STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. – The U.S. Army has placed its 2006 fiscal year order for 306 Stryker wheeled combat vehicles from General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD). The order is valued at $463.9 million and is an extension of a November 2000 contract to provide more than 2,100 armored vehicles. To date, approximately 1,500 Strykers have been delivered.

Work will be performed in Anniston, Alabama; Lima, Ohio; and London, Ontario, Canada, by existing General Dynamics employees. Vehicle deliveries are slated for April 2007 through March 2008.

Stryker, a family of eight-wheel-drive combat vehicles that can travel at speeds up to 62 mph on highways with a range of 312 miles, is the Army’s highest-priority production combat vehicle program and the centerpiece of the ongoing Army Transformation. Stryker’s current combined fleet operational readiness rate is in excess of 96 percent with more than 6 million miles accumulated through two completed Operation Iraqi Freedom rotations. Stryker vehicle variants have more than 70 percent common components within the 300-plus Strykers comprising a brigade combat team, increasing cost-effectiveness of the fleet by easing the unit’s training and logistics burden.

Stryker operates with the latest C4ISR equipment and an integrated armor package protecting soldiers against improvised explosive devices, rocket propelled grenades and a variety of infantry weapons. The Mobile Gun Systems and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicles, the newest Stryker configurations, were delivered in late 2005. Other Stryker vehicle configurations include: the anti-tank guided missile and medical evacuation vehicles; and carriers for mortars, engineer squads, command groups and fire-support teams.

Significantly lighter and more transportable than existing tanks and armored vehicles, Stryker fulfills an immediate requirement to equip a strategically deployable (C-17/C-5) and operationally deployable (C-130) brigade capable of rapid movement anywhere on the globe in a combat-ready configuration. Stryker Brigade Combat Teams have operated with “historically high” mission availability rates in Iraq since October 2003, demonstrating the value of a force that can move rapidly as a cohesive and networked combined-arms combat team.

General Dynamics, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., employs approximately 72,200 people worldwide and had 2005 revenue of $21.2 billion.  The company is a market leader in mission-critical information systems and technologies; land and expeditionary combat systems, armaments and munitions; shipbuilding and marine systems; and business aviation. More information can be found online at www.generaldynamics.com

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