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Home » FCS Watch » “Future Combat”: Cuts, or More Cash?

“Future Combat”: Cuts, or More Cash?

It’s only taken $50 bil­lion in extra cash, a heap of missed dead­lines and redrawn require­ments, and a war that’s lasted about two years too long. But the Pentagon may finally be ready to start putting the axe to the Army’s leviathan mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram, Future Combat Systems.
nloscfiring.jpgInside Defense reports that FCS is on a “short list of…weapon sys­tem pro­grams that could be ter­mi­nated or sig­nif­i­cantly pared back.”

They are look­ing to slip it to the right or kill it, said a source famil­iar with FCS options advanced by the Pentagon’s office of pro­gram analy­sis and eval­u­a­tion.
Army offi­cials are work­ing to con­vince Pentagon lead­ers, includ­ing England, to recon­sider cut­ting or even ter­mi­nat­ing FCS, the service’s only major new-​​start devel­op­ment pro­gram.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker is sched­uled to meet Friday with England and again make the case for the pro­gram, a brief­ing that is expected to dis­cuss FCS’ rel­e­vance to today’s challenges.

Whoops! Make that $70 bil­lion in cost over­runs. The Defense Department qui­etly released a “selected acqui­si­tion report” this week say­ing that FCS would now run $161 bil­lion — up from 2003’s $92 bil­lion esti­mate. So we’re talk­ing a 75% increase. And remem­ber, folks, that’s only down pay­ment. Because $161 bil­lion only pays for mod­ern­iz­ing a third of the Army’s troops.

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November 18th, 2005 | FCS Watch | 477625 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2005/11/18/future-combat-cuts-or-more-cash/%22Future+Combat%22%3A+Cuts%2C+or+More+Cash%3F2005-11-18+15%3A21%3A19noahmax You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. John says:
    November 18, 2005 at 3:01 pm

    The only FCS sys­tem to come in on bud­get and to work is the one pic­tured. The Interim Artillery Vehicle. It meets the weight (C-​​130 trans­portable) spec­i­fi­ca­tion too.

    Reply
  2. Art Vandaley says:
    November 18, 2005 at 3:27 pm

    Noah — good syn­op­sis.
    Now this is some good news! Yes, — can­cel the pro­gram already! The Army recently changed the require­ments to drop the C-​​130s as the required trans­port plat­form, a key require­ment from DAY 1 BTW. Now watch Boeing beg for more money to now redo much of the Engineering to now opti­mize all these phan­tom Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV) Platforms for larger air­craft, delay­ing the pro­gram yet again. Watch Boeing grab another 25%/year cost growth too. And to add insult to injury, the per-​​vehicle pro­duc­tion cost esti­mate for the FCS MGVs is almost 10-​​times an Abrams or Bradley due to all the elec­tron­ics, this is BEFORE they have been fat­tened up. Yeah — the Army will be able to buy 1000’s of those at that price. No one wants to talk about that!
    And does JTRS work? .. NO.
    And is IMS going to work? ..NO.
    Is UGS going to work? ..NO.
    And are all the funky unmanned plat­forms going to work? .. NO.
    And will the mobile wire­less ad-​​hoc net­work work? .. NO.
    And will WIN-​​T work? .. NO.
    What a col­losal train-​​wreck.
    And General Dynamics just can’t wait for this pro­gram to be can­celled since they have a cor­ner on the ground vehi­cle mar­ket and will reap much of the repro­grammed money.
    There should have been active 3rd party over­sight 3 years ago to limit the insan­ity on this pro­gram. How much has been spent and what is there to show for it now? … basi­cally noth­ing. And they are sup­pose to roll-​​out vehi­cles begin­ning in 2008? .… Not bloody likely!!
    Will costs con­tinue to rise … of course!
    Drive a stake through its heart I say.

    Reply
  3. David Axe says:
    November 18, 2005 at 5:43 pm

    No kid­ding, Art. I love me some big-​​ticket defense hard­ware, but this FCS is a POS. In this day and age, it’s a lot smarter and cost-​​effective to stick with old reli­able plat­forms and sim­ply update update update. You save money, avoid megabillion-​​dollar bun­gles and end up with equip­ment the troops can use instead of whizbang toys that work only on paper.

    Reply
  4. Cybrludite says:
    November 19, 2005 at 2:41 am

    David,
    That works great until it costs more to keep the updated sys­tems run­ning than it would to replace them. And even then, the machines will wear out & be used up even­tu­ally. Cheaper in the short run, but you do have to think of the long term as well.

    Reply
  5. Dfens says:
    November 19, 2005 at 10:24 am

    Yes, can­celling this pro­gram is a lot eas­ier and costs a hell of a lot more than fix­ing the prob­lem. It also ensures every pro­gram from now on is a sim­i­lar fail­ure.
    Keep pay­ing the con­trac­tors profit on devel­op­ment. Keep mak­ing it prof­itable for them to screw up. Then whine about why they do. Cancel their pro­gram. Hire a new con­trac­tor. Start the whin­ing again. Repeat until some­one gets tired of hear­ing the whin­ing and kicks our ass.

    Reply
  6. PO'd Taxpayer says:
    November 20, 2005 at 6:24 pm

    FCS is only the most recent exam­ple of Pentagon acqui­si­tion blun­ders. Unfortunately, this is what hap­pens is you have Generals in charge of these par­tic­u­lar pro­grams who are in it to either get their next star or set them­selves up for retire­ment in a nice, defense con­trac­tor posi­tion. What’s worse is when you have politi­cians med­dling because it keeps their con­stituents employed and them in the office.
    This has been going on since the Bradley deba­cle, con­tin­ued with the B-​​1 bomber, and is now going on with the gold­plat­ing of the F22 and JSF. It will con­tinue to go on as long as the goev­ern­ment has the final say on whether these get can­celled. Read the books, “National Defense: The gold plat­ing of the B1 Bomber”, “The Pentagon Wars”, and “Grand Theft Pentagon” for a good, accu­rate look at how Defense Acauisitions work,
    Folks, as much as I hate to say it, the FCS will prob­a­bly not get can­celled. There’s too much polit­i­cal clout invested. I pray that I’m wrong. If not, this pro­gram will never die because too much has been invested. They’ll con­tinue to scale back require­ments and get one quar­ter of what they wanted for 10 times the cost. Why not? Have you ever heard of the gov­ern­ment pun­ish­ing the con­trac­tors for not per­form­ing.
    As some­one who works in defense acqui­si­tions, it sick­ens me to see how the gov­ern­ment wastes money because our lead­er­ship doesn’t have the balls to pull the plug on a dying pro­gram. Common sense doesn’t fac­tor into deci­sions, pro­mo­tions do. If a pro­gram dies under someone’s watch, it career sui­cide. Sadly, the only way to fix it is by remov­ing all the old school lead­er­ship and start­ing over with a cul­tural change. You know this won’t hap­pen. So, for those who can, invest in the Defense indus­try. The gov­ern­ment won’t let them go out of business.

    Reply
  7. Whopping Great Intermission says:
    November 21, 2005 at 7:56 am

    PO’d Taxpayer,
    I’d like to hear more about the Bradley deba­cle. The B-​​1 and F-​​22 prob­lems are com­mon knowl­edge (I think) but so much time has passed, and the sys­tem has per­formed so well, that I’m hav­ing a hard time track­ing ANYTHING down on the Bradley acqui­si­tion con­tro­versy.
    Ironic, isn’t it, that the B-​​1 was can­celled to make room for the B-​​2 (which had ren­dered it obso­lete) which was in turn cut partly because the B-​​1 could do the job just as well in the post-​​USSR wold?

    Reply
  8. FFRDC Employee says:
    November 23, 2005 at 1:11 pm

    HBO did indeed make a movie about “The Pentagon Wars”. Excellent movie. Carey Elwes as the Air Force office pro­tag­o­nist, and Kelsey Grammer as his neme­sis, General Partridge. I believe you can rent it at Blockbuster.
    At some point they made the Bradley amphibi­ous. What’s really telling is that they say that the Israelis bought off on the ini­tial design before they screwed with it, and the fac­tory mak­ing the Bradleys made two ver­sions — the screwed up one and the orig­i­nal one. Guess who bought which one?

    Reply

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