Introduction
The following introduction is taken from the Tankograd website:
The Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle (IAV) family was introduced to fill a US Army capability gap for a rapidly deployable armoured combat vehicle that required minimal logistical support and featured state-of-the-art technology. For this purpose, a new type of troop formation was created that did not exist before, namely the so-called “Medium Force”. This was to close the capability gap between light infantry units and heavy tank brigades.
For the first time this publication grants an overview over all Stryker variants, from its ICV basic model up to the most recent additions to the family.
M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV)
M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle Javelin (ICV-J)
M1126 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle Scout (ICV-S)
M1126 Stryker Electronic Warfare (TEWS)
M1126 Stryker Electronic Warfare (WIN-T)
M1126 Stryker High-Energy Laser (MEHEL)
M1127 Stryker Reconnaissance Vehicle (RV)
M1127 Stryker Opposing Force Surrogate Vehicle (OSWV)
M1128 Stryker Mobile Gun System (MGS)
M1129B Stryker Mortar Carrier B (MC-B)
M1130 Stryker Command Vehicle (CV)
M1131 Stryker Fire Support Vehicle (FSV)
M1132 Stryker Engineer Squad Vehicle (ESV)
M1132 Stryker Command Vehicle (CV)
M1133 Stryker Medical Evacuation Vehicle (MEV)
M1134 Stryker Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM)
M1135 Stryker NBC Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV)
M1296 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle Dragoon (ICV-D)
Stryker A1 Short-Range Air Defense (IM-SHORAD)
Review
This offering from Tankograd Publishing is a soft backed title authored by Walter Bohm. The contents are provided over 64 pages of a semi-gloss paper with a full gloss card cover that, from past experience, provides a decent level of protection unless abused. This is one of Tankograd's duel language publications, with German on the left and English on the right of each page. The text in the title provides you with an insight of what the vehicles intended use was, and how it came about. As can be seen by the list of vehicles in the introduction, the Stryker performed a wide variety of roles with varying degrees of success.
Having read through the introduction my opinion is that the Stryker was designed to be a low weight armoured vehicle primarily for transporting troops with the ability to take on offensive roles and to have a decent turn of speed due to being wheeled rather than being tracked. As you would expect with Tankograd the photographs are of a very good quality, covering a wide range of Stryker set ups of the vehicles in the field. With this title Tankograd has tried to cover a lot of set ups in a small number of pages. As a general reference on the Stryker family this release does a good job of providing that overall coverage. However, the Stryker family really requires individual types being covered in their own title, and if I am honest I would not be surprised to see titles covering such, if this publication proves popular. Due to the fact that there are a large number of models of the Stryker available I suspect that demand for this release will be high, which bodes well for follow on titles.
Conclusion
Tankograd has a very specific style with their releases, and this offering sits comfortably inside this presentation style. My only disappointment with the title is that there is no dedicated walk around which is something I have come to enjoy in Tankograd titles, but I have to be fair that the amount of information that this title provides restricts the ability to offer that. The biggest plus side for me is the captions provided with each photograph that provides a decent amount of information and allowing the reader to quickly gather what they want.
From the Publisher
here some answers for your STRYKER review questions:
Tankograd has opted to publish an up-to-date overview on the entire Stryker family of vehicles which was not available before by any publisher. We have decided against walkarounds for three reasons:
# they would have blown up the number of pages beyond the standardised retail price of the Series 3000
# there are several walk-around-type publications on the Stryker already available e.g. by WWP and Sabot, so there was no need to repeat these
# as much as we see the desire of modelers to have “all-in-one“ books (history, technology, variants and walkarounds on each of them) this approach would increase the size and price of the book to 200+ Euro/Dollar/Pound. At the current situation we just see no market for such an expensive work on a vehicle such as the Stryker, even if the idea is very tempting!.