Stryker troops warm up for exercise in South Korea

[unhappycamper]

Army Pfc. Matt Wignall, a member of the Alaska-based Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, loads .50-caliber rounds onto a Stryker light armored vehicle Saturday at Rodriguez Range, South Korea. The soldiers are in South Korea for an annual training exercise.


Stryker troops warm up for exercise in South Korea
By T.D. Flack, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, February 25, 2008

RODRIGUEZ RANGE, South Korea — Sitting high in an observation tower on a ridge above the sprawling Rodriguez Range, Capt. Jeremiah Hurley watched his soldiers pour steady streams of deadly accurate .50-caliber fire from their Stryker light armored vehicles.

“It’s an awesome, awesome machine,” said Hurley, commander of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, as his troops worked through gunnery training.

The Alaska-based Stryker troops are in South Korea for Key Resolve/Foal Eagle, the new name for a training exercise started in the mid-1990s involving branches of the U.S. and South Korean militaries.

As South Korean range employees manipulated the pop-up targets, soldiers in the tower communicated with those safely encased in the Strykers’ protective shells, where gunners operated their .50-caliber weapons via a Remote Weapons Station joystick and thermal imaging system.

Even though Saturday’s training was a just warm-up for the March 2-7 exercise, Sgt. Andrew Brady, a team leader with 2nd Squad, 4th Platoon, explained that every minute of training is important, because the soldiers are headed to Iraq later this year.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52789