From TransFormaTion To CombaT The First stryker brigade at War

Compared with the battle that occurred in Mogadishu, Somalia,
in 1993, the fight that Stryker Brigade elements fought at Tall Afar
on 4 September 2004 served as a good indicator of the progress Army
Transformation had achieved. Although the rules of engagement and
the friendly and enemy forces involved were not identical, there were
clear parallels. Even so, the outcome in each case was different.
At Mogadishu, U.S. forces were called upon to rescue the crews of
two downed Black Hawk helicopters; at Tall Afar, the 5th Battalion,
20th Infantry, encountered a similar situation when it had to retrieve the
pilots of a stricken Kiowa Warrior. At Mogadishu, the Americans were
pinned down overnight by strong opposition. In the end, although they
inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, they had to fight their way out
on foot at considerable cost. At Tall Afar, the Stryker unit ensured the
retrieval of the aircraft and its crew while inflicting serious casualties on
the enemy and suffering only a few wounded of its own. Those results
were not achieved by good luck or happenstance. Although the enemy
gained the initiative when he shot down the Kiowa, the Strykers could
move and mass very rapidly. They reached the helicopter first, set up a
defense, and overwhelmed the forces attempting to overrun the site.
The Stryker battalion that fought at Tall Afar had capabilities that the
U.S. Army force in Somalia lacked. Although the American soldiers in
both engagements had similar skills and equipment, the Stryker-equipped
unit also had the advantage of access to real-time intelligence; responsive
joint firepower; mobile, armor-protected combat systems; and shared
awareness down to the squad level. The advantages the unit’s communications
offered in this case were not always present in its other operations,
where the enemy employed weapons and tactics that allowed him
to blend easily into the civilian population; but the force’s technological
advantages at Tall Afar made a decided difference.
The crucial test of the Stryker Brigade, and of Army Transformation,
did not take place in a laboratory or amid the dusty trails and hills
of Fort Irwin’s National Training Center. It came in Iraq, where the
soldiers of the Stryker Brigade faced a resilient and dedicated foe. The
effort cost the unit over the course of that year a total of 13 combat
deaths, 13 noncombat deaths, and some 300 other casualties. The price
to its opponents was immeasurably greater.
The fielding of the initial Stryker Brigade represented but the first
step in an ongoing process to change the nation’s Army. The entire force,
not just a few select organizations, must be capable of providing combat
commanders with well-led, well-trained, and well-equipped fighting
units. The scope of this effort becomes apparent only with a realization
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