BUB: FCS

News updates on the Future Combat Systems

Official US Army site of FCS
Future Combat Systems at Wikipedia

DoDBuzz talks about how the Pentagon threw FCS a lifeline

The Pentagon gave Boeing a nice Christmas present – approval by the Defense Acquisition Board on Dec. 24 of the remnants of the Future Combat System to equip one Brigade Combat Team for test and evaluation.

This tentatively clears the way for the crucial FCS network to go ahead, as well as technologies such as the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, the Class 1 Block 0 Unmanned Air System, Unattended Ground Sensors and the Non-​​Line of Sight Launch System. But the DAB also imposed important conditions on the Low Rate Initial Production decision, said a source familiar with the program.

And the acquisitions hierarchy is questioning that lifeline

Following Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ cancellation of FCS last year, the Army rolled out a new modernization strategy that included getting at least some of the FCS technologies in development over the past seven years into the hands of soldiers by 2011 and then fielding “capability packages” to combat brigades in two year increments.

Yet, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter’s Acquisition Decision Memorandum giving the go-​​ahead raises some serious questions about the Army’s whole modernization strategy. Carter approved building only enough of the new gear to outfit a single brigade while capping long lead funding for more gear at $70 million and limiting NLOS-​​LS funding at $35 million, until further tests prove the missile works.

Carter told the Army to drop its “system-​​of-​​systems” approach to building complete weapons packages and rush to the field whatever bits and pieces are deemed far enough along to prove useful to soldiers on the battlefield and to delay those components that don’t show promise. “I believe this flexibility will allow the Department to best support Secretary Gates’ direction to “win the wars we are in,”” he wrote.

+++

StrategyPage has a great analysis of how the Army's transformation moved forward without waiting for FCS to catch up.

Along the way, the American army went through some unexpected, and largely unreported, transformations. First, as the American military has done throughout its history, the army quickly adapted to the conditions it found itself in (in the middle of a major terror campaign), and defended itself, while training the new Iraqi army and police force. This was more difficult because the old army and police were dominated by Sunni Arabs, who were still the enemy and still fighting. But although the army was under heavy attack, their casualty rate was a third of what it had been in Vietnam, Korea and World War II. Better training, tactics, weapons, leadership and equipment was the reason. But that was not the kind of stuff that makes for exciting headlines, so it was ignored. Outside the military, at least.

As the army adapted, it also developed new weapons and equipment (remotely controlled gun turrets, missiles fired from UAVs, GPS guided rockets and shells, jammers to defeat roadside bombs, robots, new armor, new intelligence collection and data mining techniques, MRAPs, and so on.) This was an army of the future, able to not just move more quickly, but also able to evolve new ideas and techniques more rapidly. The army also found that some weapons, like their M-1 tanks and M-2 infantry vehicles were still very relevant.

The army also discovered that there was a down side to lower casualties. Troops were now spending more time in combat than ever before. As was discovered, and documented, during World War II, that the average soldier can only take so much combat (about 200 days worth) before they become psychologically unfit for the battlefield. The army then went on to find ways to delay the onset of this breakdown, and ways to cure it.

While the army was just taking care of business, that made it clear that a lot of Cold War era weapons systems were a waste of money. This led to the cancellation of some expensive systems (the Comanche helicopter, Crusader artillery vehicle, FCS and Land Warrior, just to name the big ones). But not just for the army. It became obvious that the Navy and Air Force, which were much less involved in Iraq, also had a lot of expensive new systems that were out of sync with reality. So DDG-1000 destroyer and the F-22 were sharply cut, and several other systems put on hold, or cancelled.

By: Brant