General Dynamics Corp, manufacturer of the Stryker armored fighting vehicle, is making a push to persuade the Army to adapt a tracked version for use in armored divisions. The company displayed a prototype tracked Stryker at the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition, held Oct. 23-25 in Washington, D.C. The tracked Stryker would replace the Army’s fleet of aging M113 Multipurpose Vehicles. “The tracked version would go anywhere an Abrams could go,” said Garth Lewis, the Stryker program manager at General Dynamics. If interested, the Army could issue a request for proposal (RFP) as soon as early next year. In the meantime, General Dynamics is replacing the Army’s inventory of flat-hulled wheeled Strykers with double-V hulled versions. The new design is more capable of protecting crews and occupants from improvised explosive device (IED) attacks.
