired a Stryker platoon of four vehicles with a serial of
fifteen trucks. Since one company could thus handle four of these serials
at a time, the approach imposed a limit of sixty vehicles each way
per day. If trouble occurred, Reed had access to on-call air support and
helicopter gunship coverage.
The first Stryker escort mission took place on 18 April. As the
convoy moved north from scanIa, the soldiers of TF arrow could see
spent shell casings and the burned-out hulks of trucks scattered along
the road. The convoy made contact with the enemy soon after entering
the western outskirts of Baghdad. Coming abreast of the Abu Ghraib
prison, the lead Stryker encountered a roadside bomb and then began
to receive RPG and small-arms fire from a building that brazenly flew
an Islamic resistance militia flag. The attack was a big mistake for the
enemy, for a 1st Cavalry Division strongpoint was nearby. Moments
later two M1A2 Abrams tanks arrived. As soon as they had a clear field
of fire, they silenced the enemy’s weapons with 120-mm. high-explosive
rounds and automatic-weapons fire. The remainder of the convoy’s trip
north was uneventful. The trucks made it safely to anaconda.
The digital communications suite each Stryker possessed proved
invaluable during this duty, permitting company commanders to monitor
the progress of each convoy and to coordinate its passage with friendly
units responsible for securing key intersections along the route. One officer
observed, “even when non-digitized vehicles are integrated within
your unit, you can tell where everyone is located because we would
employ digitized vehicles at the head of the convoy, at the tail end,
and interspersed throughout in order to provide coverage of the entire
convoy.”
For two months, TF arrow shepherded contractors’ supply trucks
and numerous military vehicles between CSC scanIa and LSA anaconda.
Enemy contact was frequent during that time. During the first five
days of the effort, the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry, recorded ten attacks.
Each time an ambush occurred, a Stryker commander marked the enemy’s
location on his computer system, which automatically transmitted data
to the rest of the escort. The system allowed the Americans to coordinate
an effective response in the shortest possible time.
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