The Armys 2010 budget request reflects the services shift of focus from the battlefields of Iraq to those of Afghanistan, with a heavy emphasis on delivering more rotary wing aviation, aerial drones and from fielding FCS equipped armored brigades to beefing up the combat power of its light infantry.
The Army requested $142 billion in the base budget for 2010 and an additional $83 billion to fund ongoing combat operations in the 2010 Overseas Contingency Operations request, previously known as emergency supplementals. The budget request fully funded the Armys expansion to 547,400 active duty soldiers.
The massive FCS program is, of course, the hot budget issue when it comes to the Army and with Gates declaration that he would cancel the bulk of the program last month, the Armys modernization strategy will shift from fielding 15 FCS equipped BCTs to building a versatile mix of networked BCTs that leverage mobility, protection, precision, information and fires in order to be effective across the full spectrum of combat operations, said Lt, Gen. Edgar Stanton, the services budget chief, in a briefing to Pentagon reporters.
The 2010 budget accelerates spin-outs, new technologies such as small ground robots and sensors, to all of the Armys 72 BCTs, active and reserve, an effort that will probably take until 2025. Gates directed the Army to stop its expansion of BCTs at 45 instead of the originally planned 48. Stanton said the QDR will determine exactly what type of BCT mix the Army needs, as far as heavy, light infantry or Stryker, and he hinted it might include a requirement for more Stryker equipped brigades. I would expect the QDR to call for more Stryker brigades as they proved their versatility in irregular warfare during fighting in Iraq.
He said the service has already begun to relook the requirements for new armored vehicles to eventually replace the Abrams, Bradley, M-113 legacy fleet, and as per Gates guidance, will incorporate lessons from the ongoing wars in the vehicles design, specifically in providing greater protection against IEDs. Stanton made it clear that he didnt much like Gates characterization of FCS as a Cold War relic. The Army expects to deliver a concept proposal for new vehicles by late summer. Given such an abbreviated timeline for rolling out a new plan, its difficult to imagine that the service will do much more than tweak the existing FCS vehicle design.
I pressed Stanton on that issue and he claimed the Army will start with a blank sheet of paper, but he also said it would be prudent to take into account the vehicle development work thats already been done. The Army could even revisit the whole wheels versus tracks debate, he said, although that doesnt seem very likely. Whatever the final design it would incorporate some form of the V-shaped blast deflecting hull design characteristic of the MRAP series of IED protected vehicles. He said the Army expects to come up with more details of where it goes in terms of new armored vehicles during the QDR strategic review.
The Army had originally planned to replace its Kiowa Warrior scout helicopter with the new Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, but the ARH program was recently cancelled so $235 million was included in the budget request to upgrade the Kiowa fleet. The Army is also spending around $500 million to train 150 new helicopter crews, and buy new Apaches and Chinooks for flight training, in an effort to bolster Army aviation in Afghanistan. Stanton said the mountainous terrain and lack of roads in Afghanistan puts a premium on helicopter transport.
The Army said its 2010 development and procurement budget is driven primarily by armor and sensor upgrades to the legacy armored fleet, newer helicopters and buying more aerial drones that will advance the Armys adaptation to combat environments where remote weapons platforms and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities play an increasingly prominent role.
Additional 2010 development and procurement highlights include:
$2.9 billion for further development of the FCS small unmanned ground vehicles, robots, small aerial drones, the information network and the non-line of sight missile system, the FCS spin-outs.
$738 million for development of the WIN-T information network.
$1.2 billion for 79 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters.
$1.06 billion for 36 CH-47F Chinook helicopters, of which 25 will be new builds and 14 remanufactured aircraft.
$736 million for 36 Sky Warrior drones, the Army variant of the Predator family armed drone.
$370 million for remanufacture of 8 AH-64 Apaches to the Longbow Block 3 configuration.
$326 million for Lakota Light Utility Helicopters.
$105 million to buy the C-12 Liberty dual prop plane, a modified King Air 350, for tactical surveillance and ground force overwatch.
$79 million to buy 704 of the small Raven aerial drone.
$917 million for 59 Patriot missiles.
$526 million for Bradley fighting vehicle modifications.
$478.9 million for Stryker vehicle survivability enhancements. No new vehicles will be bought in 2010 but the production line will be kept warm.
$1.5 billion to buy 10,214 new Humvees.
$471 million to buy 22 M1A2 SEP tanks and for other Abrams modifications.
$1.6 billion to buy 5,232 FMTV medium trucks, and $1.4 billion to buy an unspecified quantity of FHTV heavy trucks and trailers.
The withdrawal of Army brigades from Iraq has reduced the demand for reset, the initiative to refit war worn vehicles, down to $11 billion in 2010 from around almost $17 billion three years ago, Stanton said. Included in the OCO funding for battle losses were 4 new Apaches and 4 new Chinook helicopters.
Stanton said the Army is in the process of looking at unfunded requirements to respond to a request for the same from Congress. The service has not yet sent its unfunded request to OSD.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I haven’t seen any mention of the M109 PIM modernization program which is interesting considering the fate of FCS including NLOS-C. I suppose the program could be rolled up into the rest of HBCT improvement programs since it has a realitvely small budget but I’ve never not seen it broke out like this. Where has this program gone?
The SBCTs are great at OIF/OEF operations, the structure of those elements leaves the HBCTs wanting. Ideally the HBCT need 1 more combined arms battalion in order to not have to use their ARS or artillery battalion as stand in Infantry. The MGS cannot be seen as a replacement for the Abrams and the Stryker is no replacement for the Bradley, but a wheeled vehicle that has the lethality/survivability that can be “good enough” should be incorporated into the SBCTs to make them truly multi roled. With the Army stopping at 45 BCTs, the active HBCTs should get that extra CAB they need. If the Army really wanted to change things up, replace the HBCT Recon Squadrons’ HUMMV/Bradley mix with all Strykers.
Too lazy to track down the source, but the SecDef said he believed the Army doesn’t have enough people to man 48 BCTs. Don’t believe the Army would want the HBCT to have to maintain Strykers as well as M1 & Bradleys. What might work is to up-gun the Recon Squadron into a mix of M1, M113s & HMMVWs.
If NLOS-C is really dead, is it too late to bring back Crusader? Since there will be HBCT for the forseeable future, the weight of Crusader is no longer an issue.
You would have guessed without anyone telling you anyway: EADS is pushing the UH-72 as a replacement for the ARH.
I just came out of a heavy recon squadron. They were designed for brigade-sized conventional fights and are almost entirely used as stand-in infantry in Iraq and A’stan except that they only have half the manpower of an infantry battalion. My squadron was used more like military police in 2007. The Strykers in our AO were great at putting lots of infantry somewhere in a hurry, but were limited in dense urban areas due to their size.
And like Byron said, while deployed I’ve seen brigades operate with only 3 of their 4 combat arms battalions and at least one operate with 7 that didn’t normally belong to them.
I’m sure they plan on the JLTV to split the difference between Strykers and humvees. The Strykers (and especially MRAPs) were sometimes too tall for Iraqi streets. The humvees could go just about anywhere in Iraqi cities, but we all know their limitations.
So new JLTV will be “bigger” than the Humvee? May need a new smaller vehicle to occupy low end of the vehicle charts, since I was under the impression that Humvee was borderline big for some applications.
Even so, there’s still a yawning size range between JLTV and Stryker. Stryker may be big for some applications; and I’m still wondering if there is room for a “Stryker lite”, perhaps scaling down LAV-3 material to a smaller six-wheel or four-wheel unit.
Why we do not need the Army FCS's T-UGS? These sensors and its Gateway from a mesh network using zigbee at 2,4 GHz. In theory the Gateways are suppose to send back video via the JTRS WNW radio to a WIN-T node, which sends the video via a SATCOM link, for example The first problem is one is "tied" to the Gateways or Gateway with a short range wideband radio (WNW waveform), which will have a maximum range of less than 2 miles. Who will be with the radio or radios at each Gateway; relay node to send back video. Another problem will be the limited range of the sensors linking each other with the Gateways. Most likely the maximum range of this mesh network will be limited to 500 meters or less. This architecture does not make sense!