A new tech solution being fielded to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Germany this month will remove a long-standing vulnerability to dismounted troops working with Strykers.
Until now, if a soldier needed to fire a Javelin missile from the light-armored vehicle, the Stryker would have to stop, the soldier would get out and hit the target with the shoulder-fired missile, and then jump back on board.
It’s kind of a 20th Century method for shooting small missiles that leaves the soldier too exposed for modern combat, where troops are required to fight fast-targeting enemies with advanced sensors and shooters.
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So, researchers with Project Manager Soldier Weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, adapted the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, which has been used for years to fire crew-served weapons from the interior safety of the Stryker, to fire Javelins.
PEO Soldier staff said that 86 systems are part of the initial fielding. A follow-on upgrade will begin fielding in late 2020 that will replace 240 existing remote fire systems on a variety of Strykers within a not-yet-identified Stryker BCT.
Stryker upgrades got a lot of attention last year when the program beefed up their firepower with a 30mm cannon to replace the two .50 caliber machine guns it previously carried.
The Army was provided more than $300 million in emergency congressional funding in late 2015 to rapidly develop and field the upgunned Stryker as a counter to Russian aggression on the European continent.
“This capability that is coming to 2CR is directly attributable to Russian aggression,” Lt. Col. Troy Meissel, the regiment’s then-deputy commander, told reporters in 2017.
The previous Stryker version was outmatched by Russia’s BMP-3 tracked infantry fighting vehicles, used in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
