The Army’s next ground combat vehicle likely won’t sport laser weapons or have a cloaking device, but it will have a modular, open-architecture design and size, weight and power margins to accept those and other emerging technologies as they come online.

Eight cross-functional teams (CFTs) are chasing down solutions to the Army’s six modernization problems, one of which is a new ground combat vehicle. The Army is speeding the timeline for replacing the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but the new platform likely won’t be immediately equipped with whiz-bang Star Wars technology, according to Army Secretary Mark Esper.

A Bradley Fighting Vehicle crew with 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas, drives to an objective during Iron Union 18-6 in the United Arab Emirates, Jan. 23, 2018.   (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Thomas X. Crough, U.S. ARCENT PAO)
A Bradley Fighting Vehicle crew with 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, Texas, drives to an objective during Iron Union 18-6 in the United Arab Emirates, Jan. 23, 2018. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Thomas X. Crough, U.S. ARCENT PAO)

“I can’t wait for lasers, necessarily,” Esper told reporters during a recent roundtable in his Pentagon office. “But if I build that vehicle next or maybe sooner, because we’re looking at mobile SHORAD – maybe I put missiles on mobile SHORAD. I don’t know, because they are teeing up options. But one thing you’d want to do is leave space and power on that systems to do lasers, if we think that’s a promising technology.”

“When we do version 2.0, it’s just a matter of plug it in, mount it, wire it,” he added. “I’m grossly simplifying it, but that’s what we think when we think about incremental is making sure there’s modularity built in, that there’s an open architecture and you preserve space, you preserve power, etc., on the vehicle.”

Esper wants to begin fielding new combat vehicles by 2030 and believes that timeline can be achieved through rapid, continuous prototyping. Waiting until the mid-2030s or later is unacceptable as near-peer adversaries like China and Russia are aggressively closing in on the Army’s technological edge, Esper said.

“We need to be more aggressive,” Esper continued. “I think the technology is out there either in our own industry or with other allies (that) we could get to that Next Generation Combat Vehicle — specifically a fighting vehicle, not a tank — sooner than what’s been predicted in the past.”

While the next-generation combat vehicle is in the works, the Army will continue to incrementally modernize the Abrams and Bradley, Esper said.

“I’m not going to wait for the Big Bang,” Esper said. “We need to continue to modernize and do so incrementally.”

The problem is those 1980s vehicles are at the limit of the add-ons they can accept and support. The Bradley in particular is running out of power margin for new weapons, sensors and communication systems.

“Certainly, with the Bradley, we are reaching the end of what’s possible with regard to increments and at some point a little bit later, it will be the same with the tank, so we are being forced to look at what’s after those two because we are reaching the limits of how much you can continue to upgrade,” Esper said. “On these vehicles, we’re reaching the point where we can’t keep growing.”

The challenge that the combat vehicles – and the other seven – face is not let the pursuit of exquisite blind them to the incremental innovations that could deliver capabilities in the near term, Esper said.

“I’m not looking for perfect,” he said. “I’m looking for better and better in terms of what meets that future operating environment where we see our strategic competitors Russia and China going – not just better than we have but better than them.”

Esper agrees with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s goal of achieving 10x capabilities in each of the six modernization areas, but said the Army must be pragmatic in writing requirements for next-generation weapons and equipment.

“The Chief’s message — and I agree with it — is to think big, think bold, but then you have to balance that with, okay, what’s achievable?” Esper said.

“If you could have the nuclear-powered tank that can shoot 10,000 meters and defeat any armor” but it will take 20 years to develop and build and consume many billions of dollars, then that is an unacceptably lengthy and expensive program, he said.

“You get to that end state through a series of long strides instead of big leaps,” he said. “We want to innovate. We want to build. But when we build something it has to be modular, open architecture. It has to have room to grow. It has to have power to grow and we’ll just continue to build. Everyone wants to try for the moonshot and that’s great, but we think it’s a lot of hopping from roof to roof moreso than the moonshot.”