The majority of Hawai'i's Stryker brigade soldiers are in place at Camp Taji in Iraq, with an official mission turnover from the 1st Ironhorse Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Hood, Texas, scheduled for Jan. 15.

Approximately 4,000 soldiers and 328 of the eight-wheeled Stryker vehicles are part of the unit that will have duty for at least the next year, and possibly longer, in the area of Taji about 15 miles northwest of Baghdad.

It's the first combat deployment for the fast-strike unit.

"We are currently doing our crossover training with the outgoing unit," said Maj. Al Hing, a spokesman for what's known as the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. "Our soldiers are hitting the streets, towns and areas with the outgoing unit. We have yet to transfer authority, so our soldiers are doing their best to pick the brains, pull every lesson learned, nuance and aspect of the sector from our outgoing Ironhorse team."

One unit of the Stryker brigade is "cross-attached" to another brigade command within the Multinational Division-Baghdad area, but that is temporary and will return to 2nd Stryker Brigade control in the future.

The base at Taji has an airstrip, but most aircraft there are Army helicopters. An Air Force unit is training Iraq air crews. Camp Taji also has the largest post exchange in Iraq. Some have compared it to a Wal-Mart.

One way to gauge what comes next for the Hawai'i brigade is to look at what came before.

The Ironhorse brigade out of Texas, with a similar number of soldiers, spent the past 14 months in the Taji area at a time of spiking violence in Iraq. A total of 53 soldiers died during the deployment.

Col. Paul Funk, the Texas brigade's commander, told reporters during an April briefing that his area of responsibility was primarily rural, with about 160 population centers and a population of nearly 2 million.

That area extended from Tarmia in the north, to Abu Ghraib in the south, from Saba al-Bor in the west to Husainiyah in the east.

Maj. Patrick Michaelis, Ironhorse brigade operations officer, recently said the area went from 150 enemy attacks a week for the first seven to 10 weeks, to about 10 "significant" events per week with isolated incidents of coordinated enemy attacks.

The unit said it found and disposed of 724 roadside bombs.

"The shift in atmosphere of our operational environment has moved away from individual security and safety to normalcy which has manifested itself in a concern for governance," Michaelis said in an Army news story.

"Spectacular attacks" are the exception and not the rule, he said. "If you had asked last year if we were fighting a counterinsurgency, it would have been hard to say, 'Yes,' " Michaelis said. "Rather, we were in the center of a low-level ethno-centric civil war."

Funk, the Ironhorse brigade commander, was asked in late December about al-Qaida. He responded: "Well, in my area, which is north and west of Baghdad, al-Qaida has been driven out. I think they're still dangerous, but they have been driven out of my area."

IN BRIEF

STRAIN EVIDENT IN SCHOFIELD ROTATIONS

To find the strain on Army forces, it's not necessary to look any further than Schofield Barracks' 3rd Brigade. Some soldiers are saying the unit already is planning for a return to Iraq in about a year.

Schofield has two main ground-troop brigades — the 2nd Brigade, which is the Stryker brigade, and the 3rd Brigade, which just returned from 15 months in Iraq.

An Army brigade typically has 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers, although for the deployment that ended in October, the addition of an aviation brigade and other units pushed the total up to more than 7,000 Hawai'i soldiers who were in Iraq.

The current tempo is 15 months in Iraq or Afghanistan and 12 months at home, and Army officials are striving to return to 12-month combat tours.

ISLE TROOPS AMONG ALL-FEMALE SORTIE

Women helicopter pilots and crew members are nothing new in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But some members of the Hawai'i Army National Guard's Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 207th Aviation Regiment, recently were part of a rare mission.

Three Hawai'i Guard soldiers were among eight women who made up the all-female crew on a two-helicopter Black Hawk sortie on Christmas Day.

The three Hawai'i soldiers who were involved in the mission were Sgt. Crisaron Voeuth, a crew chief; Capt. Phoebe Inigo, a pilot; and Sgt. Michelle Aina, a door gunner.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.