Brigade Adds Frontier Weapon to Gear List
Aug. 18, 2003 — -- Modern versions of the frontier tomahawk have been quietly finding their way into the hands of members of the U.S. armed forces for a couple of years now. But now it's one step closer to becoming a standard-issue item.
Beginning this month, the newly formed Stryker Brigade Combat Team will begin equipping infantry squads with "breach kits" (used to clear obstacles and force entry into buildings) that will each include a tomahawk.
And according to at least one member of this new team, the tomahawks have been a welcome addition.
"[This] tomahawk has allowed us to do stuff in the breaching arena that the Leatherman [multitool] allowed us to do early on when we got the Leatherman. It's kind of a do-everything little widget, if you will," said Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Myhre.
Chopping Through Army Bureaucracy
Tomahawks have been used by soldiers since before the Revolutionary War, and, less commonly, in modern times.
Andy Prisco, president of the American Tomahawk Co., has been selling tomahawks to individual members of the U.S. armed forces and, occasionally, making larger sales to military units. But so far Prisco and his business partner, former Army Ranger Justin Gingrich, have found getting their tomahawks accepted into military procurement channels a much bigger challenge.
In the summer of 2001, Prisco submitted his company's tomahawk to the Soldier Enhancement Program, a congressionally mandated system that allows the military to evaluate and adopt commercially available, off-the-shelf items. But after almost two years, progress on the tomahawk proposal seems to have bogged down.
Then, just a few months ago, Prisco learned of a relatively new program, the Rapid Fielding Initiative. Prisco said that in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, RFI was introduced as a way for military units about to be deployed overseas to quickly equip themselves with commercially available items that are not part of the military inventory.
RFI provides a brigade commander with a budget and the discretion to purchase whatever he feels he needs for the members of his unit — typically, a list of hundreds of individual items. It is a limited program, however. RFI budgets and ordering authority are given to an individual brigade commander in the months prior to a deployment. Once the purchases are made and the unit is deployed, the RFI authority passes on to the next unit or units scheduled to be deployed.
New Unit, New Equipment
Myhre, who is the force modernization NCO for the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team) based in Fort Lewis, Wash., has been involved with the Rapid Fielding Initiative program for about two years.
Myhre said members of his brigade were looking for an all-around digging/cutting/chopping tool, and tested samples of the tomahawk when the brigade went through its own testing at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La.
"We really ran it [the tomahawk] through its paces and it does everything it's supposed to be able to do, so we added it to the RFI," he said.
Myhre said that, using the RFI "menus" created by other units that have deployed previously, his job is to evaluate which items his unit needs from the list, and research other items that would be more appropriate for his unit.
The Stryker brigades are "interim" brigades, designed to fill the gap between "light" forces such as airborne units — which can be deployed quickly but lack heavy firepower — and armored brigades, which can be very slow to deploy. The brigades are named for their eight-wheeled, 19-ton armored vehicles, which have high-tech communications equipment and come in 10 variations using a common chassis.
Members of the Stryker Brigade will be deploying to Iraq later this year, sending 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers and more than 2,000 vehicles, including about 300 Strykers.
Myhre said that typically a Stryker vehicle is operated by a driver, a gunner and a vehicle commander, and additionally carries a nine-man infantry squad, which transports its equipment aboard the Stryker. Each squad has its own breach kit, which is a 30-pound backpack containing a 5-pound sledgehammer, a set of bolt cutters, a Hooligan tool (like a fireman's crowbar for forcing doors or windows open), a battering ram, a 12-foot-tall collapsible ladder and a tomahawk.
Myhre said that breach kits have existed in the Army for years, but early versions were more basic, containing upgraded wire cutters, a machete and perhaps a few other tools. He added that the kits have evolved by looking at how fire departments get into locked houses that are on fire and how SWAT teams get into a barricaded buildings when facing armed resistance.
"We've gotten to where it's about a five-item kit in a backpack configuration that … will truly let you get into just about anything you want to get into. … But unless you want that guy to carry those 30 pounds around all the time, there's really not always the calling for such drastic implements."
Myhre said that in many cases, soldiers decide to carry just the tomahawk instead of the entire breach kit, and some members, after using the tomahawk in the breach kit, have decided to use their own money to purchase one to carry as part of their personal gear.
Looking to the Future
For American Tomahawk, based in Anderson Island, Wash., the RFI program has offered welcome, quick results when compared to the normal procurement process. While Prisco overcame a major hurdle by getting his product onto the current RFI menu, there's also a downside: Each time the RFI program moves to a new unit preparing to deploy, the whole process of creating a purchase list begins again.
"It's bittersweet, in that it took commercial recognition of our item to finally get it into the Army, because the military's process for doing that is convoluted," Prisco said.
So, rather than going through the traditional procurement channels, he said, "The way we got in the Army was based on the people who actually use our products see the merit."