POHAKULOA TRAINING AREA — Three years ago this month, the "Golden Dragons" of the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry conducted a near-battalion-sized raid in northern Iraq — swarming 500 soldiers into the village of Amadiyah from Humvees, open-backed trucks and helicopters in search of insurgents.

At the 133,000-acre Big Island training range on Saturday, the Schofield Barracks unit was preparing for an expected return to Iraq, this time protected by a whole lot more armor.

Fifty-nine Stryker vehicles, their high-pitched signature engines announcing their arrival, crossed scrub-lined Saddle Road in waves to attack a mock enemy hidden throughout the Pohakuloa Training Area's network of old Quonset huts and buildings. The Advertiser was the first media outlet given access to the Stryker training on the Big Island.

The shift to Stryker technology has bought a new dynamic: Instead of looking out Humvee windows, up to nine infantry soldiers now can watch from inside, seeing on a small monitor what's being picked up on a topside weapon system's powerful optics.

The adjustment to the 19-ton armored vehicles is continuing for the nearly 4,000 soldiers of the Stryker brigade. But many are already sold.

"The Strykers are awesome. The Strykers are where it's at," said Staff Sgt. Christopher Wessling, 31, from Guam.

Strykers, although far from invincible, are safer than Humvees. Wessling was with the 1-14 Golden Dragons in Iraq in 2004.

"I rode in a Humvee with no doors," he said. "So from a Humvee with no doors to a Stryker is 10 times better."

GOING TO IRAQ

The recent battalion-size deployments to the Big Island by the entire brigade, which has received about 300 of the 328 expected Stryker vehicles, is ratcheting up the realism for what's ahead — despite the constraints of an environmental lawsuit.

"The brigade is going to deploy (to Iraq), there's no doubt about it," said its commander, Col. Stefan Banach. The timeframe he expects is later this year.

As part of the brigade's rapid development, Strykers in convoys of 10 to 14 have been heading down to Waipi'o Point from Schofield Barracks for Army ship transport to the Big Island since January.

Over several weeks at Pohakuloa, the soldiers practice the battalion-level blank-fire exercise involving more than 600 soldiers and a lot of convoy and room-clearing live-fire training before heading back to O'ahu.

The live fire extends to 10 Stryker vehicles that carry 120 mm mortars. A 105 mm "mobile gun system" Stryker variant is expected on O'ahu in June.

The 1-14 Golden Dragons are the last battalion to rotate through Pohakuloa in the current rotation.

The Army has said it also would be conducting Stryker training at Schofield, and non- live-fire maneuvers in the Kahuku Training Area.

But the vehicles are likely to be gone from O'ahu for more than a year and a half beginning this summer. Two months of training will take place in August and September at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in California, with its more than 1,000 square miles of maneuver area and firing ranges.

Banach said the Stryker vehicles likely would be shipped to the Middle East from the West Coast.

In the meantime, the Army continues to look at alternative locations outside Hawai'i for the $1.5 billion Stryker brigade as a result of a lawsuit brought by three Hawaiian groups saying Strykers would harm the environment and cultural sites.

In late December, a federal judge in Honolulu ruled that limited Stryker training could continue to prepare the unit and its soldiers to deploy to Iraq.

As a result, the Army hasn't been able to use 24,000 acres of Parker Ranch it purchased for $31.5 million for Stryker maneuvers. The land is north of but contiguous to 109,000 acres of pre-existing Pohakuloa training lands.

The recent Stryker training at Pohakuloa has been conducted on the east and north side of the range, where Bradshaw Army Airfield, the base garrison, and some firing ranges are located.

Banach said "given our training objectives and the fact we're going to (the National Training Center), we have what we need."

But he added that having the Parker Ranch land and Makua Military Reservation — the source of a separate lawsuit — to use in the future would be beneficial in part because there's competition for Hawai'i Army units to get the training they need.

ADDITIONAL ARMOR

The Stryker's armor can stop a 14.5 mm heavy machine gun round, but protection from rocket-propelled grenades has come from 5,000 pounds of additional birdcage-like "slat" armor fitted on the vehicles.

The Strykers in Hawai'i haven't trained at Pohakuloa with the slat armor, and Banach said that's partly for practical reasons. Driving with the extra girth would make highway driving more dangerous in convoys, he said. The armor would be added in the Middle East.

Banach said four sets of slat armor will be arriving on O'ahu and all drivers will get experience with it before the brigade heads to the National Training Center.

Banach said the decision not to drive Strykers on public highways with the extra-wide slat armor also involves being good neighbors.

"We understand the environment," he said. "We're here in Hawai'i. We also understand in balance what our training requirements are, and I think we can attain both objectives."

Roadway courtesy also extended to Saddle Road, which the Strykers crossed for Saturday's exercise. Instead of stopping motorists for the crossing Strykers, the Army stopped the Strykers for crossing motorists.

Maj. Michael Adelberg, the Stryker brigade's fire support officer, said Saturday's exercise was meant to replicate an attack on a city like Fallujah in late 2004, where the military broadcast its plans and warned civilians to leave the city.

The "enemy" was played by fellow soldiers, some of whom wore headscarves and carried fake rocket-propelled grenades. Others wore black T-shirts.

There was blank fire but no pyrotechnics because surrounding grasses at the windswept range were too dry and the risk of fire too great, officials said.

Inside one Stryker, four infantry soldiers waited and watched on the monitor to see what to expect as other troops cleared an initial set of Quonset hut barracks.

The back ramp was closed and the top hatches were buttoned up when word came over the radio of a possible roadside bomb ahead.

Interior lights went on and fans kept the interior relatively cool. The Stryker followed two vehicles down a street, the tailgate was dropped, and the fixation on the interior monitor was replaced by running and shouted orders.

"Let's go, let's go!" shouted Wessling, the staff sergeant, to other soldiers as they started clearing Quonset huts. "What have you got right there? What have you got Henry?"

Staff Sgt. Jason Henry, 28, from Micronesia, was sighting down his M-4 rifle around the side of one of the buildings.

Sporadic bursts of blank fire would be heard as enemy fighters were spotted.

First Lt. Daniel Laakso, 25, who's with 1st Platoon, Company C, said, "there's a nervous feeling every time we work up to doing things like this," and the realism comes with the blank-firing and opposing-force role players.

Observers decided who was injured and killed.

Laakso ended up questioning the mayor of a city about a walkie-talkie he was carrying.

"Who were you talking to on this?" he asked.

"My family, my family. I told them to go away, bad guys," came back the answer in broken English.

SOMETHING NEW

For some of the soldiers, the only thing new is the Stryker training; they've been to Iraq once or twice before.

More than 7,000 Schofield soldiers are serving in northern Iraq. A three-month extension of their mission means they'll be there until October and November. Stryker soldiers also will have to serve 15 months in Iraq.

Staff Sgt. Travis Pickens, 26, from Mississippi, went in 2003 and 2004 and is not excited about going back.

"But I know it's something I've gotta do and then that's going to be it," said the father of four. "I'll leave this Army to younger men."

Frequent deployments had an impact.

"That, and I'm tired," he said. "I miss my kids."

But the type of training Schofield is doing now "is better, combat focused, clearing buildings," he said.

The soldiers know Strykers aren't invincible, but many believe in the added protection, improved communications and ability to see more of the battlefield from the safety of the vehicles.

On the first day of a new mission last month to Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, two Stryker vehicles were destroyed, one soldier was killed and 12 wounded.

"You can't stop everything, but I tell you what, these things stop most," Wessling said. "Better than me running down the street catching" a rocket-propelled grenade by my body armor.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.