New Stryker brigade at Fort Carson receives first vehicles

Soldiers assigned to the newly redesignated 3rd Stryker Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, began receiving Stryker vehicles at Fort Carson, Colorado, on September 2, marking the next step in the unit’s conversion from a tank formation to a wheeled Stryker force.

The brigade, known as the Iron Brigade, previously operated as the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, built around M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Its last Abrams tank left Fort Carson in mid-July, heading to Fort Irwin, California, for Project Convergence Capstone 6, an exercise where the brigade tested emerging technology including a new digital command-and-control system before completing its final conversion steps and taking on the Stryker Brigade designation.

The tanks the brigade gave up are headed to Army depots for overhaul, after which they will be redistributed to other armored units across the service, according to earlier Army reporting on the transition.

With Strykers now arriving at Fort Carson, soldiers will move into new equipment training, platform familiarization and leader development, covering vehicle capabilities, maintenance and digital systems. The Army has said the brigade will also see a personnel realignment as infantry soldiers arrive to fill out the battalions needed for a Stryker-based force structure, which relies more heavily on dismounted infantry than an armored formation built around tanks.

The Stryker is an eight-wheeled, armored combat vehicle that trades the heavier armor and firepower of a tank for greater speed and lower logistical demands, letting units move under their own power over longer distances instead of requiring the heavy-equipment transporters and rail movements that come with fielding tanks.

The conversion is tied to a larger organizational shift. The 4th Infantry Division has been reassigned to America’s First Corps, which supports U.S. Army Pacific, a headquarters focused on projecting land power across the Pacific and sustaining a regional military presence. Army officials have said the Iron Brigade’s move to Strykers is meant to give the division a more rapidly deployable, digitally connected force to support that mission.

“We absolutely honor the legacy of the 3rd Armored Brigade and their storied history,” said early Col. Nick Sinclair, the brigade’s commander, in July as the unit prepared for its final conversion steps. The brigade has spent decades as one of the Army’s principal armored formations, deploying to the Middle East and Europe and rotating repeatedly through the Army’s National Training Center.