A Personal Dissent
Lurch at Main and Central wonders Is the Stryker Striking Out?. Then Swopa at Needlenose adds his point of view.
Like a lot of things in the military the Stryker is serving in a role it wasn’t designed for, and doesn’t work well in that different role.
General Eric Shinseki, the man who knew how many troops were needed for the Iraq conflict, was the “horse” pulling for the Infantry Carrier Vehicle. That designation is important because it tells you what the Stryker was designed to do – carry an infantry squad. It was a replacement for a canvas-sided truck.
During development the Stryker armor was upgraded from simple fragmentation protection to protection from 7.62mm and .50 caliber armor piercing rounds. It couldn’t go heavier without losing its ability to be carried by a C-130, a major requirement for the design.
It wasn’t a replacement for the HMMWVee, or the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier, or the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, it was designed to replace a six-wheel truck.
The Military Times says the Army to make request for 17,000 MRAPs, and the Stryker definitely wasn’t designed as a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle [MRAP] like the Cougar and Buffalo.
The Stryker is certainly better than a truck, or a Humvee, but it wasn’t designed for urban warfare. I’m not going to fault it for not being all things to all people, or for not being the greatest thing since sliced bread. It fulfills its design goals adequately, although real-world experience will probably point to improvements.
