Deployment Ceremony For 3rd Stryker Brigade Set For Tuesday

The 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, will conduct a deployment ceremony at 10 a.m. Tuesday outside brigade headquarters on Joint Base Lewis-McChord Main.

This will be the 3rd Stryker Brigade’s first deployment to Afghanistan; it has previously been deployed to Iraq three times. Beginning in November 2003, 3/2 SBCT served a year in Samarra and Mosul. In June 2006, the brigade conducted operations in Mosul and the Ninevah Province, Baghdad, Najaf, and Baqubah before returning to then-Fort Lewis in September 2007. And from July 2009 through July 2010, 3rd Stryker Brigade Soldiers were stationed at locations throughout Diyala Province.

The 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, or “Arrowhead Brigade,” was the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat team. Beginning in December, about 3,000 Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade will deploy to Southern Afghanistan to conduct counter-insurgency operations.

Soldiers will work alongside Afghan national security forces toward the goal of transitioning to where the forces will take the lead, similar to the missions Stryker soldiers have done in Iraq in recent years.