Modern War Toys Play Defense (The U.S. Army has big plans to modernize its fleet, but...)

The U.S. Army has big plans to modernize its fleet, but faces some heavy fighting ahead.

In March 2002, 1,700 U.S. troops brought the full power of American military technology to bear on 100 square kilometers of rough mountainside in Afghanistan. Unmanned aerial drones, sensor-laden ground robots, and satellites scoured the Shar-I-Kot valley for an estimated 1,000 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters hiding in crags and caves.

But the electronic eyes did not see all. While the United States claimed victory in the battle 18 days after it started, nine U.S. soldiers were killed and scores—possibly hundreds—of enemy fighters escaped.

The U.S. Department of Defense should remember Operation Anaconda as it moves forward with a plan to transform the U.S. Army into a networked force of flying drones, robots, and smart sensors. Known as Future Combat Systems (FCS), the scheme is the largest federal and private-sector undertaking since NASA landed a man on the moon. Started in 2003, FCS will require 37 million lines of code, more than 300 subcontractors, and at least nine more years to finish its first phase. No one knows how much FCS will cost in the end, but estimates range from $108 billion to $450 billion.

Its backers say FCS is worth a massive price tag. The ultimate strategic prize on the battlefield is to know more about your enemy than he knows about you, and FCS is a bid to give U.S. forces that advantage wherever and whenever they fight. An Army white paper from 2004 puts it this way: “see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.”

In addition to making commanders omniscient, the Army’s other claims about FCS are formidable. Combat time will be cut in half, whether the fight is a block-by-block urban battle or a peacekeeping mission in a failed nation. The cumbersome retinue of cooks, mechanics, and other non-fighting soldiers that trails behind a fighting army will be reduced by 30 to 70 percent. But perhaps FCS’ biggest selling point—at a time when the U.S. is fighting open-ended insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan—is the boast that it will slash the number of soldiers killed in action by 60 to 80 percent.

To win this state of permanent battlefield superiority, the Pentagon envisions 18 interconnected platforms all communicating on the same war zone network. The platforms include four types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), three unmanned ground vehicles, ground sensors, medical evacuation vehicles, tanks, and troop carriers. At the top of the FCS pyramid is the soldier himself—armed, wired, and nearly beyond the reach of enemy fire.

The loose confederation of companies and universities needed to make FCS a reality is as sprawling as the plan is ambitious. While it is managed for the Pentagon by Boeing and SAIC, other companies—Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, all top five Pentagon contractors—have a piece of the FCS action.

FCS money is flowing to small startups such as Dust Networks, a three-year-old sensor maker based in Hayward, California. Universities are also benefiting, particularly those that have strong robotics and computer science departments such as Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Maryland, and Stanford University.

In October, this far-flung assembly of subcontractors will have a first chance to field test some of their contributions to FCS. With Humvees standing in for future tanks and mobile cannons, the Army plans to test the most bedeviled element of FCS: Jitters.

Never ones to be deterred by an odd or unfortunate acronym, the Pentagon coined the term Jitters for the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS). It’s a seven-year-old, $15.6-billion project, also managed by Boeing, to replace the 750,000 radios now used by the U.S. military with a single software-based radio that will allow the military to communicate across spectrums. Jitters isn’t an official part of FCS, but FCS won’t be able to work without it. And Jitters is in serious trouble. “If they don’t do something with Jitters, it will just be another monumental waste of Defense Department money,” says Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski, the director of force transformation at the Pentagon until he retired in February.

What went wrong? Mr. Cebrowski says Jitters reached the brink of obsolescence because the Pentagon insisted that every requirement of the original Jitters plan be met before new radios could be purchased. Put prototypes of the network into Iraq now, he says. They don’t have to be perfect, just let the soldiers in the field work out the kinks.

In April, the Pentagon made its concern about Jitters official by sending a so-called “show cause” letter to Boeing, essentially demanding that the company prove why it should keep the contract. Boeing officials say Jitters is being restructured so that only the elements connected to FCS will be developed, and the Army will decide the fate of the program in August.

Jitters is just one part of a four-pronged program to improve communications in the Army. Jitters, the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T)—a high-capacity information network for command units—and a family of smaller radios will be integrated by a new middleware platform that the Army likens to a massive martial version of Microsoft Windows called the System of System Common Operating Environment, or SOSCOE.

In early July, the Government Accounting Office, the U.S. Congress’ research arm, issued a report that found that all of these programs are in danger of not being ready in time for FCS deadlines. “They continue to meet a stringent set of user requirements, steep technical challenges, and stringent timeframes,” says the GAO.

Even more troubling, the National Security Agency found that the current Jitters design “is not sufficient to meet security requirements in an open networked environment.”

For its part, Boeing says it expects Jitters to be ready in time to take its place as a pillar of FCS. “I am worried about JTRS, but it is just one thing,” says Ray Carnes, Boeing’s deputy director of command and control systems for FCS. Mr. Carnes says the real challenge will be blending the transportation of data with war-fighting software and hardware, from handheld radios to electronic eyes and cannons. This has never been done before, and it represents the biggest challenge facing FCS. Mr. Cebrowski agrees: “The most difficult part of FCS is achieving network stability.”

Doubts about the network fuel the determination of the project’s many foes to scale back or even extinguish FCS altogether. Since its inception two years ago, FCS has already undergone two major revisions at the request of Congress. In August 2004, the FCS timeline was accelerated to deliver new weapons technology to soldiers in the field by 2008, instead of 2011. And in April, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), a longtime critic of Boeing and its many Pentagon contracts, forced the Army to rewrite its deal with Boeing from one that used a little-known type of contract intended for small businesses to a more traditional arrangement between the Pentagon and a major contractor.

Still, the chorus of critics has not been silenced. Before FCS is put to the test on an ersatz battlefield in October, it will face heavy shelling from Capitol Hill as early as August. There is legislation in the House Armed Services Committee’s Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee that pares $400 million from FCS’s $3.4-billion 2006 budget. Cutting cash now could spell doom for FCS, says both the Army and Boeing. “It’s pretty apocalyptic,” says Randy Harrison, a Boeing spokesman. Mr. Harrison adds that Boeing, the Pentagon’s second-largest contractor with $17.1 billion in awards in 2004, has already started a full-bore lobbying campaign to crush the proposed cutback.

While lawmakers and lobbyists clash over FCS’ financial future, another debate—one with roots that predate FCS by centuries—is taking place inside the community of military academics and thinkers. Even if FCS does solve its daunting technical problems on budget and on time, will it help the U.S. win the wars it is likely to fight in coming years? Or, as the question has been phrased for millennia, how much should an army spend on technology versus flesh-and-blood troops?

Consider the recent wars the U.S. fought to topple regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, says Stephen Biddle, a professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. Technology didn’t prevent a skilled army of al-Qaeda fighters from using the Earth’s natural cover “to get out from under” highly advanced surveillance devices. And an unskilled army, such as the one that mounted a lame defense of Saddam Hussein in 2003, can be quashed without spending $120 billion on robots, drones, and sensors. The lesson: “Skill trumps technology,” says Mr. Biddle.

Mr. Biddle also says that robots could become too expensive to field once enemies begin targeting them with the same determination they now reserve for human fighters. The Packbot, iRobot’s small unmanned ground vehicle (SUGV) now serving in Iraq, costs around $90,000. iRobot, which also makes the Roomba, a self-propelled vacuum, is designing SUGVs for FCS. “Sooner or later, we will run out of robots, or we will run out of money,” says Mr. Biddle.

However, Mr. Cebrowski argues that if FCS comes together as it is supposed to, it will be sufficiently agile to win any war, be it in Indonesian jungles or on the road to Pyongyang. “You cannot accurately predict your next fight, no smart enemy will allow you to do so,” he says.

Making the U.S. military light, swift, and lethal has been a cornerstone of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to modernize the nation’s war machine. But FCS’ critics say its proposed weapons are too heavy. The original idea was to be able to unload a single FCS-mounted combat system (essentially a tank) or a non-line-of-sight cannon full of gas and ammo from a single C-130 cargo plane onto a battlefield, ready to fight.

Because of armor requirements, a problem that has vexed the Pentagon in Iraq, “they are not even close to that,” says Bradley Curran, a defense industry analyst at Frost and Sullivan. Boeing says it is counting on new technologies such as reactive armor and vehicle-mounted anti-missile systems to provide the same level of defense without the weight.

As FCS heads into what promises to be a rocky few months both in Congress and on the proving ground, Boeing is adamant that FCS undergo more scrutiny and oversight than any other project the company is working on with the Pentagon. Army officials get updates every day on what parts of FCS are on schedule, what parts are not, and what steps are being taken to remedy delays. The new contract announced in April calls for top Army brass to conduct an in-depth review of FCS three times a year.

Mr. Cebrowski, who speaks with the bluntness of a retired vice admiral with more than forty years in uniform, says FCS can go either way. He says there are signs that FCS and its managers in the private sector and the Army are sloughing off old, inefficient ways of building new weapons. But ill-fated programs like Jitters show that the Pentagon and its contractors have serious problems. The fix, he says, is to put new technology in the hands of soldiers as rapidly as possible. “The forces can mature the technology in the field,” he says. There is no tougher testing site than the Shar-I-Kot valley.

But ill-fated programs like Jitters show that the Pentagon and its contractors have serious problems. The fix, he says, is to put new technology in the hands of soldiers as rapidly as possible. “The forces can mature the technology in the field,” he says. There is no tougher testing site than the Shar-I-Kot valley.

I thought that this was how the military liked to do things these days--rapid prototype.

It makes me wonder if this is a huge hidden casualty from the current war. That is, if the Pentagon deploys a prototype, are they going to get fried in the media if it doesn't meet all specfications out of the box? It really does seem that the MSM are forcing a less-than-ideal procurement strategy.

It sounds like design-creep has beset the program.

Grandiose information systems are very difficult to build and integrate. That's aside from avoiding disruption from sophisticated enemies like China.

I think they'll end up scaling back and refocusing on a system that integrates more at unit-level, not trying to track every soldier on the field.

I can't even imagine how you'd start writing the software for such a monster. It's difficult to see how you'd ever validate it or really test it adequately. Or maintain the software at reasonable cost once it was written. The scale of software required would be far more demanding than even that which the old Star Wars programs would have entailed.

"Doubts about the network fuel the determination of the project’s many foes to scale back or even extinguish FCS altogether."

I'll Take EXTENGUISH the Future Combat System for 200 Alex.

Dumsfeld MUST GO!

if it were up to Rummy, 30 years from now we will be fighting Chinese tanks in high tech Golfcarts.

Iraq has shown that even in low-tech insurgent warfare that Heavy Armor/Heavy Mech is still the KING of the battlefield.

Most of our fatalities are coming from our guys traveling in light armored vehicles - the very same vehicles Dumsfeld wants to trade in our fleet of Abrams tanks for.

We've lost 1800 troops and 70% of them came from IEDs blowing up light armor humvees.

If light armor is being ripped to shreds by camel jockies with primitive RPGs what will our magnificent "FCS" vehicles do against Chinese tanks, IFVs and heavy artillery?

I can see the argument for building medium tanks that can cross bridges that aren't strong enough to carry an Abrams, but to replace the Abrams with some crappy Stryker gizmo.

Rumsfeld needs to be fired soon before he destroys the US Army.

It CAN'T be done

What happened to America's can do spirit? Don't make the mistake of fighting prior year wars. Robots don't need much armor as there are no expensive to train humans inside to protect. It's much cheaper to lose 10 robots than one soldier. Most technology breakthroughs come from military spending on technology and it should be encouraged.

The long term benefits of military technology investment are many. In the future these robots will be domesticated to do farming, manufacturing, border patrol. We won't need an influx of immigrants to support our retirees. This high tech spending is key to America's future.

What we're witnessing is the rise of the machine. Robots are evolving, on the battlefield as they always do, much faster than humans ever will. It won't happen overnight but someday robots will exceed the average human soldiers ability to kill.

Do you have a job in the military? Your interest in hiring more humans seems personal.

This month's Small Arms Review has an article on these Talon robots.

They've been used a while for explosive disposal but armed variants are starting to get issued to Stryker units. They can be mounted on the hull of a Styker or a humvee and act as a remote controlled turret, or they can roll around on the ground under their own power.

Between the Talon and the armed Predator drones looks like we're going Terminator on those jihadis.

"I can't even imagine how you'd start writing the software for such a monster. It's difficult to see how you'd ever validate it or really test it adequately. Or maintain the software at reasonable cost once it was written. The scale of software required would be far more demanding than even that which the old Star Wars programs would have entailed."

"It CAN'T be done, it's a crock of Sh!t from the Neofrauds in the Pentagon."

----

Nonsense. JSTARS is a successful C3I program that put the air assets on on total information basis, and is based on 20 year old technology.

This idea seems to be to apply this C3I "total informatino awareness" concept at street-level fighting. harder, maybe, but far from impossible, and with 2010 technology, we could do far far more than we could even imagine now.

Managing 37 million lines of code? Tough, but most PCs have about that much lines of code in the programs loaded. You manage the complexity through modular systems that are tested ... in the field.

I'm in the camp of "put something out there and evolve it".
The failed programs are the gold-plated ones that try to over-deliver.... Just do some good, like maybe get some real sensors that can do sentry duty and are plugged into a net for battallion-level info-sharing, and see if it helps.

Or get UAVs and ground combats systems plugged in so ground teams can work hand-in-glove with UAV observation and combat assets.

As you get pieces working, or new sensors, robots, add them in then get the integration done.

""If it were up to Rummy, 30 years from now we will be fighting Chinese tanks in high tech Golfcarts."

"LOL! Too true!"

That's not the funny part ... the funny part is ... WE WILL WIN."

How are light armored vehicles from FCS going to kill Chinese MBTs when illiterate Muslim goons have killed over 1000 GIs with cheap RPGs?

The giant sucking sound you hear from the DoD coffers to fund this is coming from Boeing management.

"It's much cheaper to lose 10 robots than one soldier. Most technology breakthroughs come from military spending on technology and it should be encouraged."

Robots are more expensive than regular ground soldiers, and the technology won't exist in our lifetimes when Robots replace men as ground troops.

"Do you have a job in the military?"

No, but I study military procurement/weapons development as an amateur when I have spare time. Anyway my current job pays far better than anything I would be earning in the military.

"Your interest in hiring more humans seems personal."

I am NOT critizing Dumsfeld for lack of personel, I critizing his procurement and organizational moves with the military.

I never thought we needed 300,000 troops to take over Iraq in 2003 because it was obvious that we would be fighting a hopelessly weak opponent.

What I don't like is Rumsfeld's procurement priorities.

Rumsfeld wants to cut purchases of the F-22, Virginia Class nuclear submarines (which we desperately need to replace the aging Los Angeles class subs), send the Abrams to the scrapyard, and DDX destroyers so that we can replace them with "Transformational" weapons that can fight crappy Islamonazi militaries but are useless against a modernizing Chinese Military.

I wish that Bush had made Rumsfeld Secretary of State and Powell as SecDef than the other way around. Even though Powell is a Pacifist, he still would do a better job at making sure our military is still designed to fight other first class military opponents rather than terrorists.

"How are light armored vehicles from FCS going to kill Chinese MBTs..."

Same way our JDAMs killed multiple armored divisions of Saddam's division in Operation Iraqi Freedom with nary a casualty. Same way we felled the Taliban with just a few hundred men on the ground, supported by incredible air assets. Only using robotic ground and UAV assets as well. Information-awareness beats brute strength every time, true since David felled Goliath.

The only thing that would worry me would be if China implemented an FCS before we did.

"when illiterate Muslim goons have killed over 1000 GIs with cheap RPGs?"

hmmm, doesnt that actually make the point about the futility of armor, given that the enemy has none?
(btw, the killer is *not* RPGs but IEDs planted stealthily by an enemy that then withdraws. )

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