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6 June 2025

The US Army is too light to win

R.D. HOOKER, JR.

How can we have forgotten the terrible lessons of the early 2000s, when losses in Iraq and Afghanistan prompted a scramble to deploy up-armored HMMWVs and Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles? Today’s Army, far lighter than the one that took such damage in so-called “low-intensity combat,” is ill-equipped to deter or contend with the likes of China or Russia.

Let’s take roll of the Army’s 31 active maneuver brigades. Eleven are heavy brigades equipped with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—well-protected platforms suited to modern war.

Another six brigades are Stryker formations equipped with their eponymous lightly armored, wheeled infantry carriers. Originally called the “interim armored vehicle,” the Stryker was intended to serve only until the arrival of the Future Combat Systems, which imploded instead. From conception, Stryker units have suffered from doctrinal and conceptual confusion. Stryker units carry more dismounted troops than Bradley units, which are intended to fight primarily mounted. But they are infantry carriers, not infantry fighting vehicles. With poor off-road mobility, they are vulnerable to hand-held antiarmor systems, and their units have towed rather than self-propelled artillery. Repeated National Training Center rotations show they cannot survive when employed against armor.

The remaining 14 active maneuver brigades are light infantry formations, cheaper and easier to deploy but, realistically, unable to compete with today’s threat. Under current guidance, they go to war in “infantry squad vehicles”—essentially, unarmored dune buggies without heavy weapons.

Compounding the problem, the commanders of these light brigades have dramatically less firepower than they used to. The recent decision to eliminate the air cavalry squadron from the aviation brigade in Army divisions removes half of each division’s 48 AH-64E attack helicopters, a massive reduction in combat power. Only slightly less dangerous was the Army’s recent decision to deactivate the cavalry squadron in Stryker and light infantry brigades, with their many wheeled vehicles and heavy weapons. The same directive stripped light infantry battalions of their antiarmor/heavy weapons companies: mounted formations armed with automatic grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and heavy antitank systems. These actions removed much of the brigade’s available firepower.

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