Hellfish
09-21-2005, 09:39 AM
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2005/oct/defense_watch.htm
A looming defense budget crunch, a shift in military priorities and growing uneasiness about the state of technology are conspiring to disrupt the Army’s largest ever procurement project, the Future Combat Systems.
The early signs that the Army began to seriously question the merits of FCS came more than a year ago, when Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, warned that FCS would have to perform better than the Abrams tank. The FCS family of 18 vehicles, which are to be connected by a single command-and-control network, originally was intended to replace every combat platform the Army operates today.
The Army so far has committed $21 billion to the program, and expects to spend at least $100 billion more by the time all the pieces of FCS enter service in 2016.
Congress, for its part, recently began to sour on FCS after having stood behind it for the past three years. The House proposed cutting $400 million from the $3.4 billion FCS budget the Army requested for 2006. Earlier this year, the Armed Services Committee chastised the program in a lengthy report.
The committee says it is disappointed by rising costs and failures to deliver the promised technologies. Between fiscal years 2004 and 2009, the estimated cost of FCS rose from $19 billion to $30 billion. Other problems that HASC highlighted include “reliance on immature technology, overdependence on contractors for program management and a lack of government systems engineering and cost analysis expertise.”
A looming defense budget crunch, a shift in military priorities and growing uneasiness about the state of technology are conspiring to disrupt the Army’s largest ever procurement project, the Future Combat Systems.
The early signs that the Army began to seriously question the merits of FCS came more than a year ago, when Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, warned that FCS would have to perform better than the Abrams tank. The FCS family of 18 vehicles, which are to be connected by a single command-and-control network, originally was intended to replace every combat platform the Army operates today.
The Army so far has committed $21 billion to the program, and expects to spend at least $100 billion more by the time all the pieces of FCS enter service in 2016.
Congress, for its part, recently began to sour on FCS after having stood behind it for the past three years. The House proposed cutting $400 million from the $3.4 billion FCS budget the Army requested for 2006. Earlier this year, the Armed Services Committee chastised the program in a lengthy report.
The committee says it is disappointed by rising costs and failures to deliver the promised technologies. Between fiscal years 2004 and 2009, the estimated cost of FCS rose from $19 billion to $30 billion. Other problems that HASC highlighted include “reliance on immature technology, overdependence on contractors for program management and a lack of government systems engineering and cost analysis expertise.”