Gentlemen, remember the
loads of bucks involved in this IAV business...
On both sides, both Stryker builders and M-113 promoters have huge interests in persuading the Army their project is the best one.
The amount of lobbying and media spinning is unbeliavable! Just look closely at the early Stryker casualty reports!
Both sides have a point. The M-113 (no official or unofficial name as yet I think, apart from 'Zippo' from the Tsahal guys who went bored of the aluminium hull and clumsy fuel tanks sending fireworks in the early versions' troop compartment
) is a reliable design which can be improved to many ends, like many people are doing. Not only in Israel, but also in Canada (FMTV), Turkey (TIFV), Jordan, Denmark, South Korea (KIFV), Australia...
Particularly in the Israeli case, where a tracked vehicle is the best for that very kind of urban warfare. There are no mines around, they have uparmoured their tin boxes to a no return point, long-range mobility is not a point, noise only add to the psychological edge, and the terrain gets so rugged that they even removed the rubber lining on the Merkava's road whells, since it was getting eaten away by both rocks and vibrations.
Now the Stryker is a controversial program, certainly costly, but not as much as it could have been.
The thing is mostly a Piranha III hull with a delirious electronics suite (which gives it a good edge in the right cinditions), and the Piranha III is a reliable and field-proven design which was already in use in several countries when the US fielded the Stryker. Look at the Canadian reports in UNSOM-II missions and you will see what "mine resistant" means!
Right now it is also pretty young, and bound to some early problems. A bloody insurrection war thousands of miles away is not the best environment for field testing and post-development.
Endlessly upgrading the 'gavin' instead of buying new hardware would be like dumping the Abrams and fitting makeshift improvements on old M60A1 tanks!
So please all stop bickering about that subject, you won't change a thing to it! You are only confusing matters by bringing political arguments (already quite pointless) out of context!
Now I know that trying to cool things down by sheer reasoning plus my very own twist for short explanations will get me flogged, but hey, what the hell, this IS a forum!
