New Stryker Faring Poorly in Field

[4dsc]

Source: Military.com

The newest version of the Army’s popular Stryker combat vehicle is garnering poor reviews here from Soldiers assigned to man its tank-like hull.

The General Dynamics Corp.-built Mobile Gun System looks like a typical eight-wheeled Stryker, except for a massive 105mm gun mounted on its roof. The gun fires three different types of projectiles, including explosive rounds, tank-busters and a "canister round" that ejects hundreds of steel pellets similar to a shotgun shell.

But while the system looks good on paper and the Army’s all for it, Soldiers with the 4th Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment -- one of the first units to receive the new vehicle for their deployment to Iraq -- don’t have a lot of good things to say about it.

More news from our man in Iraq .

"I wish would just blow mine up so I could be done with it," said Spec. Kyle Handrahan, 22, of Anaheim, Calif., a tanker assigned to Alpha Company, 4/9’s MGS platoon.

"It’s a piece," another MGS platoon member chimed in. "Nothing works on it."



Read more: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,160981,00.html?ESRC=dod.nl

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How do you spell waste??

[Gman]

1. Waste? Oh, no...

Just more looting of the treasury by Bush cronies. They produced a crappy overpriced product and got to loot the treasury.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "We republicons really know how to (smirk) run an army (smirk) - Commander AWOL

"Never forget that My Illustrious Commander Self is backed up by a real military, um, expert: VP Dickie Cheney managed to wangle Five (5) military deferments. That's even betterer than me, eh? We republicons is military experts alright."

- Commander AWOL

[eib1]

3. The words of these soldiers

should be a thousand times more important than anything management or shareholders have to say.

[Orsino]

4. So it's both "popular" AND "garnering poor reviews"? Neat trick.

It's a floor wax and a desert topping!

[KG]

5. all war is waste.

[UpInArms]

6. reminds me of this quote:

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. ~~Dwight D. Eisenhower

[poppysgal]

10. how true

:hi: If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
Joan Baez

[UpInArms]

12. yeah, and Debs said who actually have a voice in war or peace

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.... the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace....They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches. ~~Eugene Debs

:hi:

[billbuckhead]

13. In retrospect Eisenhower must have been a huge disappointment to corporama

I bet he didn't help Nixon much in the 1960 election. I never understand why we didn't run Wes Clark instead of Kerry.

[UpInArms]

14. because we bought into the "electable" meme

:(

[L0oniX]

7. More pork fat for the military industrial corporations ...no doubt.

[Redstone]

8. That's what happens when things are given names with stupid spelling.

Redstone

[JackDragna]

9. From what I understand, the Stryker was considered terrible..

..from the moment it first came out, a monument to building overpriced crap rather than designing a vehicle that would be useful in combat. Another fine example of our conservative jerkoffs in Washington "supporting our troops" by building them multi-million dollar coffins.

[Thothmes]

11. The Stryker

designs began in the 90s Gen. Shinseki was the moving force behind the army adoption of the original version of the vehicle. It is based on a Canadian design which was based on a Swiss army wheeled vehicle.

[tabasco]

15. That's how I understand it too.

Shinseki was right about Iraq but wrong about the Stryker.

M113A3 would have done better and we already had them.