June 17, 2009 -- Senior Army officials told senators yesterday that the network being developed under the Future Combat Systems program is the most critical component of the service’s modernization efforts.
“Simply put, the network is the centerpiece of the Army’s modernization effort and any shortfall in funding will put that effort at risk,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said in his opening statement before the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee.
Important guidance for the restructured FCS program, including the network, has yet to be issued, according to senior service officials.
Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, military deputy to the Army acquisition executive, told the subcommittee that the long-awaited acquisition decision memorandum that will allow the Army to stop work on the FCS manned ground vehicles and begin contract negotiations is in its “final stages.”
The Pentagon and the Army want to make sure “the wording is exactly right -- that it captures the decisions of the secretary of defense, that it gives us the flexibility to be able to move forward, to restructure the program and cancel the FCS program as we know it yesterday -- terminate the manned ground vehicle portion of that -- but keep the other parts of the program that we want to move forward with,” said Thompson. He cited the network and the FCS spin-out capability sets as parts of the original FCS program that the Army intends to keep and even expand.
Thompson also made his case for keeping fiscal year 2010 money for contract termination costs in the budget. Otherwise, work on the network and the spin-out sets will be delayed because of a need to reallocate FY-09 funding, he said.
Earlier yesterday, the House Armed Services Committee agreed to cut $327 million in FCS termination costs from the budget, leaving $100 million.
At the same Senate hearing, Paul Francis of the Government Accountability Office suggested which aspects of the FCS program should be integrated into the Army’s new efforts and which should be discarded. His testimony pulled from GAO recommendations made throughout the program’s history.
While the effort was admirable in some ways, said Francis, the FCS program’s scope was too big and the challenges too great. Such a large and complex program required greater government oversight, he added.
To help increase government responsibility for programs like FCS, the Army is adding 5,400 people to its acquisition work force, David Ahern, director for portfolio systems acquisition under the Pentagon acquisition chief, said at the hearing.
He said the FCS program management office’s role will be expanded, particularly in the areas of contract management and oversight, systems engineering and integration. Up until now, Boeing, the FCS prime contractor, did most of this work.
Chiarelli highlighted a completed after-action review of the FCS program’s development and acquisition strategy. He said this study, combined with lessons learned from seven years at war, will be valuable in the development of the new vehicle.
“I would be very surprised if we didn’t see a family of vehicles,” said Chiarelli of the new effort. He said developing multiple vehicles in the new program is “entirely possible.”
Another part of the Army’s wide-ranging modernization efforts is finding a role for its 16,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, said Chiarelli, adding that the Army intends to integrate them into formations in the future. However, he noted that MRAPs make up just 8 percent of the Army’s 200,000 vehicles, so it is important to determine where the vehicles make the most sense, he said.
At yesterday’s meeting of a blue-ribbon panel the service hosted to gather input from outside sources on the new ground combat vehicle, a group of non-commissioned officers pointed out the MRAP vehicle’s limitations, said Chiarelli. The officers explained that while MRAPs are good infantry carriers, the nine seconds it takes for the vehicle’s ramp to come down can make soldiers feel vulnerable, he said. For Chiarelli, this confirms the importance of finding the right role and the appropriate operating environment for the vehicles.
The Army’s modernization efforts also include a review of the service’s force mix, the generals told the Senate subcommittee. They said increasing the number of Stryker brigades is a possibility.
“As we look at a balanced force to handle things across the spectrum of conflict, it is a possibility that we would want to build more of the Stryker brigades than the seven that we have today,” said Thompson. The number of Stryker brigades will also be studied during the Quadrennial Defense Review, he added.
“At some point in time, the existing vehicles -- even Strykers, as good as they are -- will reach their design limits,” said Thompson.
Thompson said the Army requires steady funding to keep its entire fleet of combat vehicles relevant and capable in different areas.
“It's been over 20 years since we started the Armored Systems Modernization Program and we're now going to start our sixth iteration of trying to modernize the ground combat vehicle capability in the Army, and that bothers me greatly,” he said. -- Kate Brannen