Troops love the Stryker

Col. Steve Townsend of the Stryker Brigades criticizes the armchair generals who deride the main combat vehicle leading the fight against the terrorists:

Loren Thompson is quoted as saying that when the
Army conceived the Stryker it "was more concerned about mobility and agility
than it was about protection." In fact, the Army built superb protection into
every Stryker. In two tours and 23 months of combat in some of the toughest
places in Iraq (including Samarra, Mosul, Tal Afar, Najaf, Al Kut, Baghdad,
Diwaniyah and Baqubah), we have had only a handful of penetrations of a Stryker
from rocket-propelled grenades, though hundreds have been fired at and scores
have struck our Strykers. The roadside bombs that sometimes damage or destroy
our Strykers are large or sophisticated enough to defeat any vehicle -- M1A2
tanks included.

And my favorite point:

The Stryker isn't perfect, but it is clearly the best vehicle
available for the kind of fight we are in right now.

That's the key, isn't it? Get weapons which are good enough into the hands of the troops now. Instead the Pentagon and industry like weapons which take decades to develop and are often obsolete when they eventually get built. A case in point is here.