What the M10 Booker debate reveals about Army procurement

What do you think of the M10 Booker's reported cancellation, and why not use a Stryker MGS turret on a Bradley chassis or adapt a Vickers 105 mm turret?

Funding is interpreted here as paused, with cancellation still possible. Substitute turrets and chassis offer compromises, while the Army still wants a tracked assault gun.

The assessment at the time of the stream treats M10 Booker funding as paused, with cancellation still possible because other Army programmes also need the money. The Bradley chassis is considered old, while the Stryker's operating characteristics appear to miss parts of Booker's requirement. A Stryker MGS turret might have worked, and a Vickers 105 mm turret was another suggested option, but the search for a vehicle tailored to the requirement worked against those compromises. A tracked assault gun remained a long-standing Army requirement. Pacific island warfare offers one reason to value a vehicle lighter than an Abrams, with Scorpion and Scimitar in the Falklands used as the comparison. The follow-up cautions that Booker was intended for wider service, even though Pacific scenarios had become a dominant procurement test in Clarke's recent conversations with Americans.