New Stryker Model?
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008Army considers variants of Stryker, Abrams
Missed this while on the road last week:
Meanwhile, the Army has built a prototype of a new Stryker maintenance vehicle variant built with a trailer and crane to recover battle-damaged vehicles in combat, said U.S. Army Col. Christopher Lockhart, TRADOC Capabilities Manager, Stryker.
“It would recover destroyed Strykers, even catastrophically destroyed Strykers with all the tires blown off. It works in conjunction with a trailer. It will be a new variant if we chose to go that way,” said Lockhart.
In addition, the Army has outfitted several Stryker vehicles with an armor kit along the lower sides of the vehicles designed to stop deadly shaped charges such as explosively formed penetrates.
“The Stryker modernization program will allow you to put more weight on the system. There is a hull protection kit, an armor package, that is being put on selective Strykers right now. It is on the lower part of the side. EFPs impact around the tire area,” said Lockhart.
The Army plans also call for full funding of the NBC (nuclear, chemical, biological) reconnaissance Stryker variant.
“We want more of the NBC recon vehicles to replace Fox vehicles that are out there. We had to address all of the manned-ground vehicles [FCS] issues in our planning. Once we did that there was a little bit of RDT & E [research, development, test and evaluation] money for the entire Stryker family. From an engineering perspective we will continue to modernize the Stryker family. They will continue to be reset and be operationally capable because they are in the hands of soldiers being used,” said Thompson.
The maintenance variant might be nice, but I was hoping for a 25mm or 30mm gun version.
Also, don’t forget the 155mm howitzer prototype Stryker.

