By Ann Roosevelt
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.–Internal discussions have led the Army to elevate the debate over its potential $160 billion top modernization program, the Future Combat Systems (FCS), according to a top service official.
“We look at FCS, not as a program, but as a public debate,” Dean Popps, acting assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition Logistics and Technology, told the Association of the United States Army winter symposium here.
Boeing [BA] and SAIC [SAI] manage the program for the service.
“At the Pentagon, we look at everything as a program,” he said.
FCS is “not about the program but about the word ‘modernization,'” Popps said.
Thus, he has pared down the modernization message to Congress in the effort to secure funding–the service requested $3.6 billion for fiscal year 2009. In FY ’08, Congress cut $228 million from the program.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey told the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 26 he wants to accelerate the program, but decisions have yet to be made (Defense Daily, Feb. 27).
The metaphor he used was to predict what his wife would say if he asked her to go out and look at SUVs for the family.
She’d come back and say she found one with DvD players in the second and third rows to play different movies for the kids, it would have GPS on the dashboard, On-Star, rear back up sonar, and at least four computers to tell her about the mechanics of the vehicle, side, top and bottom airbags.
Those things translate into a mobile network, survivability and connectivity. When she visits the store, she likely would have the family cell phone and may also have a Blackberry for her business. So, to do the family shopping, she’d have two mobile networks.
The question he asks is, “why would you want your soldiers in anything less than a system like that?” If you want it for family life and convenience and you’re not conducting missions of war, you’re getting groceries and are still connected to networks. “Look at level of modernity–that alone makes the case. FCS is that SUV.”
Today, no one would want to buy a vehicle from the 1950s, so why buy something like those platforms for today’s soldiers. “Then they begin to see it,” Popps said.