By Ann Roosevelt
Downward pressures on the defense budgets and concerns about the Army moving funds from current force heavy combat vehicles into Future Combat Systems (FCS) work is part of the current environment, but for a top BAE Systems executive, what is needed is clarity.
“Our biggest concern is the lack of clarity at the moment and the fact that we don’t know exactly how it’s going to sort itself out and what the customer’s ultimate needs and plans are going to be so it makes it difficult to figure out what we need to do in order to be in a position to respond to the customer’s need, Linda Hudson, president of BAE’s Land and Armaments Operating Group, told Defense Daily in an interview.
It would be helpful for BAE to know where the service is going to plan accordingly. “We certainly have a significant role in the HBCT (Heavy Brigade Combat Team) as it is defined today,” said Hudson, who leads the largest military vehicle business in the world. “We also, along with our partner General Dynamics, also have a significant role in the Future Combat System.”
BAE wants to support the customer, understand the expectations and to meet the Army’s needs regardless of the direction it chooses for the future.
“We’re not advocating for one solution versus the other, or any particular outcome,” she said.
BAE provides essentially all the military fighting vehicles for the United Kingdom–builds them, supports them in the field, maintains the technical data, and has a significant role in the U.K. army’s current force and discussions about its future, which includes such things as the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES), which started out as something similar to the U.S. FCS program.
“At the moment, we do not have a contract role on the FRES program,” Hudson said. “The FRES, much like FCS, is evolving in what the expectations are as the current fight has caused people to re-look what kind of equipment they’re going to buy, when they’re going to buy it. It’s put strains on the U.K. budget, much like it’s put strains on the U.S. budget.”
BAE still competes for FRES elements, such as the integrator role for the Utility vehicle and as the provider of the specialist vehicle–expected to be the next competition.
“In our mind, FRES is still the future concept of the U.K. army vehicle strategy going forward, much like FCS is here in the U.S.
FRES has not matured as far as FCS has and is undergoing many of the same strains, as service leaders consider how to balance the current force with the future force and how to deal with the inevitable budget pressures many countries are dealing with today.
“It’s the anticipation and trying to figure out what the customer is going to do that causes us more angst than whichever decision they make, because we believe we have a role to play both here in the U.S. and the U.K., whether they stay with the current force and continue to enhance its capabilities or more quickly into the future with either FCS or FRES,” Hudson said.
Worldwide, there appears to be a renewed interest in heavy combat vehicles.
BAE has a joint venture in Turkey called FNSS.
“It was quite surprising when Turkey decided they were going to create their own main battle tank,” she said. “We competed for it, we did not win the planned contract role, but we are playing a subcontract role to Otokar, which won the tank contract with Turkey” (Defense Daily, Aug. 29).
“I understand that Korea also has a requirement for a new main battle tank and it’s their intention to develop their own, so it appears that tanks and also the associated fighting vehicles, kind of like the Bradley or the CV90 that we make in Sweden are not the forgotten past,” she said. “Countries are buying heavy forces with a renewed interest today that we haven’t seen in a while.”
Looking to the future, BAE developed the Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon (NLOS-C), which is no paper idea. “It’s in test. We’ve actually fired the first rounds off the first test vehicle.” (Defense Daily, Sept. 28).
“It’s been a while since artillery has gone to the next level, with what happened to Crusader and such, we’re delighted to be a major player in NLOS-C,” Hudson said.
The Army canceled the next-generation self-propelled howitzer called Crusader as an expensive system that belonged to the Cold War past (Defense Daily, May 9, 2002).
“A large part of the team that is working on NLOS-C came from the group of engineers that were on the Crusader team, and they have been able to take it to the next level.”
Much on NLOS-C was developed in BAE’s facilities in Minneapolis, Minn., with an advanced modeling and simulation capability. BAE also has a Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) in Santa Clara, Calif. BAE was able to take the technology used to create the systems integration capabilities in Santa Clara and transfer them to their systems engineering group in the U.K., with all the appropriate export approvals. The U.K. group is working on the next generation of vehicles for the U.K. Army. If you walk into the SIL there, you can’t tell anything different from the California site.
“There have really been synergies we could get from this global business that we’ve got that benefit all the customers that we serve,” she said.
For a project like the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) program that consumed much of last year, BAE was able to use engineers from all over the United States and engineers in South Africa who actually developed their original MRAP capabilities without having to put people on airplanes, and getting them all in the same place. It really is not only a time saver, but an enabler of using resources that historically none of us have ever had.
Clarity would also be helpful as the MRAP requirement is fulfilled.
“To our customers’ credit, though, they’re living in a very dynamic situation where the threats change and all of us have spent the last year, year and a half adapting as new requirements emerge both on the customer side and the industry side,” she said.
However, MRAP in its original construct, a very heavy, very protected vehicle appears to be coming to an end.
“We, collectively in industry, have almost built out all the requirements for that,” she said. “Then the fight in Afghanistan began to change and that’s when the requirement for a lighter MRAP emerged. The terrain is different the fight is different and yet they need more protection than they had with the vehicles in Afghanistan.”
The big, heavy MRAPs that were effective in Iraq don’t do so well in mountains and narrow trails in Afghanistan so that’s where the MRAP-light began to emerge.
The first award for the first MRAPs destined for Afghanistan actually are being built in our facility in South Africa, where BAE is teamed with General Dynamics [GD].
Now Hudson said there’s talk about an in-between MRAP-light and JLTV configuration. There’s been a request for information and everyone is now looking at what can be done quickly that can get a lighter very survivable vehicle for the current fight. JLTV is a little more measured longer-term procurement.
“My take is they’re just trying to fill this in between gap between what we have today and when JLTV is going to come along,” Hudson said. “We have every expectation that JLTV will continue but it’s laid out with a very deliberate acquisition plan with coming up with three competitors, a demonstration phase, and the selection of one or two for the next phase. It’s going to be a while before JLTV is a fielded vehicle.”
That goes along with the interest in pulling pieces of technology–spinning out–from FCS and putting mature technology into current equipment to get it to the field faster.
“There are people looking at how we can accelerate NLOS-C but it’s a new design, it’s got to go through some steps before it’s ready to be fielded,” she said.
BAE is also upgrading the Paladin system and taking what we’ve learned for the next-generation artillery and incorporating it in existing systems.
“One of our manned ground vehicle on FCS is an ambulance vehicle,” she said. “We’ve been able to take some of the design capabilities from the FCS ambulance and actually incorporated it into the MRAP ambulance configuration.”
Some technology, such as the M777 lightweight howitzer, has moved forward and is in use with the current force in Afghanistan.
“It is proving to be an absolutely perfect weapon system for the Afghanistan battle,” she said. “It can move quickly, it’s lightweight, it doesn’t take many crew to operate it. It’s extremely accurate with its fire control system. It’s just getting rave reviews in the Afghanistan arena.”
The use of titanium in that system was really revolutionary, Hudson said. “Nobody had ever used titanium in a structure of that size that could withstand the forces of a howitzer firing, and it really is a technological marvel.”
BAE does a lot of work in advanced materials. For some time, everyone has been trying to come up with a large gun barrel that is not made out of heavy steel. “It will happen. It’s not quite there yet, but it will happen,” she said. “One of the biggest challenges we collectively have is doing things lighter. Not as much doing things smaller, like some of the space and airplane issues, but doing it lighter while retaining essentially the same capability.”
Another materials challenge is to do the same with body armor. “We’re working on it, she said. “It is really the main technical challenge that we encounter in vehicles and protection and everything is weight.”
While acquisition reform has been around forever, Hudson pointed to MRAP acquisition as a clear example of how it should be done.
“It was done because it was in the national interest,” she said. “I think it showed that when we have a real need, we can do things in responsible ways. The government can do what it needs to do and protect its position and industry can do the same, and we can field hardware in really record-breaking time without violating any of the rules. We didn’t shortcut on any of the materials we used or anything else. We really did it right in my mind and it didn’t take 10 years to get the system in the field.”
However, not everything can be procured that way. But it does show that the systems can be responsive and do the job if properly used. “But it takes good behaviors on both sides, not just the governments side but industry and there’s a lot of fault to go around. I don’t have the solution. I think when you’re facing what everyone expects to be a declining budget when you see that there aren’t that many big programs in the future coming it brings out a lot of bad behavior on industry’s side. When you see this is my only chance and you don’t win the contract you’re going to protest, you’re going to push back, because your business is on the line. You’ll take a shot at trying to find a mistake that someone made along the way.”
On the government side, I think most of the services have acknowledged they need more acquisition personnel and more experienced acquisition personnel who can make sure a competition is run properly, the requirements are properly identified and that the source selection is properly held, she said.
Each contract is different. The U.K. has done some very forward-thinking things, particularly in the aircraft arena with their through-life capability management contracts, which are long-term relationships in the case of aircraft with BAE, she said.
“We just finalized negotiations with the U.K. government on a munitions contract, that is 15 years in length.,” she said. “It establishes us as the sole provider of munitions to the U.K. government for 15 years. We operate the government-owned plants with our people but as part of that we committed to invest a significant amount of money in improving the infrastructure in the U.K. ammunition plant. It’s really a win-win for both parties.”
The U.K. government didn’t have the capital to invest to improve the production facilities. The only way it would be a beneficial investment for BAE was if there was a long- term contractual commitment from the government.
“I think those are very forward-thinking views about how do you minimize expenditures and take advantage of your industrial base and move on,” she said. “It improves capability, it retains jobs and it is a stabilizing influence on the economy.”
Every program today is a team partnership, because vertical integration is rare, she said. “It’s all about finding the people with the best ideas and bringing them together and as a prime contractor being able to orchestrate that is half the fun. It’s a model that I think serves everybody best.”
Looking to the future, Hudson said, “While we can’t see the big programs or the big new vehicles, we believe there’s an ongoing demand for supporting the force and that’s where we think the emphasis is.”
It’s going to be a while before FCS comes into its own, and in the meantime, “we’re just looking at how we can better partner with the customer to take advantage of the equipment they have and continue to upgrade it and make it better.”