Meet The Parental Units

I’m not terribly well versed in modern combat vehicles, but I found the following chain of causality pretty interesting.

The picture below is of a Stryker, produced by General Dynamic Land Systems, a combat vehicle recently in the news for being the buggy of choice for the last American combat unit to leave Iraq.
Stryker

– and this is its Papa, the Canadian LAV III, also produced by General Dynamic Land Systems.
LAV III

Finally, here’s grandpa, the Swiss Piranha IIIC, produced by MOWAG.
Piranha IIIC

It’s interesting to see how much intermingling of equipment is going on – but I do find it funny that Canadians seem to have been thoroughly out-pizazzed, even by the Swiss, in naming their iteration.

Also, I was glad to see a different manufacturer for the Piranha. I was becoming concerned that General Dynamic was some sort of shadowy skynet-style arms manufacturer.

The MOWAG Piranha is a family of armoured fighting vehicles designed by the Swiss MOWAG (since April 2010 the name has changed to General Dynamics European Land Systems – Mowag GmbH), corporation. – wikipedia