REPORT: ARMY “FUTURE COMBAT” IN PERIL, GENERALS KNEW ALL ALONG

It’s been called the most ambi­tious mil­i­tary effort since the Manhattan Project, and the cen­ter­piece of Donald Rumsfeld’s plans to over­haul America’s armed forces: a $92 bil­lion push to change almost every­thing about the Army by 2010, from the guns GIs carry, to the offi­cers they salute, to the tanks they drive.
Now, a new con­gres­sional report is alleg­ing that the “Future Combat Systems” pro­gram is poised for major delays and a finan­cial train wreck. Worst of all, the report claims, the Army knew this was going to hap­pen all along.
“Army offi­cials acknowl­edge that (2010) is an ambi­tious date and that the pro­gram was not really ready for sys­tem devel­op­ment and demon­stra­tion when it was approved. However, the offi­cials believe it was nec­es­sary to cre­ate ‘irre­versible momen­tum’ for the pro­gram,” reads the report from the General Accounting Office, Congress’ inves­ti­ga­tional arm. “FCS is at sig­nif­i­cant risk for not deliv­er­ing required capa­bil­ity within bud­geted resources.“
The Army and Boeing, one of Future Combat Systems’ two main con­trac­tors, both say the sprawl­ing project is on track. The con­gres­sional report is off-​​base, they assert.
“We have a good plan in place to address the con­cerns over tech­nol­ogy matu­rity,” said one Army source close to the project. Congress was “fully briefed up front” about the risks and pace of FCS’ devel­op­ment.
But out­side mil­i­tary ana­lysts and for­mer Pentagon offi­cials are inclined to agree with the GAO’s take on the Army effort. And they see it as the lat­est case of the mil­i­tary pour­ing count­less bil­lions into weapons sys­tems before they’re ready to go.
“For years, the GAO has been try­ing to explain in kindergarten-​​simple terms to the Pentagon that you should make some­thing and test it before you buy it. But year after year, the process goes on. And the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse,” said Marcus Corbin, with the Center for Defense Information.
My Wired News arti­cle has details.
THERE’S MORE: FCS’ delay “prob­a­bly does not mat­ter since the US mil­i­tary is so far ahead of the rest of the world that will we will win under any cir­cum­stances,” notes GlobalSecurity.org’s John Pike. But “it mat­ters in the sense that the poor old long suf­fer­ing tax­pay­ers are get­ting taken to the clean­ers again.“
The mis­sile defense sys­tem is prob­a­bly the best-​​known of these bloated pro­grams. But “these are not just mis­sile defense mis­takes,” Pike notes. “They are sys­temic to any num­ber of major defense and space pro­grams of the past decade, all of which were awarded under con­di­tions of intense com­pe­ti­tion, and all of which promised unre­al­is­tic costs sav­ing due to using a sin­gle com­pany as a sys­tems inte­gra­tor.“
Referring to two recently-​​cancelled, high-​​profile Army pro­grams, Project on Government Oversight’s Eric Miller e-​​mails, “If you think the Comanche heli­copter and Crusader Armored Vehicle pro­grams were finan­cial and tech­ni­cal dis­as­ters, wait until you see the Future Combat System pro­gram play out in future years. Its hardly going out on a limb to say FCS is going to end up cost­ing more than pre­dicted, and as a result well likely get fewer num­bers of weapons sys­tems and dumb down tech­nolo­gies.“
Mentioning the Army’s con­tro­ver­sial new fleet of light armored vehi­cles, the Brookings Institution’s Mike O’Hanlon asks, “We are already build­ing a half dozen Stryker brigades — why not get some use out of them before rush­ing to the next thing, and learn a bit from them? Also, the Abrams/​Bradley heavy Army is still per­form­ing well and its equip­ment is not yet show­ing major signs of dis­re­pair or obso­les­cence.“
“I can’t think in the 23 years I’ve sat here of a sys­tem more fraught with risk,” Rep. John Spratt, (D-​​SC) recently told Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac.

April 5th, 2004 | FCS Watch | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.