By Emelie Rutherford
The Army plans to replace the canceled manned-ground-vehicle portion of its modernization program in five to seven years with new vehicles based on existing technologies, service leaders said yesterday on Capitol Hill.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended last month terminating the eight manned-ground vehicles being developed for the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS) program, and called for the Army to launch a reevaluated vehicle-modernization program.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said the service’s goal is to proceed after Labor Day with a “new concept design” for the vehicles, which could be put out to bid approximately one year later.
“Our attempt will be to get a new vehicle (fielded) in five to seven years…so we don’t stretch this process out any longer than it is,” Casey testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC).
That means sticking to plans for the canceled vehicle effort, and bringing the new vehicles on from 2015 to 2017, he told reporters after the hearing.
The service will “cast a wide net and look at what’s available out there” for the new vehicles, Casey said.
“One of the things we get by saying we’d like to do this in five to seven years is it forces us to rely on existing technologies and capabilities,” Casey said. “We pushed the envelope with technology here in developing the FCS program, so we got a very good feel of what’s possible…and I think that’s going to help us.”
The four-star general said no decisions have been made on whether the new manned-ground vehicles would have a common chassis, as the eight terminated vehicles would have had. But he said the service “saw a lot of value in common chassis in terms of logistics support.”
The new vehicles, Casey said, will reflect “lessons from the current fight,” which could include having V-shaped bottoms to deflect underbelly explosions and side armor to shield from explosively formed penetrators.
A FCS system-of-system preliminary design review is being conducted this week. When it’s over, Casey told the SAC, the Army and Department of Defense will issue an acquisition- decision memorandum “that will halt the Future Combat Systems program as we know it today.” The Army then will split out the manned-ground vehicles from the other systems, he said.
The service’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has begun building a development document for the new vehicle effort. Casey told reporters the Army expects to “bring that (document) forward after Labor Day.” A solicitation for the new vehicles could be sent out roughly one year later, and a new contract with industry could be in place six months after that, he said.
Casey rejected the argument the Army “wasted” money on the defunct FCS vehicle effort.
“The manned-ground vehicle was a great research-and-development effort, and we intend to take that technology we’ve got from that moving forward,” he said.
While some lawmakers have decried Gates’ move to cut the existing FCS manned-ground vehicle effort, those critics have predicted they would fail in any attempt to restore funding for it. Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) was alone in raising the FCS restructuring at yesterday’s SAC hearing.
Gates has said the previously planned FCS vehicles did not reflect lessons learned about the type of trucks needed for counterinsurgency and close-quarters combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Casey acknowledged yesterday he did not support the manned-ground vehicle termination.
“I ultimately could not convince (Gates) that we had taken enough of the lessons that we’d learned from the current fight and incorporated them into that vehicle program,” Casey told reporters. “I thought we had. He thought we hadn’t.”
He said the Army is “looking at this as an opportunity, because we can (go) forward with a clean slate, build a vehicle that has the support of the (Defense) Department and Congress, and move out.”
Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters that Gates has committed to “preserve the funds necessary in order to accomplish Army modernization,” but that “until we know what the plan for the manned-ground vehicle is, it’s hard to put a price on it.”
The Army intends to complete by Labor Day a plan to present Gates regarding its “way ahead” for the vehicles, Geren said.
While the new vehicles will be connected to the FCS network, he said they will comprise a program separate from FCS.
“The jury’s still out on what the name will be,” he said.
Army officials also are examining how to manage FCS, which has been steered by lead-system integrator Boeing [BA]-SAIC [SAI]. Gates said last month he was “troubled” by the current contract and its fee structure.
Geren said Gates has asked the Army “to look at the issue of how the contract was managed, the issue of lead system integration (and if there are) certain things we could do in the Army, certain things that we have to go outside (for).”
The Pentagon’s FY ’10 budget request, which the Obama administration sent last week to Congress, does not include $633 million that would have been needed for development and procurement of FCS’s manned-ground-vehicle program, nor does it fund procurement of the Non-Line of Sight Cannon (NLOS-C), which is under a separate budget line from the manned- vehicles family.
For FCS, the request seeks to continue development of three unmanned-ground vehicles, two unmanned-aerial vehicles, the non-line of sight launch system, unattended ground sensors, and an information network. In addition, the Pentagon wants to accelerate fielding of FCS capabilities that have demonstrated success, such as the unmanned ground and aerial vehicles and unattended sensors.
General Dynamics [GD] and BAE Systems have been the lead contractors for the manned-ground-vehicle portion of FCS, and BAE also has been developing the NLOS-C.