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New Stryker boasts plenty of firepower

Sep-17-2006 » Filed Under: Stryker Vehicle

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MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

The 10th and final version of the Stryker armored vehicle to be delivered to Fort Lewis looks a lot like its predecessors, with one exception.

One big exception.

The Mobile Gun System features a 105 mm cannon. Five years in the making, it brings much more to the fight than other versions armed with a heavy machine gun, a grenade launcher or anti-tank missiles.

“This will bring a lot more firepower, a lot more versatility to what the infantry can do,” said Sgt. 1st Class David Cooper, a tanker who leads a platoon of three of the new vehicles in the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment.

The new variant – they call it the MGS – is designed to back up the infantry with a gun that can blast through walls, knock out a fortified sniper nest, stop another armored vehicle and clear a street of enemy fighters.

General Dynamics Land Systems began delivering the new vehicles a couple of months ago, and now company teams are training crews. For now, Fort Lewis will be home to one brigade worth of MGS vehicles, 27 in all.

Local Stryker troops now fighting in Mosul and Baghdad, Iraq, won’t get the big guns before coming home next year. But the brigade breaking them in at Fort Lewis expects to take them to Iraq when it likely goes next summer.

The Army eventually plans to buy a set of 27 for each of its seven Stryker brigades, at a cost of about $3.7 million per vehicle.

The MGS is the most expensive of the 10 Stryker variants – the most common, the infantry carrier, costs about $1.6 million – and has proved to be the most difficult to develop.[...]


Comments For "New Stryker boasts plenty of firepower":

Hope the new stryker is safer in the hatches for the soldiers, that they have sorted out the problems with the tires and so on....

Posted by: Englishmum [TypeKey Profile Page] | September 20, 2006 4:51 PM

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