Quote Originally Posted by Jones_RE View Post
The other advantage of Stryker of M-113 is armor. The Stryker is built to withstand heavy machine gun fire. It's supposed to have a ceramic overlay for RPG/shaped charge warheads - which ran into development problems - slat armor is the expedient replacement. M-113's have repeatedly proven to be too vulnerable without significant uparmoring. The IDF has completely redone theirs, but I doubt they fully trust even that level of protection any more given what happened in the recent fighting in Lebannon.

Really, I think the whole Stryker vs. M-113 debate is kind of besides the point. The current mucky mucks in charge of procuring/developing new systems are perfectly capable of turning in an M-113 based platform which has all the problems of a Stryker and spending just as much money while they're at it. I think better oversight by Congress, the Department of Defense and the Army could have brought either project in for a lot less money than was/is being spent.
The organic ceramic armor for the Stryker does not protect against RPGs. Even the M1A2 Abrams with all of its armor still doesn't offer complete passive protection against the standard RPG. The slat armor was redeveloped to serve as an interim solution since the ERA tile package hadn't been developed, tested, and fielded yet.

As far as costs, outside of the MGS, the Stryker program hasn't had significant cost overruns. The cost has gone up due to having feedback from combat experience that has driven condensed lifecycle upgrades; however, additional oversight by DoD or Congress would not have brought the program cost down much - IIRC, about 25-40% of the program's costs has been spent on infrastructure upgrades to allow installations designed to handle light/mech brigades to handle the increased size of a SBCT. This means better sim centers, ranges, combat vehicle trails to departure airfields, etc. These costs would have existed no matter what platform was chosen. In the end, the M113 option could have been cheaper up front, but you would have had the costs of more logistics and a more difficult footprint to support when deployed.