This arti­cle first appeared in AviationWeek.com.

The first Space Based Infrared System (Sbirs) mis­sile warn­ing satel­lite bound for geo­syn­chro­nous (GEO) orbit is on track for deliv­ery to the U.S. Air Force by the fourth quar­ter of cal­en­dar year 2010, accord­ing to its manufacturer.

This will be a major mile­stone for the $10.4 bil­lion Sbirs pro­gram, which has under­gone mul­ti­ple restruc­tur­ings, cost over­runs and delays. Delivery of the first GEO satel­lite is at least 7 years later than planned and cost esti­mates have exceeded pre­dic­tions by billions.

During a speech at this year’s Strategic Space con­fer­ence here hosted by the Space Foundation, the gen­eral over­see­ing Strategic Command said he is wor­ried about poten­tial gaps in cov­er­age for some mis­sion areas in part because satel­lites are being deliv­ered later than planned. U.S. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton used Sbirs as an exam­ple; all of the pre­ced­ing Defense Support Program (DSP) satel­lites have been launched, and the Sbirs sched­ule has repeat­edly slipped.

Following deliv­ery, the inte­gra­tion of GEO-1 onto the rocket will take 45–60 days in prepa­ra­tion for launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., accord­ing to Rick Ambrose, vice pres­i­dent of sur­veil­lance and nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems for Sbirs prime con­trac­tor Lockheed Martin. GEO-1 will aug­ment and even­tu­ally relieve satel­lites in the exist­ing DSP constellation.

Thermal vac­uum test­ing is slated for com­ple­tion on GEO-1 in the mid­dle of this month, Ambrose adds. The tri­als include three cycles each of hot and cold envi­ron­men­tal test­ing; the satel­lite is on its final round of test­ing in cold tem­per­a­tures at Lockheed Martin’s Sunnyvale, Calif., man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity, Ambrose said dur­ing a Nov. 3 inter­view with Aviation Week.

Following this round of tests, about 30 days will be set aside to replace some small parts with issues dis­cov­ered dur­ing the tri­als. One exam­ple is the replace­ment of a part that included tin, which is not suit­able for use on the spacecraft.

In the first quar­ter of cal­en­dar year 2010, the full-up space­craft will undergo the Final Integrated System Test (FIST) period, a series of tests on the entire sys­tem in ambi­ent conditions.

Read the rest of this story, see how IEDs are like Ivan’s first space shot, won­der when’s the Brit car­rier com­ing in and see why Boeing might need Joe the Plumber from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Defense Technology International.

Thales U.K. has been awarded a �150-million ($245-million) sup­ply and in-service sup­port con­tract for the Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) suite of FIST, the U.K. Defense Ministry’s Future Integrated Soldier Technology program.

The STA suite will, Thales says, com­prise weapon sights, obser­va­tion equip­ment and target-location sys­tems from var­i­ous sup­pli­ers that are designed pri­mar­ily for close-quarters bat­tle (CQB).

FIST will improve the capa­bil­i­ties of dis­mounted infantry in all envi­ron­ments, day and night. The pro­gram fol­lows a requirements-driven approach to equip­ping teams of sol­diers with an inte­grated fight­ing sys­tem that can be net­worked. Other parts of the pro­gram include command-and-control soft­ware, com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, sit­u­a­tional aware­ness devices and body armor. Some 35,000 FIST sys­tems will be deployed with the British Army, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force.

Thales is a prime con­trac­tor. Details of the STA award were dis­closed on Sept. 8, dur­ing the Defense Systems and Equipment International show in London.

The STA pack­age con­sists of almost 11,000 suites of equip­ment. Initial deliv­er­ies are planned for November 2010, in time for train­ing infantry units prior to their deploy­ment to Afghanistan in early 2011. Full con­tract deliv­er­ies are due to be com­pleted in June 2014.

The first pack­age includes ther­mal sights sup­plied by Qioptiq of the U.K. Thermal imag­ing sys­tems are report­edly the best choice for Afghanistan, where the level of starlight or ambi­ent light from man­made sources is too low to sup­port image-intensifying sys­tems. Thermal imag­ing also has ben­e­fits in improv­ing the abil­ity to see through cam­ou­flage and aid­ing sol­diers in iden­ti­fy­ing con­cealed weapons and impro­vised explo­sive devices. While con­cealed man­made objects can be invis­i­ble to the naked eye, they stand out in stark con­trast against their back­ground on infrared (IR) spec­tral bands.

In the next five years, Qioptiq is sched­uled to deliver more than 4,000 weapon sights, des­ig­nated FIST Thermal Sight. The sight is equipped with an uncooled ther­mal core and a 640 X 480-pixel for­mat. It offers an enhanced man-machine inter­face, inte­grated IR laser aimer for improved tar­get iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and an inte­grated red-dot CQB sight.

Qioptiq will addi­tion­ally con­vert more than 4,000 Common Weapon Sights from Pilkington Optronics and its own Maxikite2 night-vision sights for oper­a­tion with the red-dot CQB sight.

Read the rest of this story and check out a host of other great sto­ries from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

In the midst of a deeply entrenched iden­tity cri­sis, the U.S. Air Force is turn­ing to tech­nol­ogy as the poten­tial answer to some of its prob­lems.

Air Force Chief Scientist Werner Dahm is con­duct­ing a sweep­ing “Technology Horizons” study to lay out tech­no­log­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties that could pro­duce use­ful appli­ca­tions for the ser­vice.

“I don’t think in the his­tory of the Air Force we’ve been at a turn­ing point like this. Maybe the clos­est was the Sputnik launch,” Dahm tells Aviation Week. “What does the Air Force do when it is faced with a rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent future? Part of what it does is reach into its sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy domain.”

The study will look 20 years ahead, with an eye toward imple­ment­ing near-term invest­ment deci­sions aimed at pro­duc­ing rel­e­vant mil­i­tary sys­tems. “We are not talk­ing about pie in the sky,” Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said last month.

The Air Force spends roughly $2 bil­lion annu­ally on sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy projects, as much as the rest of the Defense Dept. spends on sim­i­lar research. The goal of Dahm’s review is to iden­tify those projects that could real­is­ti­cally change how the Air Force accom­plishes its mis­sions — such as the advent of the GPS con­stel­la­tion. The results are expected in late February.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Schwartz entered office last year with a slew of imme­di­ate prob­lems, includ­ing mis­man­age­ment of the nuclear arse­nal and ram­pant pro­cure­ment mis­steps. The global finan­cial reces­sion has also tight­ened the Pentagon’s bud­get amid the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan.

“We are going to have to envi­sion and artic­u­late things that are real­is­ti­cally doable in the likely bud­get envi­ron­ment that we are going to face in the next decade or two,” Dahm says. There has been much crit­i­cism of the Air Force’s sharp focus on air supe­ri­or­ity, which led it to pro­cure fifth-generation fight­ers at great expense. Some say this focus came at the sac­ri­fice of other efforts, such as irreg­u­lar war­fare (IW) tech­nolo­gies.

“What we have to do is to fig­ure out how do we aug­ment [today’s capa­bil­i­ties] with some care­fully cho­sen new capa­bil­i­ties that allow those sys­tems to con­tribute to all of the threats that we face today — the IW threat, the cyber-threat and [oper­at­ing] in the space envi­ron­ment,” Dahm says.

The study is being exe­cuted by 36 lead­ers from acad­e­mia, the defense research com­mu­nity, major com­mands and indus­try. They are bro­ken into three work­ing groups — air, space and cyber. The groups began their efforts soon after in the study’s June 18 launch. The sec­ond phase begins this month and is “where a lot of gold will lie,” Dahm says. The par­tic­i­pants will address “cross-domain” tech­nolo­gies that could enhance warfight­ing efforts in a num­ber of areas and across the spec­trum of major con­flict oper­a­tions and insur­gent fights.

Read the rest of this story, see an ejection-seat view of the Parthenon, pon­der why the Aussies are scared of subs down under and roll out the stars and stripes for Euro-Hawk with our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

U.S. Army avi­a­tion lead­er­ship has been strate­gi­cally redis­trib­ut­ing the $14.6 bil­lion in Comanche fund­ing among its var­i­ous mod­ern­iza­tion pro­grams since the heli­copter was can­celed in 2004. But the well is due to dry up soon, and the ser­vice is for­mu­lat­ing a strat­egy to pro­tect its resources.

“Army avi­a­tion has done very well,” says Brig. Gen. William Crosby, pro­gram exec­u­tive offi­cer for avi­a­tion. Recognition of the Army’s high oper­a­tional tempo “keeps us pretty well funded, but the real­ity of bud­gets are com­ing down. We have to be fru­gal with our assess­ments.”

The first step in cre­at­ing a real­is­tic pic­ture of the future is com­plete. The Aviation Study II, char­tered by Lt. Gen. J.D. Thurman, Army deputy chief of staff, con­cluded with chief of staff approval for the for­ma­tion of a 12th com­bat avi­a­tion brigade, a reor­ga­ni­za­tion of resources to come in the next 12–18 months. Exploration will also con­tinue into the best way to inte­grate and deploy unmanned aer­ial sys­tems in com­bat.

Moreover, $400 mil­lion aimed at improv­ing train­ing will help grow the body of stu­dent heli­copter pilots at Ft. Rucker, Ala., to 1,400 from 1,200. The funds should also alle­vi­ate what avi­a­tion branch chief Maj. Gen. James Barclay calls a “train­ing bub­ble.” At one point, 800 stu­dents were wait­ing up to six months to tran­si­tion into advanced air­craft. That “bub­ble” has been reduced by half, Barclay says. A fleet of new Apaches and Black Hawks will help elim­i­nate the prob­lem entirely by 2012.

Army avi­a­tion has not faced any fund­ing short­falls since the can­cel­la­tion of Comanche. Funding for avi­a­tion has actu­ally increased by 40%, accord­ing to a recent study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). But the good news is tem­pered by eco­nomic real­ity. “We don’t know the future,” Barclay says. “Most of us who have been doing this for 30 years real­ize you’re just wait­ing on the next deci­sion, the next [bud­get plan­ning cycle].”

The GAO agrees, and rec­om­mends that the ser­vice incor­po­rate some of that uncer­tainty into its 2010 Army Aviation Modernization Strategy, pri­mar­ily through assess­ing the poten­tial effect decreased fund­ing might have and how the Army will deal with the con­straints. The GAO also wants the Army to press ahead with the Joint Future Theater Lift pro­gram, which has stalled as the Air Force, which favors a short-takeoff air­craft, mulls its piece of the require­ments.

The Army’s cur­rent plan through 2010 includes upgrad­ing exist­ing sys­tems, devel­op­ing new ones and procur­ing com­mer­cially pro­duced equip­ment and air­craft such as the Lakota UH-72A Light Utility Helicopter (LUH). The Army has com­mit­ted to buy­ing 345 EADS-built LUHs, 210 of which are des­tined for National Guard duty. Every LUH fielded, says Col. Neil Thurgood, the Army’s Utility Helicopter pro­gram man­ager, frees up another Black Hawk to be sent into com­bat, where the Black Hawk is in high demand.

The Army may be able to par­lay the early LUH suc­cess (86 air­craft have been deliv­ered) into cost sav­ings, as other ser­vices and even other coun­tries add to the order book. Late last year, the Navy signed a $30-million con­tract for five Lakotas for the test pilot school at NAS Patuxent River, Md., and Thurgood says sev­eral coun­tries have expressed inter­est in Foreign Military Sales of the aircraft.

Read the rest of this story, check out the German EuroHawk drone, engage in the Army’s doc­trine wars and see how The Hill plans to fix ship­yards from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps’ long-term solu­tion to their light tac­ti­cal vehi­cle needs — the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle — is on track to hit all of its mile­stones, accord­ing to pro­gram man­agers who spoke with reporters Oct. 6 at the Association of the U.S. Army con­ven­tion in Washington.

“The trucks are about a third of the way through the 27-month TD [tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment] phase, and we’ve been through the pre­lim­i­nary design reviews,” says Kevin Fahey, pro­gram exec­u­tive offi­cer, com­bat sup­port & com­bat ser­vice sup­port. “Over the next cou­ple months we’re going to do the Critical Design Reviews,” with more the first week of October, and two more in November.

Fahey said that between now and the end of the year, the plan is for the three remain­ing con­trac­tors in the com­pe­ti­tion to sub­mit their armor coupons and bal­lis­tics, and early next year in April/ May is when they will get the pro­to­type vehi­cles with about a year of test­ing on them.

Despite ear­lier plans call­ing for every­one from the Canadians to the British to the Australians to the Israelis to par­tic­i­pate in JLTV devel­op­ment, only the Australians remain, and India also has started to show inter­est.

“The Australians have given us notice that they want to par­tic­i­pate in the next phase of the pro­gram,” accord­ing to Fahey, “while we just found out that India also wants to par­tic­i­pate in the next phase of the pro­gram.” But for the moment, the Australians are the only full par­tic­i­pant in the next phase. India has only entered into dis­cus­sions about par­tic­i­pat­ing in the JLTV pro­gram.

When it comes to the rum­blings about the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) muscling in on the ter­ri­tory already carved out for the JLTV in future plans, Bill Taylor, deputy PEO, says not so fast.

“I think there’s room for both pro­grams. In fact, I think there’s a need for both pro­grams. M-ATV, like MRAP, was dri­ven by urgency and the need to sat­isfy that urgency,” Taylor said. The M-ATV, he said, focuses almost exclu­sively on crew sur­viv­abil­ity, like MRAP, but JLTV is tak­ing the long view. Both pro­grams share 320 mis­sion require­ments, but JLTV is going after an addi­tional unique set of 580 require­ments that M-ATV is not required to sat­isfy, he said.

Read the rest of this story, see what LockMart’s work­ing on with bal­loons and hand drones, check out L3’s pri­vate eyes and see how SWORD cuts the rotor clut­ter from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

U.S. plans to deploy an unmanned sur­veil­lance air­ship to Afghanistan are mov­ing for­ward, with a con­tract for the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) demon­stra­tion expected to be awarded by year-end.

Designed to stay aloft for three weeks car­ry­ing a heavy pay­load of wide-area sen­sors, the air­ship is becom­ing a flag­ship for Defense Dept. efforts to pro­vide unblink­ing air­borne sur­veil­lance to defeat the threat from road­side bombs.

With other pro­grams push­ing unmanned air­craft to greater per­sis­tence and heav­ier pay­loads, the Pentagon is com­ing to grips with the con­se­quence: a tor­rent of motion imagery that must be ana­lyzed and archived to be of use.

The Pentagon’s intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance (ISR) task force has the LEMV on the fast track, with a sin­gle demon­stra­tor vehi­cle to be fielded to Afghanistan within 18 months of con­tract award. Congress has fully funded the Fiscal 2010 bud­get request of $90 mil­lion for the pro­gram.

U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense Command (SMDC) is to lead the air­ship pro­gram, con­tract­ing with an indus­try con­sor­tium now tak­ing final shape.

The con­sor­tium is expected to be estab­lished by early October, with a request for pro­posal to fol­low in November, lead­ing to con­tract award by the end of December. The air­ship would fly within 15 months and deploy by mid-2011.

Exactly how the gov­ern­ment will inter­act with the con­sor­tium is not yet clear. There are sev­eral poten­tial plat­form providers involved, includ­ing Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and the U.K.‘s Hybrid Air Vehicles, both of which are expected to brief SMDC on their pro­pos­als in October.

The LEMV is required to stay aloft at 20,000 ft. for 21 days car­ry­ing a 2,500-lb. pay­load, a com­bi­na­tion of either a multi-camera wide-area air­borne sur­veil­lance (WAAS) sen­sor or a ground moving-target indi­ca­tion (GMTI) radar plus a signals-intelligence sys­tem and mul­ti­ple electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sen­sors.

Lockheed Martin’s design is a 250-ft.-long hybrid air­ship, which derives 80% of its lift from helium buoy­ancy and the rest from aero­dy­nam­ics so it can be launched and recov­ered with­out the tra­di­tional air­ship ground infra­struc­ture. The vehi­cle will be option­ally piloted: manned for self-deployment and unmanned for sur­veil­lance missions.

Read the rest of this story, check out where the tanker tango stands, see Iraqi helo grads and pon­der the German elec­tion from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

Lockheed Martin is work­ing with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to fly a ver­sion of the F-35s stealthy electro-optical tar­get­ing sys­tem (EOTS) on the Avenger unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle (UAV) in the lat­ter part of 2010.

Mounted behind faceted sap­phire win­dows, the mid-wave infrared sen­sor would reduce the swept-wing, jet-powered UAVs radar sig­na­ture com­pared with the con­ven­tional exter­nal electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) tur­ret on a Predator or Reaper.

General Atomics is devel­op­ing the Avenger as its can­di­date for the U.S. Air Forces pend­ing MQ-X require­ment for a follow-on to the com­pa­nys MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper UAVs, to enter ser­vice some­time after 2015.

Lockheed Martin calls its UAV ver­sion of the EOTS the Advanced Low-observable Embedded Reconnaissance Targeting (ALERT) sys­tem. Integration of the sen­sor onto the Avenger is being funded inter­nally by the com­pa­nies.

Trying to make a con­ven­tional EO/IR sen­sor stealthy by mount­ing it behind a win­dow reduces its per­for­mance, the com­pany argues, while the F-35 EOTS has been designed to mount the optics close to the win­dow to max­i­mize aper­ture.

Lockheed Martin says it is work­ing on the elec­tri­cal and mechan­i­cal inter­faces between the ALERT and the Avenger, and has per­formed a fit check with the UAVs outer mold line, but air­craft mod­i­fi­ca­tions have not yet begun.

Read the rest of this story, mourn with the Italians, see how COIN’s been dri­ving vehi­cle devel­op­ment and pon­der the Afghan Question with our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Defense Technology International.

The U.S. Marine Corps is act­ing as the lead ser­vice on the Bell-Boeing MV-22 Osprey tiltro­tor, with three deploy­ments to Iraq under its belt and a squadron fly­ing from the deck of the USS Bataan amphibi­ous assault ship. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (Afsoc) is grow­ing its own fleet of CV-22s, steadily build­ing hours and mis­sion pro­files.

The Marines have recently suf­fered cri­tiques from Washington for cost and per­for­mance issues, most notably in a May Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that cited the aircraft’s “unre­solved oper­a­tional effec­tive­ness and suit­abil­ity issues.” But the ser­vice takes excep­tion to sev­eral defi­cien­cies in the report. “We worked with the GAO for months, showed them every­thing, and yet we still think that their report misses the mark,” says Lt. Gen. George Trautman, deputy com­man­dant for Marine Corps avi­a­tion.

The report cov­ers ground trod­den by the pro­gram for more than two decades, list­ing prob­lems Trautman says the ser­vice is address­ing or has dealt with already. Support for the plat­form has not ebbed among cer­tain law­mak­ers despite a June dec­la­ra­tion from Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that the air­craft should be “put out of its mis­ery.” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chair­man of the House Appropriations defense sub­com­mit­tee, trav­eled to Camp Lejeune, N.C., in August to seek what he called the “ground truth” behind claims made against the MV-22. “I’ve found that if you want to know the truth and under­stand the facts, it’s imper­a­tive that you get out into the field and speak one-on-one with those oper­at­ing these sys­tems,” says Murtha. “The Marines are very sat­is­fied with the MV-22’s operations.”

Read the rest of this story, check out more STOVL JSF action, debate the F-35 alter­na­tive engine and see how big Rafale won from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

Northrop Grumman is devel­op­ing a com­mon autonomous air­borne sense-and-avoid sys­tem for both the U.S. Air Force RQ-4B Global Hawk high-altitude long-endurance unmanned air­craft and its U.S. Navy RQ-4N Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) deriv­a­tive.

Originally the ser­vices were pur­su­ing sep­a­rate solu­tions for oper­at­ing the air­craft in national air­space, but the Navy has announced its inten­tion to award Northrop Grumman a sole-source con­tract to develop a com­mon sys­tem that also will be scal­able to medium-altitude unmanned air­craft.

The devel­op­ment effort will bring together work that was already under way on a sense-and-avoid sys­tem for Global Hawk and a “due regard” sys­tem for BAMS. “They have both put funds in a bucket, basi­cally, that they have allo­cated to us,” says George Guerra, Global Hawk vice pres­i­dent.

“For the Air Force we were con­tin­u­ing to look at what the oppor­tu­ni­ties were for a sense-and-avoid sys­tem, while the BAMS pro­gram actu­ally pro­posed a due-regard sys­tem,” he says. “What they did is say lets go under­stand what sys­tems you are look­ing at on the Air Force side and share with you what [the Navy] has done on due regard.”

Guerra says Northrop Grumman was awarded a 5–6 month study ear­lier this year to under­stand the require­ments of both ser­vices, how well the sys­tems being stud­ied would meet them, and to plan a way for­ward. “Our plan is to come out with a sin­gle sys­tem that sat­is­fies the needs of both ser­vices,” he said.

Under con­tract to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Northrop Grumman has been flight-testing a mul­ti­sen­sor autonomous see-and-avoid sys­tem on a Calspan-operated Learjet 25 act­ing as a sur­ro­gate for the Global Hawk. This includes electro-optical (EO) sen­sors and an air-to-air radar sim­i­lar to that orig­i­nally pro­posed for BAMS.

Read the rest of this story, see how the US/Pak rela­tion­ship is more like a sit­com, check out the new Sabra UGV and see if Stryker comms are Lima Charlie from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I have trav­eled out to Ft. Bliss to par­tic­i­pate in a media event intended to out­line the Army’s mod­ern­iza­tion effort for its brigade com­bat teams. I’ll be out in the field tomor­row shoot­ing video tak­ing some stills and doing inter­views (and gen­er­ally get­ting smart on the pro­gram) and will pro­vide data dumps here as comms per­mit. The fol­low­ing arti­cle from our Av Week friends helps set the scene.]
This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

By early October, the U.S. Army will have a new pro­gram exec­u­tive office (PEO) in charge of its Brigade Combat Team Modernization (BCTM), a sweep­ing effort to restruc­ture its con­tro­ver­sial Future Combat Systems (FCS) pro­gram.

The new PEO will effec­tively act as the inte­gra­tor for BCTM, look­ing across the board at how to inte­grate so-called capa­bil­i­ties sets into Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), accord­ing to Paul Mehney, asso­ciate direc­tor for BCTM. Additionally, a prod­uct man­ager role will be estab­lished in var­i­ous sec­tors, includ­ing one for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), which will replace the can­celled Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV).

The Armys much-touted net­work, the back­bone of FCS, could become a point of con­tention as the ser­vices Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) wres­tles with how much infor­ma­tion will go to whom and how it will get deliv­ered. The MGVs were essen­tially the hub of the net­work, and with­out them, TRADOC will have to deter­mine new require­ments for host­ing the net­work and how much infor­ma­tion the new struc­ture will relay to the field.

The fully equipped, 15-brigade FCS struc­ture is off the table as well, forc­ing the Army to fig­ure out how to incor­po­rate Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehi­cles and up-armored Humvees into the new BCT for­ma­tions. All 73 Army BCTs will now be mobile and tailor-able, accord­ing to Mehney, capa­ble of per­form­ing the full spec­trum of oper­a­tions — offen­sive, defen­sive and sta­bil­ity — no mat­ter the brigades con­fig­u­ra­tion.

Capability sets will replace so-called spin outs, with the BCTs ben­e­fit­ing from upgrades and improve­ments on a rotat­ing basis every few years. That sys­tem may help the pro­gram avoid the tech­ni­cal matu­rity issues it faced over the course of devel­op­ment for FCS. Paul Francis of the con­gres­sional Government Accountability Office (GAO) tes­ti­fied June 16 before the Senate Armed Services air-land sub­com­mit­tee that he thought the require­ments were set before we knew what was tech­ni­cally fea­si­ble. So I think theres been a lot of work to ratio­nal­ize.

Still, the end-product may not be that far from the orig­i­nal vision, albeit adapted to new bud­get real­i­ties, one Washington think tank ana­lyst says in an Aug. 26 report. Given the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the net­work and a num­ber of addi­tional FCS com­po­nents, it seems unlikely that the new mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram will be sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent from the pre­vi­ous one, says Evan Braden Montgomery of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The Army may need to be far more selec­tive in its mod­ern­iza­tion efforts, replac­ing some but not all of the dif­fer­ent types of vehi­cles in its armored fleet.

The new process will take longer, how­ever. The Army will start with a first incre­ment in 2011, but it will take until 2025 to com­pletely field all the capa­bil­ity sets.

Read the rest of this story, see how the Iraqi air force is gain­ing planes, read about the dead Rendon con­tract and hear the gen­er­als roar from our Aviation Week friends, exclu­sively on Military.com.

– Christian