The Future of US Ground Combat Vehicles?

MG(R) Robert Scales has some thoughts on how we should proceed.

First, he admits the key motivator for this article.

This article is a pre-emptive strike, an attempt to offer some ideas about the concept that will define GCV. It’s important from the start to get the concepts right and clearly understood.

He examines why the FCS, uh "tanked."

One reason for the failure of the FCS concept was that it contained too many compromises in an effort to place all mounted combat functions inside a single platform. As one senior veteran of the FCS wars put it to me: “You lose too much when you try to put a tank on top of an ambulance.” To avoid this error, the GCV should be optimized for the common purpose of transporting a squad-sized team to the fight, not just infantry but any small team likely to be placed in harm’s way, such as engineers, military police, psychological operations forces and many others.

And around his specific recommendations (go read the article!) he offers these thoughts

One thing is certain, however: No legacy system, no matter how heavily modified, will meet the needs of all the ground services for operating across the conflict spectrum from irregular to conventional war. The only practical solution is to build the GCV around the concept of a universal small-unit carrier and then stretch the system as far as possible to accommodate other functions. In the near term, the design simply cannot accommodate every possible variant. Thus, the ground services will have to rely on older systems to perform big war tasks until new programs are begun to replace the venerable M1 Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle.

By: Brant