Night of the Living Revenge of the Bastard Step-Child of FCS

Man, what a name-change can disguise. I'll be the headline "Early-Infantry Brigade Combat Team Program Decisions Announced" in no way informs you that this is what's left of the vaunted FCS program, eh?

The Department of the Army announced today that it decided to continue low-rate initial production of two elements of the Early-Infantry Brigade Combat Team (E-IBCT) program -- the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle and tactical network system. The E-IBCT investment of network technologies and software provide a foundation for growth of the Army’s tactical network.

The Army will no longer pursue the Unattended Ground Sensors and the Class 1 Unmanned Air System elements of the program. The Army will transition the procurement of small unmanned ground vehicles and tactical network systems to program executive offices with primary responsibility for these systems.

An E-IBCT acquisition decision memorandum, signed by the under secretary of defense (acquisition, technology and logistics) on Feb. 3, 2011, formalized this decision. The Army developed the E-IBCT program in an effort to accelerate fielding of key network and sensor capabilities. This decision allows the Army to pursue an acquisition approach enabling the continued development of the tactical network.

The Army remains committed to providing soldiers with the most effective equipment available. These standards require diligent and informed choices as systems are evaluated, tested and fielded in support of this goal. The decision to conclude the E-IBCT program and shift the remaining elements to other program offices carefully balances military utility, system performance, and affordability with the immediate needs of our warfighters.

By: Brant

$22 billion buys... what, exactly?

DefenseTech has an article about exactly what all that FCS investment bought, and how half of it doesn't work worth a crap.

So what has that $22.6 billion in FCS development money bought? Here’s where it gets real ugly. GAO just came out with its annual assessment of major weapons systems (.pdf) and they looked at the first increment of those spin outs which includes unattended munitions, including the Non-Line-Of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS), sensors, a small hovering drone, a small robot, new radios and software.
The small iRobot-type robot, hundreds of which have been in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, “could not provide infrared imagery necessary to recognize a person at required distances,” GAO said. The hovering “beer keg” is far too noisy, and could only operate for 4 hours before failure, instead of the required 23. The unattended ground sensor was supposed to operate for 127 hours, it only works for 5 hours. Army officials say the images it produces are terrible.
The NLOS-LS, as we’ve written about here, failed in recent tests to hit its intended target in four out of six tries. Army Maj. Gen. Keith Walker, the service’s Future Force Integration Directorate Commander, told us last month he suspects the missiles issues are serious. Remember, most of this stuff has been in development since 2003.
At least the current Army program people are forthcoming. I covered FCS circa 2005–2007 and it was really frustrating to have Boeing and Army people go on-and-on telling you to your face how well the program was performing.

By: Brant

The Future of US Ground Combat Vehicles?

MG(R) Robert Scales has some thoughts on how we should proceed.

First, he admits the key motivator for this article.

This article is a pre-emptive strike, an attempt to offer some ideas about the concept that will define GCV. It’s important from the start to get the concepts right and clearly understood.

He examines why the FCS, uh "tanked."

One reason for the failure of the FCS concept was that it contained too many compromises in an effort to place all mounted combat functions inside a single platform. As one senior veteran of the FCS wars put it to me: “You lose too much when you try to put a tank on top of an ambulance.” To avoid this error, the GCV should be optimized for the common purpose of transporting a squad-sized team to the fight, not just infantry but any small team likely to be placed in harm’s way, such as engineers, military police, psychological operations forces and many others.

And around his specific recommendations (go read the article!) he offers these thoughts

One thing is certain, however: No legacy system, no matter how heavily modified, will meet the needs of all the ground services for operating across the conflict spectrum from irregular to conventional war. The only practical solution is to build the GCV around the concept of a universal small-unit carrier and then stretch the system as far as possible to accommodate other functions. In the near term, the design simply cannot accommodate every possible variant. Thus, the ground services will have to rely on older systems to perform big war tasks until new programs are begun to replace the venerable M1 Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle.

By: Brant

BUB: FCS

News updates on the Future Combat Systems

Official US Army site of FCS
Future Combat Systems at Wikipedia

DoDBuzz talks about how the Pentagon threw FCS a lifeline

The Pentagon gave Boeing a nice Christmas present – approval by the Defense Acquisition Board on Dec. 24 of the remnants of the Future Combat System to equip one Brigade Combat Team for test and evaluation.

This tentatively clears the way for the crucial FCS network to go ahead, as well as technologies such as the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, the Class 1 Block 0 Unmanned Air System, Unattended Ground Sensors and the Non-​​Line of Sight Launch System. But the DAB also imposed important conditions on the Low Rate Initial Production decision, said a source familiar with the program.

And the acquisitions hierarchy is questioning that lifeline

Following Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ cancellation of FCS last year, the Army rolled out a new modernization strategy that included getting at least some of the FCS technologies in development over the past seven years into the hands of soldiers by 2011 and then fielding “capability packages” to combat brigades in two year increments.

Yet, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter’s Acquisition Decision Memorandum giving the go-​​ahead raises some serious questions about the Army’s whole modernization strategy. Carter approved building only enough of the new gear to outfit a single brigade while capping long lead funding for more gear at $70 million and limiting NLOS-​​LS funding at $35 million, until further tests prove the missile works.

Carter told the Army to drop its “system-​​of-​​systems” approach to building complete weapons packages and rush to the field whatever bits and pieces are deemed far enough along to prove useful to soldiers on the battlefield and to delay those components that don’t show promise. “I believe this flexibility will allow the Department to best support Secretary Gates’ direction to “win the wars we are in,”” he wrote.

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StrategyPage has a great analysis of how the Army's transformation moved forward without waiting for FCS to catch up.

Along the way, the American army went through some unexpected, and largely unreported, transformations. First, as the American military has done throughout its history, the army quickly adapted to the conditions it found itself in (in the middle of a major terror campaign), and defended itself, while training the new Iraqi army and police force. This was more difficult because the old army and police were dominated by Sunni Arabs, who were still the enemy and still fighting. But although the army was under heavy attack, their casualty rate was a third of what it had been in Vietnam, Korea and World War II. Better training, tactics, weapons, leadership and equipment was the reason. But that was not the kind of stuff that makes for exciting headlines, so it was ignored. Outside the military, at least.

As the army adapted, it also developed new weapons and equipment (remotely controlled gun turrets, missiles fired from UAVs, GPS guided rockets and shells, jammers to defeat roadside bombs, robots, new armor, new intelligence collection and data mining techniques, MRAPs, and so on.) This was an army of the future, able to not just move more quickly, but also able to evolve new ideas and techniques more rapidly. The army also found that some weapons, like their M-1 tanks and M-2 infantry vehicles were still very relevant.

The army also discovered that there was a down side to lower casualties. Troops were now spending more time in combat than ever before. As was discovered, and documented, during World War II, that the average soldier can only take so much combat (about 200 days worth) before they become psychologically unfit for the battlefield. The army then went on to find ways to delay the onset of this breakdown, and ways to cure it.

While the army was just taking care of business, that made it clear that a lot of Cold War era weapons systems were a waste of money. This led to the cancellation of some expensive systems (the Comanche helicopter, Crusader artillery vehicle, FCS and Land Warrior, just to name the big ones). But not just for the army. It became obvious that the Navy and Air Force, which were much less involved in Iraq, also had a lot of expensive new systems that were out of sync with reality. So DDG-1000 destroyer and the F-22 were sharply cut, and several other systems put on hold, or cancelled.

By: Brant

Checking out the 2010 SecDef Budget

Looking through the 2010 SecDef Budget Statement reveals a lot of interesting tidbits.


The Ford-class carrier program isn't being killed, it's being slowed. It'll cause a brief 2-year gap between the retirement of one carrier and the next one being completed. Waah. We'll only have 10 carrier battle/strike groups instead of 11. The rest of the world can float 10 combined and most of them (UK, France, Spain, Italy etc) are our allies. See Wikipedia's aircraft carrier article for more.


UAVs are fine for ground-support and reconnaissance, but currently lack the ability to fight air-to-air. That doesn't mean we stop R&D on getting there, but it's not operational now, and the best estimates are at least 10-15 years away. It's going to take some very sophisticated AI to get a try unmanned air-to-air capability out there.


One of the biggest arguments in the defense establishment right now is surrounding COIN v conventional warfare, and whether or not they are exclusionary of each other. There are good cases to be made on both sides.

But right now the Gates budget proposes cutting much of our land-force modernization. The FCS program was supposed to replace the M1-series tanks, M2/3-series IFVs, the M113-series APCs, and the M109-series howitzers. While a compelling case can be made that, for their roles, each of them is arguably the top dog worldwide in their respective classes, the truth is these systems are anywhere from 30 years old (M2/3 series) to almost 50 years old (M113 series). By the time the FCS was going to be in wide fielding, those numbers would've gone up to 40 and 60 years, respectively.


With no real follow-on plan for what's going to replace them, the current series of US ground combat vehicles will be in service for at least another 15 years or so. That equates to a primary APC designed in 1960 still being used in 2020. Nowhere in the history of ground warfare do you find vehicles in a first-world Army still in service in its same basic production form for that long. The closest you get are the M50/51 Super Sherman variants the Israelis tricked out from the WWII chassis that were still in use in the early 1980s, and even that isn't a good comparison considering how much the Israelis packed into the original chassis.


I get that there are real budget issues here, and that we can't make everthing a priority. I think the F22 being capped in the 180-range is probably about right. I also think that the F35 being capped for the us in the 200-range is probably right, too. (Neither of those counts include USN/USMC purchases). And we can afford to slow down on a carrier purchase, especially when you factor in the power-projection capability of the LPDs alongside the CVNs.


But slowing the modernization of the land forces is both an easy target and a bad idea, and I'm not saying that just because I'm an Army guy by background. The bottom-line metrics are what they are. We'll be fighting any war between now and 2020 with essentially the same force we designed for 1985 in the Fulda Gap. That's an astounding 35-year modernization gap. Imagine fielding the same Army in 1980 that we used to win WWII, and that's your comparison. And while the US Army had several conflicts between WWII and 1980 (Korea, Vietnam, etc), it's not like we've been sitting still since 1985 either (Panama, Gulf I, Somalia, Balkans, Afghanistan, Gulf II). Are we still ahead of everyone else? Today, yes. But in 2020? Who knows. We haven't sucessfully predicted any of deployments for the last 20+ years, despite a lot of very good knowledge of the world's trouble spots (heck, SPI predicted the implosion of Yugoslavia in their folio game by the same name, back in 1977!). So why would we assume that there won't be a need to replace 40- and 50-year old ground combat equipment between now and whatever our next war is?

More links:
Military Budget Reflects a Shift in U.S. Strategy - NYTimes.com
Gates Seeks Sharp Turn In Spending - washingtonpost.com
Gates axes some costly weapons, emphasizes 'irregular' warfare | csmonitor.com

C4ISR Conference - the afternoon session

First afternoon session
Intel Sharing for Homeland Defense - Michael Noll, Director of Intelligence (J2), U.S. Northern Command/ North American Aerospace Defense Command

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Starts off with the oft-repeated point, that thus far AQ has successfully conducted zero attacks on US homeland since 2001.

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What's the real threat that NorthCom is supposed to spend time on? Terror? Natural disasters? ICBMs?

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How many &%$^# times do you need to remind people to turn off their damn phones?! (Checking mine quickly, of course...)

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Fortunately, my phone was off.
Talking about differences between "Homeland Security" and "Homeland Defense" but I have yet to hear much about the difference between "Homeland Defense" and "Department of Defense"...

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"Homeland Defense" apparently revolving around defense of critical infrastructure. Never got that memo from DHS... would've been nice to know that's their raison d'etre.
Apparently "critical infrastructure" includes nursing homes.

Should DoD get involved? Yes! Never again will we let people drown in nursing homes.

Gee... I seem to remember us telling those people to evacuate and they didn't.

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Talking about using C4ISR assets for homeland missions, like aerial surveillance for firefighting in California: ID hotspots from the air with IR, use live video feeds to overwatch firefighters on the ground, map the post-burn areas for potential mudslide hazards afterwards.

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Important point about who has authority to authorize use of military ISR assets in a homeland defense/security mission. Can you use military assets within US boundaries?

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Apparently, the FAA is not fond of UAVs at all - plays havoc with air traffic control...

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A lot of talk about considerations, but not a lot about actual solutions. Could've been a much better talk about details within specific incidents, rather than just hand-wave over "bridge collapse in Minnesota when the Navy was working for the county sheriff." Why was sheriff in charge? How was that agreement reached? What were implications/ramifications?

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Needed a much more dynamic speaking in the first post-lunch session...

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Next Session
CDR Phil Turner, USN CANES project
SOA-oriented program to get data on boats and share it...

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Current issue is that anyone coming on a boat was required to bring their own systems: hardware, software, etc. That was a lot of time and money and space allocation on the boat.

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Had some issues with ratio between space/capacity and frequency of use. Fleet wanted greater capacity with reduced footprint. Complicating factor is that ships only lay up every 2 years for refit and IT overhauls have to happen then.

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Big wake-up call was when Microsoft stopped supporting Windows NT and it was a huge effort for Navy to overhaul the fleet. Microsoft told Navy to catch up since they were a tiny percentage of Microsoft's overall budget. Navy realized need to get away from being tied to COTS.

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Navy currently trying to migrate away from COTS to GOTS and SOA-based architecture. Move legacy systems and data to the future.

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Navy had a standard of 95% availability on networks, but 1 hour of downtime during a day resulted in 24-hour reset time when underway, and that was unacceptable in the fleet.

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Roadmap has common computing environment online in FY08 and legacy systems collapsing into that thru FY11 when CANES should go live.

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Afloat Core Services (ACS) is basically Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES). Each service building NCES-compliant projects to meet their individual needs. SOA is a migration through iterative process, not a 'lightswitch' where suddenly today you're SOA when yesterday you weren't.

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Example of migration from legacy to SOA environment is the SABRE airline reservation system. SABRE system wasn't changed, but exposed thru SOA to websites like Travelocity.

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18 different architecture and engineering docs over the past 6 months bounced between Navy and industry with monthly updates based on comment/review from subject-matter experts.

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Pilot program has been the Lincoln Strike Group, and reduction in racks/rack space from 18 to 3 equates to space, weight, power on the boats, which is vital when afloat.

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BREAK TIME...

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Keynote Speaker - LTG Sorenson, Army CIO
We're in en era of persistent conflict: globalization, resource competition, WMD proliferation, climate change, failed/failing states, demographic trends. Protracted conflict fueled by these six factors. (ed note: not much in the way of expected conventional warfare there)

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The decade of change: GEN Shinseki (transformational focus - more deployable Army); GEN Schoomaker (operational focus - modularity at brigade/battalion level); GEN Casey (institutional focus - transform enterprise to expeditionary focus)

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4 Army Imperatives: Sustain, Prepare, Reset, Transform
Restore balance between current needs and future force requirements

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Catalysts for change: tansformation from division to brigade-based force; GWOT global fight; CONUS-based force.
Expeditionary Tenet: Short/No-Notice deployments; fight-upon-arrival; Austere operational environment; CONUS-based Army; Operational flexibility with modular taskOrg
Fight-upon-arrival will require overcoming networks challenges given the lack of sufficient bandwidth in conflict zones (ie, no one's laying fiber on the battlefield before we get there - unless we start building services for the enemy...).

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Current networks are all point-to-point in their stovepipes, requiring a lot of bandwidth to remain open in case it's needed, instead of shared bandwidth between many SOA-enabled apps.

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Current LandWarNet organization is expensive and not synchronized and hard to deploy on little notice to austere environment.
Next move is federated systems. Operating principles are to aggregate, consolidate, standardize, modernize.
Goal is an enterprise with global, standardized, protected, economical portfolio of projects.

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Building better connectivity by building centralized data centers that are easier to secure and require smaller footprints.
FY09 start APCs
FY10 SWA and all CONUS servers up
FY11 global system ready, including Pac-rim

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Army KM principles went by too fast for me to type out - there were 14 of them... gimme a break...

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Started a set of AKO-based web forum portals for types of units. Allowed Stryker BDE's to share ideas/info from downrange to home station

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wrap-up slide:
Posturing for persistent conflict; Network service centers (global network enterprise construct); Future data solutions; Shared situational awareness

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Still preaching the SOA gospel during the Q&A, especially as it relates to FCS battle command, and migrating ABCS to FCS SOA.

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GREAT question about how to allow reservists/Guardsmen to bring their personal equipment into armories for weekend drills and use their same equipment they use at home preparing for drill while they're at the units. Currently not allowed to do that, but it's a need, especially given that there's remote access capability from home, but no direct-line access capability at the armory.
Solutions might include thumb-drive keys allowing log-on, or CAC-card readers, something similar.

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So apparently there's a broad-strokes plan to migrate the data, but not a lot of details in the Q&A.

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I don't know if I'm going to do this for day 2 or not. It's not a bad way to take notes, but gets tiring trying to keep up.
By: Brant

Canada Bulks Up

Canada's Conservative government is reinforcing the armed forces with a massive acquisition program:

Certainly, the key ingredients for success are there. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government intends to invest CAD50 billion (USD43 billion) in new equipment over the next 20 years and has already awarded major contacts for four C-17 and 17 C-130J transport aircraft, 100 Leopard 2A4 and 2A6 main battle tanks (MBTs), M777 155 mm howitzers, mine-protected vehicles, heavy logistics trucks, upgrades of the 12 Halifax-class frigates and the lease of Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
In addition, the Conservative government's planned acquisitions include 16 CH-47 helicopters, more UAVs, three Joint Support Ships (JSS), six to eight Polar Class 5 Arctic/Offshore Patrol Vessels (A/OPVs) and 2,300 medium support vehicles.
The government's Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS) also outlines longer-term plans to buy 15 new surface combatants, 17 fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft, 65 next-generation fighter aircraft, 10-12 maritime patrol aircraft and a new family of land combat vehicles.

Canada is seriously upgrading their defence equipment, and doing so with very little of the political acquisition infighting that's currently plaguing the American military establishment. (KC-X, FCS, et al)

Updated
The Liberals in Canada have released their counter-plan, which apparently includes even more budget cuts to the Canadian military, potentially depriving them of everything up to, and including, their underwear:

Canadian Liberal leader Stephane Dion refused on Wednesday to rule out renewed cuts to the military if he defeats Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper in next week's election

By: Widow 6-7

FCS Spiraling... out of control?

The Army's FCS plans were not only an ambitious rewiring of the US military, but a change to the entire acquisitions program. Rather than build and buy large and complex complete systems, the Army has created projects with "spirals" which deploy capabilities as they finish their deployment within the overall suite of capabilities. The new FCS program is one of the first to "spiral" the technology, and the first few components are starting to be unveiled:

Top U.S. Army officials on Monday said a $160 billion Future Combat Systems modernization program managed by Boeing Co and SAIC Inc was 'on budget, on track,' but could see changes over time.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said the Army was going through a detailed review of 14 separate weapon systems included in the program to ensure that the technologies involved were on schedule.

Now, not everyone is thrilled with the progress of the FCS, especially as the project management seems to be run by the same people who stand to gain from the longer deployment horizon now associated with the FCS:

In a little-noticed report issued on June 7, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, warned that Boeing's influence over FCS poses "significant risks to the Army's ability to provide oversight." Because of the program's complexity and cost, GAO auditors urged the Office of the Secretary of Defense to assume direct supervision. The projected bill for FCS through 2030 has already more than doubled, to $230 billion. Boeing would receive an undetermined fraction of that. The estimated price tag has ballooned even as former military officials and other experts question whether the ambitious program can accomplish its goal of allowing U.S. forces to cut through the confusion of battle.
FCS "misunderstands the frailty of the technologies, the limitations of the sensors, what they can and can't and never see," says Winslow T. Wheeler, a former GAO auditor of military programs who now directs the Center for Defense Information, a private research group in Washington. U.S. Army and Boeing officials counter that FCS remains on track and that the Pentagon hasn't ceded too much influence to the company. "We think [FCS] is going to revolutionize how we conduct warfare," says Lieutenant General Stephen M. Speakes, who heads the program to outfit 15 combat brigades, or about 60,000 soldiers, with the innovative gear.

By: Brant