By Ann Roosevelt
The House Armed Services Committee today learns more about the Army-disputed Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) latest report on the services’ top modernization program, the Future Combat System (FCS).
Some cost and technology readiness results in the report are disputed by the service and four senior Army officials that reached out to the media in a roundtable at the Pentagon last week to defend the program (Defense Daily, March 13).
The Army is adapting its FCS program over time to meet soldier’s current needs and improve capabilities over the full range of operations with FCS, not only for Iraq and Afghanistan but other places soldiers are deployed, said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, deputy commanding general, Futures/director, Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
“Last summer we shifted from putting our spin out in the heavy brigade combat team first to the infantry brigade combat team–our force that is deployed the most often and the most in need of improvements to survivability,” Vane said. “As we shift our effort from Iraq to Afghanistan we increasingly will see the need for a small unit excellence, distributed command and control, standing off from the enemy, [and] soldier connected to the network.”
Size, weight and power are some of the issues that make it more difficult to modernize some current systems that were designed in the 1970s.
The GAO report (GAO-09-288) aired concerns that FCS program costs are likely to rise at a time when the competition for funds both within and outside of DoD are intensifying in the federal budget process.
Boeing [BA] and SAIC [SAI] manage the program for the Army.
In one instance, the FCS spin outs targeted to improve and fill capability gaps for the IBCT, the report said: “The Army now projects that the costs of its revised FCS spin out initiative will be about $21 billion beyond the core FCS program costs of $159 billion.”
Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics & Technology, said he didn’t know where that figure came from: “One of the things that we have to get addressed with GAO is the basis on which they calculated that ’cause I can’t explain their $21 billion dollars.”
Thompson said, “From our perspective, the actual cost growth related to program execution–and I would define that as the cost estimate upfront plus the little bit of growth in software in the program–the cost growth related to program execution has been about 6.5 percent inside this program.”
Thompson offered some strategic reasons for program cost increases including four program restructures, incorporating lessons learned from the past seven years, increased quantities of the items being bought, increases in capability, the costs of the spin outs and incorporating such things as testing, recommended by GAO.
GAO and the Army also disagree on FCS technology maturation levels.
Maj. Gen. John Bartley, program manager Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat Team, said when FCS entered Milestone B, the question was at what level is technology considered mature. It is the Army’s position that it’s at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6; GAO believes it is at TRL 7. “The difference is the place at which you do the test.”
Additionally, GAO took issue with three technologies: JTRS Ground Mobile Radio, Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking Protocols and Wideband Networking Waveform (WNW), all of which the Army was cautioned about by independent reviewers in 2008.
Neither JTRS nor WNW is part of the FCS program but they play an important part in network activities. The Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking Protocols, an FCS program, facilitate how nodes are added and removed from the network. All three technologies will take part in a JTRS 30 node test in May prior to the Defense Acquisition Board review.
“It is our expectation that all 44 of those technologies will be at the right technology readiness level which is 6 or higher than 6 in order to begin to do the integration,” Thompson said.
Taking an operational view of technologies, Vane said, “whether you want to argue over a TRL 6,7, or whatever, we look at it from a little different perspective. There is any number of surrogates of these technologies already being deployed in theater.”
Such surrogate technologies include small robots, small unmanned aerial vehicles, the Command Post of the Future, waveform surrogates, and even Task Force Odin, a conceptual prototype of how the Army will use UAVs with FCS.
“All these things are predecessor technologies and help the Army learn, build knowledge base and make sure that when we do get to that actual FCS TRL level we’ve got it right,” Vane said. “So we’re very comfortable from an operational perspective.”
Over the past 18 months, system preliminary design reviews have taken place and the program is now preparing for a May 11-15 system of system preliminary design review. That sets the design for the brigade combat team.
Thompson said the May review forms the basis of reports that the Office of the Secretary of Defense sends up to Congress, and will inform the Defense Acquisition Review board for the annual meeting now scheduled for July.
The FCS spin outs will greatly add to the IBCT capability, Maj. Gen. James Terry, director of Future Force Integration Directorate at ARCIC, said. Terry, who leads the Army Evaluation Task Force at Ft. Bliss, Texas, examining the FCS spin outs came to the Texas job from the 10th Mountain Div. in Afghanistan.
“I’ve got to tell you what I see in the capabilities in the spin outs that are going directly to the Infantry Brigade Combat Teams, really what we’re doing is extending the reach of the soldier,” he said. The ground and aerial robots offer greater situational awareness sooner than current methods and without putting soldiers in harms way. The situational awareness can be networked inside and out of the organization to allow more precise maneuver, and when necessary, fires.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, with FCS spin out equipment soldiers will have a greater capability to operate among the people, which is required in the current environment, while disturbing the population as little as possible.
“Frankly it allows you to engage with more precision, in terms of information engagement opportunities with the local population right there at the point of tactical activity,” he said. “And that I want to tell you, it’s the tactical activity is what’s going to win these campaigns out there. We’re just empowering soldiers to do that.”