By Ann Roosevelt
The Army’s top civilian and military leaders say the Future Combat System (FCS) is a priority, it is “real,” and the service will work to “protect” the funding.
“The Future Combat System is our number one modernization program and we will work to protect the resources for it,” Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters at the Association of the United States Army annual conference in Washington, D.C., Oct. 8.
“I will tell you that it’s real,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said at the same event.
The Army requested $3.7 billion for the program in fiscal year 2008.
Casey related a recent visit to labs in California labs to observe FCS activities, including seeing the hybrid electric drive being developed for FCS manned ground vehicles.
The first prototype manned ground vehicles will be out around the Army birthday next June, he said.
“This Future Combat System is a force that can move up and down the full spectrum of conflict,” Casey said of his thoughts after the visit.
Boeing [BA] and SAIC [SAI] manage FCS for the Army. More than 500 contractors and suppliers work on the program, Dennis Muilenburg, vice president, general manager, Boeing Combat Systems and FCS program manager, said at the FCS quarterly update the same day.
Fiscal Year 2008 is the first year for FCS production, Muilenburg said, with procurement of long-lead items for Spin Out 1, FCS technologies mature enough to be fielded to the current force, after the Army Evaluation Task Force (AETF) at Ft. Bliss, Texas, gives them a workout (Defense Daily, Sept. 27).
Casey brought some FCS technologies to Congress at a hearing this summer that will be included in the first spin out.
There is strong support for FCS across the Office of the Secretary of Defense over the next five years for the program, which will make up less than 5 percent of the budget, Geren said.
The program was laid out for the secretary and deputy secretary of defense a month or so ago, Casey said, and both showed strong support for the program.
FCS now represents about 3 percent of the Army budget. “That’s about the minimum investment you can make,” Casey said. Moving faster is a question of resources.
FCS also is an example of how the Army is streamlining acquisition. FCS is on cost, schedule and performance, Muilenburg said.
FCS is a “huge” program, Claude Bolton, the Army acquisition chief, said in a separate interview.
This comes even as 10 percent of the budget is taken away every year, more than $800 million in the past few years, that trimmed 18 systems to 14, he said. Yet the program is still on track. There are no stovepipes, everyone from testers to requirements writers to the Government Accountability Office have been working together since the first days of the program.
Soldiers are using prototypical FCS equipment in Iraq now. Bolton said feedback to him is that they want more of it. Examples include the Honeywell [HON] Micro Air Vehicle, an early version is being used by the 25th Infantry Division, and iRobot [IRBT] advanced robots, which have taken on checking under vehicles to keep soldiers back and out of harm’s way.
Such systems will be evaluated by the AETF and then produced for the current force.
“The leadership is holding my feet to the fire to do it faster,” Bolton said.
The program is moving quickly.
Also Oct. 8, Boeing and SAIC announced the delivery of six more network integration capability B-kits to vehicle integrators BAE SYSTEMS, General Dynamics [GD] and AM General. To date, 18 B-kits have been delivered.
The B-kits are being installed on Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees as part of the first spin out of FCS capabilities to the current force.
Additionally, Netfires LLC, a joint venture between Raytheon [RTN] and Lockheed Martin [LMT], announced delivery for testing the first two container launch units for the Non-Line-Of-Sight-Launch System to the AETF.