Congress should build the ‘future combat system’

Decision Brief                         No. 05-D 35                                       2005-07-18

(Washington, D.C.): In an age of international terrorism and rapidly developing conflicts in geographically distant locales, the U.S. Army faces a tremendous challenge meeting the requirements placed upon it as America’s premiere ground fighting force. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted the importance of maneuver, coordination, and rapid deployment, attributes sometimes difficult to reconcile with the Army’s heavily armored Cold War-era “legacy” force.

The Future Combat Systems

To rectify this, Army strategists have been developing a new concept of war, one less characterized by size and firepower and more reliant on flexibility and battlefield coordination. The vision of these strategists is the “future force,” one that will successfully integrate the attributes of the legacy force, current transition units, and the high-tech concepts now in development.

The first major step in this move to the future force is the Future Combat Systems (FCS), a program initiated by the U.S. Army in 2003. FCS will pioneer the next generation of war-fighting capabilities, including the construction of a whole new class of air and land vehicles connected by a battle-management network. The project is currently in developmental phases and is projected to be fully operational by the year 2014. Fortunately, long before then, the FCS will be distributing – or “spinning-out” – matured technologies to soldiers already in the field, strengthening the current force while laying the groundwork for the force of the future.

The conventional war-making wisdom of the past brought with it the notion that the survivability and lethality of a combat vehicle was strictly a function of heavy armor and main cannon size. Characteristic of such traditional thinking is the Army’s prized M1 Abrams Tank – composed of nearly 70 tons of steel and a main gun capable of penetrating the armor of the most modern enemy main battle tanks. Such legacy force platforms are extremely powerful and have served the Army well in the past. However, they are both difficult to transport and to keep supplied, limiting the Army’s operational reach and particularly its ability to react to quickly developing hotspots such as the one faced by the United States in Afghanistan in 2001.

The Army calls FCS the “greatest technology and integration challenge ever taken,” and sees it as an indispensable ingredient in its bid to transform the Army into a force centered on small, agile and responsive combat units. Initial production of FCS platforms is to begin in November of 2008. Once accomplished, it will represent nothing less than a total revolution in American military affairs.

The Challenge to FCS

Unfortunately, some on Capitol Hill are opposing the funding required to develop and field the Future Combat Systems. Seemingly, this opposition stems from a failure to appreciate the truly transformational nature of the FCS and the critical role it can – and must – play in providing for America’s defense in the decades to come. It appears as well to rely heavily on criticisms contained in a now-dated Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in April 2004.

Such efforts could, if unchecked, lead to the reduction of funding by a half billion dollars during FY06 that the Army itself describes as critical for the development of FCS to test it at Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 2006. Even worse, the efforts could lead to a breaking up of the very heart of FCS’ network, in favor of a return to conventional approaches.

The GAO report reinforced several commonly held misconceptions about the Future Combat Systems initiative. They fail to take into account the impressive progress that has been made to date in the FCS program.

-One such fallacy is the notion that the current development of FCS technology is insufficiently advanced for designers to meet future goals and costs. If true, decision-makers would be obliged to approve funding for a program that is untested and unproven. This criticism appears to arise from the fact that the GAO uses a different benchmark for evaluating program maturity than does the Department of Defense. Instead of the lagging program the GAO indicates, FCS is currently on track to conform to DOD’s stringent requirements, with all technologies scheduled to meet their Program Need Dates.

-Some staff critics in the House of Representatives have suggested, erroneously, that progress in FCS development to date has been lackluster and unanticipated design problems could be expected to only worsen the situation down the road. In reality, the FCS program is far better equipped to identify and address any future problems than its critics appreciate. The use of synchronized maturity periods known as “Integration Phases,” has allowed FCS developers an unprecedented ability to anticipate and rectify problems before they appear.

-The perception that the FCS program is behind schedule is also inaccurate. In fact, it is on schedule at nearly 15% of funding already expended by June 2005 – a performance milestone that, when reached by other defense programs in the past, has almost always proven an indicator of future success.

‘Penny Foolish, Pound Stupid’

Some in Congress contend that it is not possible to fully fund the Future Combat Systems while spending for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a trade-off mentality is a recipe for disaster. In the interest of alleviating a present budget crunch, it would compound the spending bow-wave problem already afflicting the Pentagon’s planned modernization programs. The result would be to deny the Army the ability to bring to bear critical technologies needed to maintain America’s preeminence on the battlefield, and, therefore, possibly its success there. In light of the fact that the defense budget is still at a relatively low percentage of the Nation’s GDP when compared to past allocations, it would be undesirable – if not actually recklessly irresponsible – to run such risks, especially in light of recently announced increases in federal revenues.

Particularly troubling is the proposal being advanced by some in Congress that the various Future Combat Systems components be split up into separate development tracks. Doing so would only serve to damage the strategic underpinnings of the entire program – i.e., its emphasis on integrated command and control. Without this critical central feature, the Pentagon could be left with a class of vehicles and weapons that would be disconnected from each other and unable decisively and successfully to confront heavier enemy forces. Were such a recommendation to be followed, it may well lead to a FCS program unable to fulfill its main objective of a more lethal yet lighter and more readily deployable ground force.

The Bottom Line

The FCS is one of the ambitious transformational programs ever embarked upon by the U.S. Department of Defense. It will fundamentally alter the way the military thinks and operates. Such a revolutionary family of systems undeniably carries with it some technological risk, but it also promises a host of tangible benefits. If the U.S. military, especially the Army, is to survive in the rapidly changing battlespace of the 21st Century, it must embrace the sort of futuristic approach inherent in the Future Combat Systems.

Talk about the desirability of and need for “force transformation” is cheap. Unfortunately, realizing it is not. The FCS represents one of the most important steps taken to date to achieve this goal. Were funding for this program to be substantially cut now, the effect would be as predictable as it would be undesirable: to imperil and possibly to preclude the realization of a critical family of capabilities made possible by swift technical development.

Congress should decline to effect such funding cuts. It should also resist suggestions that the development process be broken up into disparate projects, an error that would only serve to undermine the coherence and integration critical to realizing the full value and capabilities of the Future Combat Systems.