Nearly 4,000 Pennsylvania National Guard members – including some from Mercer County – are being notified that they could be sent to Iraq within a year. The deployment, if fulfilled, would be the state Guard’s largest to Iraq.

The soldiers are members of the 28th Division’s 56th Stryker Brigade, headquartered in Philadelphia but spread across roughly 30 armories statewide.

An element of the 56th, the 1st Battalion, 112th Infantry, based in Erie, has units in Crawford and Butler counties.

“I’m sure there are some soldiers out there from the Mercer area,” said Maj. Timothy J. Foor, battalion executive officer and full-time administrative officer.

The Guard just recently received notification for training and are being told they will get an “alert order” today, Capt. Cory Angell, a Guard spokesman, said Thursday.

A deployment would also mark the first time that Guard-controlled Stryker vehicles would see combat, Angell said.

“These soldiers have received equipment and training that some regular Army units haven’t received, and I think it just shows that the National Guard is no longer a strategic reserve — it’s an operational force,” Angell said. “I think this will be historic.”

A 2,200-member deployment to Iraq in the summer of 2005 — the largest since the Korean War — returned to Pennsylvania in June 2006.

A number of Mercer County soldiers with the Guard’s 107th Field Artillery, which includes Battery A in Hermitage, also have served in Iraq.

Roughly 14,000 guard members from Pennsylvania were deployed during the Korean War.

The Pennsylvania National Guard, regarded as one of the nation’s largest and most deployed state Guards, is the only one with a Stryker brigade.

The first Stryker vehicles arrived here in June 2006. There are 10 variations of the 19-ton, eight-wheeled vehicles to meet different needs, such as troop carrying, medical evacuation, mine detection and heavy artillery.

The vehicles, which can travel up to 75 mph, are viewed as one of the ways to make the Army lighter, faster and more technologically savvy.

The Stryker can climb over boulders and heat up a soldier’s meal. Its periscopes and television monitors allow the driver and gunner to operate it without opening the hatches. It detects the presence of chemical and biological agents and has an air filtration system.

Its computers can run diagnostic tests to pinpoint malfunctions or show a real-time, interactive map that allows the soldiers to track the location of other Stryker vehicles and program in enemy positions.