BW: The Right Stuff For GIs Of The Future

The Right Stuff For GIs Of The Future
The Army's $125 billion Future Combat Systems comes under sharp scrutiny

Business Week 08/15/05
author: Stan Crock
author: Stanley Holmes
(Copyright 2005 McGraw-Hill, Inc.)

The roadside bomb that killed 14 Marines in Iraq on Aug. 3 was a deadly reminder that unconventional warfare poses the biggest threat to American forces. But the U.S. Army is betting billions of dollars on the notion that future wars will be fought on open battlefields against conventional enemies. At the heart of that strategy: Future Combat Systems (FCS), an ambitious plan to create 18 new weapons, from robots to light combat vehicles to aerial drones, and link them all in a vast war-fighting network. ... FCS -- which is slated to consume nearly half of the Army's procurement budget in the coming years -- is under increasing scrutiny.

FCS is a very big contract for Boeing. Big contracts always seem to attract a lot of commentators, but I suppose that is good.

Skeptics also fear that the FCS technology is a reach and that its price tag is too dear. The Army estimates it will spend $125 billion to develop the FCS and equip a third of its units with new weapons -- not counting $46 billion in new radios and other communications gear the system requires.

Ever notice how there are skeptics for everything. You can always find somebody out there that is against any idea you might want to propose. It is very easy for people to say I don't like that, it is harder for people to accept something.

Boeing gets high marks for managing the program under a two-year-old contract. But the Army has restructured the FCS several times. As a result, it will now cost 60% more than an earlier $78 billion estimate and take four years longer to develop. Given the Army's shifts, "our performance to date is on schedule and on budget," says James F. Albaugh, CEO of Boeing's Integrated Defense systems.

As usual the government restructures a program it didn't plan out well enough to begin with and the program ends up costing more as a result. Just about every defense program the pentagon dreams up changes its requirements once or twice, which greatly increases its costs.

The fear: While the FCS network could give GIs the advantage of surprise and speed, the enemy can pull surprises, too. And the FCS's lighter vehicles would be more vulnerable than 70-ton Abrams tanks used in Iraq.

True...

Some analysts wonder whether the program is what the Army really needs. After watching the U.S. twice dismantle Iraq's once-vaunted forces, few foes are likely to engage the U.S. in open battle.

Yeah, thats sound thinking...give me a break. If you don't have a convetional Army force then somebody will attack you that way. The strong conventional force prevents a conventional assualt, but if you have a strong conventional force your enemies must attack in other ways to contract your strengths. Sometimes people scare me with their supposed logical thinking... Those "analysts" need to get a reality check every now and then.

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