“FUTURE COMBAT” GETS REAL

Future Combat Systems — the U.S. Army’s $117 bil­lion plan to turn entire divi­sions into net­worked, robot-​​reliant forces in one fell swoop — is over as we know it. In its place: a seem­ingly more sen­si­ble plan, to grad­u­ally improve units’ speed, smarts, and con­nec­tion to one another.
The pro­gram is still called Future Combat Systems, or FCS. But instead of try­ing to com­pletely reboot Army forces by 2012, the goal is to intro­duce more mod­est — but still sub­stan­tial — improve­ments, start­ing in 2008. Only after these building-​​block changes are made will the sweep­ing over­haul kick in.
At the heart of FCS is the net­work. It’s what will allow every high-​​tech FCS sys­tem — from robotic “mules” to far-​​seeing can­nons — to share infor­ma­tion, and work together. And at the heart of the net­work is “the ‘System of Systems Common Operating Environment,’ which will pro­vide a com­mon set of ser­vices, inter­faces and appli­ca­tions,” notes Government Computer News.
The SOSCOE will run on Linux. Instead of the endlessly-​​overlapping, pro­pri­etary net­works the mil­i­tary uses so often today, “its an open-​​source sys­tem and will have many of the off-​​the-​​shelf capa­bil­i­ties that are there or being devel­oped in the com­mer­cial world,” said retired Lt. Gen. Dan Zanini, who now works for Science Applications International Corp., one of two com­pa­nies in charge of FCS devel­op­ment.
Also in devel­op­ment are the Joint Tactical Radio System and the Warfighter Information Network-​​Tactical, which will “pro­vide the com­mu­ni­ca­tions back­bone of FCS,” Government Computer News says. JTRS is a hand-​​held, software-​​based radio, which allows troops of every type to com­mu­ni­cate with one another. Today, sol­diers and marines can still be sad­dled on the bat­tle­field with a half-​​dozen dif­fer­ent radios. WIN-​​T is the mobile, wire­less net­work for front-​​line troops.
Each project is, by itself, a titanic, multi-​​billion dol­lar Gordian Knot of a task. But by tack­ling these three first, there’s a chance that the larger FCS pro­gram will actu­ally suc­ceed in the end.

September 1st, 2004 | FCS Watch | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.