I wrote up an interview I did last week with Col. Bryan McVeigh, program manager for the Army’s new Ground Combat Vehicle program on companion site DOD Buzz and wanted to post it here for DT readers.
I asked McVeigh why the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) request for proposal was held up by the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer Ashton Carter. Carter and his senior staff wanted to make sure that the Army was truly opening up competition for the GCV and that was made clear in the RFP, said McVeigh.
The GCV acquisition program “is focused on competition,” with up to three contractors selected for the technology development phase. The Army hasn’t kept two builders going head-to-head through early development since the Abrams main battle tank program, McVeigh said.
The Army wants companies other than armored vehicle builders BAE and General Dynamics to pitch proposals. “We want to be able to look at other American companies to allow them to break into this niche market. This isn’t just MGV warmed over. I just don’t want one or two companies that were deep in MGV have a competitive advantage in this,” he said.
OSD did not make any major changes to the Army’s plans, McVeigh said. Industry proposals are due in late April, then the source selection process begins, culminating in September with a “Milestone A” decision from Carter’s office, allowing the Army to award the actual production contract.
The Army is trying to build on six years of development work on the FCS Manned Ground Vehicle, and months ago it gave industry that development “body of knowledge,” which laid out the preliminary design, to incorporate into their proposals for the GCV.
Where the Army’s plans for GCV differ most significantly from the ill-starred FCS program is they don’t want “revolutionary” technologies this time around. FCS was all about pushing the technological envelope in everything from high-tech armors to automotive components to sensors, which resulted in a lot of time and money spent with very little to show for it. Its all about program “risk” avoidance this time around, all GCV technologies must be at technology readiness level 6, which means they’ve proven to work in a simulated operational environment.
“Our goal is to make sure we get something out to the soldiers within seven years… if we wait for the perfect solution we’re never going to get it into the hands of soldiers,” McVeigh said. We need their feedback to continue and improve the design.
The biggest changes over the original FCS vehicle design is in the armor package and other “survivability” fixes. The GCV will be significantly heavier than the FCS MGV, which started out at 20 tons and ultimately grew to around 34 tons before it was cancelled. McVeigh wouldn’t specify the vehicle’s weight exactly, because he wants to give industry bit of latitude. This is the first vehicle, at least since the Abrams tank, that from the beginning is built to be readily upgradeable, McVeigh said, which means the ability to add more armor.
It will come with a base level, “Level 0,” armor protection for irregular fights of the kind found in Iraq where the big threat is IEDs, explosively formed penetrators and mostly small-arms up to heavy machine guns. While the MRAP is a great vehicle for specific battlefields, he said, it doesn’t have needed cross-country mobility. “Based off the lessons we’ve learned in theater, survivability doesn’t just come from armor, it doesn’t just come from active-protection systems, it comes from not allowing the enemy to channel you into one area.”
The GCV must have mobility equivalent to an Abrams tank. Although McVeigh refused to say so, cross-country mobility, especially on any kind of soft ground or snow, only comes from tracks. In urban areas, tracked vehicles have the advantage of being able to pivot steer, which is a huge advantage over wheeled vehicles.
The “Level 1” armor package, will add appliqué armor that also protects up to auto-cannon, along the lines of the current Bradley. An active-protection (APS) system will be included on the vehicle to provide 360 degree protection against RPGs, which is the threshold requirement; the objective requirements, are an APS that can defeat heavier anti-tank guided missiles and sabot rounds. But McVeigh says builders must demonstrate how they’ll improve on the existing APS architecture the ability to defeat those heavier threats down the road as technology improves. “I don’t want two different computers running it. I don’t want two different radar systems running it.”
The Army is developing an improved version of Raytheon’s Quick Kill APS system. The Army is continuing to develop its APS, contractors can bid any system they want, McVeigh said, as long as they meet the GCV holistic requirements.
The FCS vehicles were designed to fit inside a C-130. That is not the case with the GCV. Transportability requirements are that it must be C-17 and C-5 transportable. “It allows us the weight flexibility,” he said. Trying to keep the FCS vehicles inside that C-130 box forced designers to dump too much armor protection and other important components.
The GCV must carry a 12 man team, a 9 man rifle squad and a three man crew. Cooling the interior of the GCV will be a big challenge, because the vehicle will carry many more computers and video panels than any other vehicles. Built into the design will be a 30 percent margin for growth in cooling and at least a 20 percent growth in propulsion.
I asked McVeigh how the GCV would match up against the current Bradley, which it is intended to replace:
“It will have significantly better mine and IED protection, it will have greater lethality, it will have a bigger cannon. It will allow us to carry more men… a complete squad. It will have about the same mobility of the Bradley but the ability to carry significantly enhanced communications and electronics so I don’t have to divert power from the propulsion system for cooling. It will have significantly improved reliability than the Bradley. It will have integrated non-lethal capabilities, which none of our vehicles have today.”
– Greg
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
"It will have integrated non-lethal capabilities, which none of our vehicles have today.”
*****
What the heck is that?
Cup holders.
The most obvious technology is the area denial system that the Air Force was working on, although it could be a lot of things.. tear gas dispensers, taser-hull, etc.
Audio cannons – directed audio waves for crowd control or instructions, or the hot microwave machine to give those people the "hot foot". It could have some dazzler to disorientate people with light displays.
Ummm, crowd control? Can anyone tell me where in Iraq or Afghanistan did the illegally invaded masses rise up and attack tanks? They did it with IEDs and guns until the US decided it was too hot in the kitchen and decided to get out. Anyway, a 120mm Rhienmetal cannon fitted with a water cannon like what has proven too be very effective on rioting crowds (especially on cold windy days) seems to be the answer. Or better still you could just stop pissing off people by not invading them in the first place. Simple solutions gentlemen!
try rechecking your facts
I'm surprised, this is a good thing… but unexpected. Better to have these non lethal crowd control abilities, then to unload into that crowd, which would only make things worst.
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If they could just fix the really really silly power issues that all these things seem to have it would be great. A bradley that can generate enough electrical power to operate some more advanced systems, charge equipment the inf has, and supply extra power to other systems you want to bring forward would just be so huge you can't imagine. A jeep/HMMWV that has a real power production would be huge too. I understand that all these other things are important, but the ability to use the systems we already have available both in the Army and just off the shelf would be such a big boon.
Power supply should be covered; that was one of the features developed out in MGV that should easily make it into anybody's new design. ISTR they were looking at diesel-electric drive for most/all of the FCS vehicles. Likewise, I believe modern band tracks beat out all other forms of locomotion for FCS, and that technology should be developed and stable enough to throw right in.
What I don't get is some of the measurements they're using for armor packages. How are IED/EFP Level 0, RPG Level 1, and ATGM even beyond that? A direct hit from a 500lb+ IED is more lethal (and in totally different ways) than a direct hit from a 10-20lb HEAT warhead. APS aside, ATGMs might actually require less weight dedicated to armor to survive than EFPs. This does not make sense.
FCS was built upon the paradigm that emerged from the late 90s where we were going to get called into action with little or no notice, and had to provide a brigade in 96 hours, and a division inside of 20 days, for a conflict that would be over (or at least move into a less active phase) within 90 days. That absolutely forced vehicle weights down.
In the last decade, we've been doing multi-year garrison of mixed terrain types against insurgents using mostly asymmetric attacks. Totally different threat environment… but is it the one that we want to predicate our basic, unenhanced capabilities around? Even when the prices that we pay include steep logistical hurdles, terrain access issues (tracks reduce ground pressure, but they don't help you cross a bridge with a 50-ton limit very much), and rising development and purchase costs.
Are we really sure that these criteria are where we want it to go?
The "10-30-30" war as envisioned in the 1990s revolution in military affairs era will never happen and was an idiotic idea in the first place. If we need a rapid-response force we have the 82nd Airborne – if they and the Air Force can't handle the problem then air-transporting light armor in won't either.
The idea that the modern operating paradigm of hybrid warfare and counter-insurgency is going away any time soon is false. It's been around as the normative form of modern warfare for about sixty years now and we've been too obsessed with the drama of force-on-force to realize this simple fact. Even in an all out World War Three with Russia and China, not only will be need vehicles suited for really heavy-duty combat (like the GCV will be) but we will need to bring our COIN A-game.
I suppose you could think of high-intensity warfare against modern threats as having a crazier "clear" phase of clear-hold-build.
Actually, to refine my previous thought.
The Army will soon have seven active-duty Stryker brigades and a bunch of light brigades (the number escapes me at the moment). The SBCT is an 80% solution to the FCS BCT, so there's another strike against the FCS model – duplication of capability.
However, when you consider the US Army's order of battle, most of our units have greater or equal air-mobility characteristics as a notional FBCT. If we get in some kind of quick-draw showdown and can't hold the line with the Marines and the "light" and "medium" Army until the "heavy" Army shows up, we're in the wrong fight.
Terrorism only works because of the News Media and the Left in this country. Get rid of them, and you won't need to worry about IEDs ever again.
It would be nice if these vehicles were air-droppable, or could fit inside the cargo hold of a C-130. The 82nd ABN still uses Sheridan tanks because they're the only Armor that can be dropped by parachute. It takes months to move an M1 Abrams (85-tons), a Bradley, or a Stryker by sea to the battle zone. Quick deployability is key.
Nitpicking a little more: the Abrams with all the bells and whistles barely hits 70 tons. It doesn't takes months to move those vehicles, just a month. One of the things people often forget is that air dropping a tank isn't enough to carry a battle. You have to send everything that goes with that tank such as maintenance, communications, fuel, fuel, and fuel. That idea of deploying an armored brigade in 96 hours was never achievable. For one thing, it would literally take the entire Air Force to lift that tonnage. Secondly, unless that brigade was on strip alert so to speak and knew the war was coming, it would take those 96 hours just to move everything from the motorpool to the airfield.
Ever done a search on youtube of airdropping gone wrong..? with the price tags these GCVs bring, air dropping would be far too risky. Best bet is develop a vertical takeoff transport that can carry 4 of these vehicles to a battlefield and build more than 50 aircraft to do it with. The current C-17 can land in a very short distance but a vertical takeoff C-17 would do the job a lot better.
The 82nd has not had M551s assigned since the mid '90s
I think you’ll find that the M551a1(tts) was retired from the 82nd in 1996, the year after I retired from the cavalry.
I hope they doing something so the guys ridding in back are more comfortable. I sat for 18 hours in a BFV without getting out during OIF I and I still have nightmares about it. How are they going to fit a whole 9 man squad into the back of it? Its going to have to be longer than the Bradly. The photo's I've seen make it look about the same size as the Bradly, so I don't know how they intend to do this?
The Stryker fits a whole squad comfortably in full kit with gear and weapons stacked on the floor. That should give you some perspective on how big this thing should be.
Why the hell will this have "integrated non-lethal capabilities?" Shouldn't non-lethal capabilities province of dedicated HMMWV-size vehicles? It'll just add weight, unless we're talking about something as simple as tear gas in the smoke grenade tubes.
Should make the non-lethal stuff an external self pwrd attachment; Easy to install and easy to jettison in a real fight.
The nature of the vehicle is modularity, so if something isn't needed, they'll probably remove it or keep it off until needed. The integration aspect is probably more along the lines of plug and play, so you don't need to spend a week rewiring junk, instead a few hours are spend bolting and plugging the gear in place. However, a pain inducing speaker is really light, as is a laser dazzler. Although, the microwave pain inducer is huge and heavy.
Considering the beating vehicles can have, it makes sense to put this gear on a heavily armored platform that can take dozens of RPG hits and survive IEDs like an Abrams. The situations the Army finds itself in aren't strictly combat, strictly peace keeping, it is what it is and all that kind of capability seems useful at the same time.
Places like Kosovo and Afghanistan have favored the Bradley over the Abrams due to weight, and allies like South Korea, where the potential for armored combat is among the highest in the world are producing new armored vehicles closer in weight to the Bradley than the Abrams. Places where you have the most need for off road capabilities also tend to have weak infrastructure that can't handle heavy vehicles. Even European bridges and roads can't handle 70 ton tracked vehicles. The Hummer was built with an ability to go off-road to the extent of an Abrams as a primary design consideration, but they are driven mostly on roads anyway.
DOD procurement's all-in-one disease has got to stop. It is a good idea to have vehicles with integrated non-lethal weapons capacity; it is a good idea to have vehicles that can defeat anti-tank armaments. It is not necessarily a good idea to put both, and the capacity to carry a nine man squad and the capacity to go off-road and a big canon in one package. The idea that it is crucially important to have 9 soldiers in one vehicle rather than two or three, seems particularly suspect.
Agree with you here. The fact that 9 soldiers would perish if one vehicle were destroyed as opposed to having 3 vehicles with 3 troops each (with the 3 vehicles providing cover to each other…) would be more feasible and logistically sound. Having 3 big guns instead of one would give the troops more cover fire and if they were taking down a building, the 3 vehicles could provide perimeter assistance. While the smaller troop compartment would lead to more vehicles produced, it is a valid trade-off in the long run.
Also, to build on the 3 vehicle possey described above, if the vehicles could be manufactured with different turret arrangements that could be quickly transferred from one vehicle to another (i.e. a SPAAG-style AA gun, a Bradley-like 25mm auto cannon, a 120mm cannon, a missile launcher like the M-113 TOW vehicle, and a simple MG turret for Anti-personnel engagements) that would make this system more marketable as it goes back to the one-to-do-it-all concept, just not ONE to do it all. It would allow commonality of parts (as the hull and electronics would be the same) and only need a turret-changer vehicle (like the M-88) to switch from variant to variant. The extra turrets could be stored in a container-like crate and pulled out when needed.
"In urban areas, tracked vehicles have the advantage of being able to pivot steer, which is a huge advantage over wheeled vehicles."
I guess you are not familiar with skid steered wheeled vehicles, such as all the FCS wheeled vehicles.
That doesn't mean, however, that there isn't tracked vehicle bias in this RFP.