Posted on 07/19/2009 12:51:24 PM PDT by GOPGuide
On June 23rd, the U.S. Army announced the official cancellation of its FCS (Future Combat Systems). This was a program of next generation weapons, vehicles and other equipment that was going to cost over $160 billion. The cancellation was no surprise. A year ago, the army dropped any pretence of trying to roll out its new FCS stuff as a complete package. That's mainly because the Department of Defense had ordered that FCS items be readied for combat use as soon as possible. The future will arrive piecemeal, as had been actually happening ever since September 11, 2001, and especially since early 2003. When the Cold War ended in 1991, the army took stock and decided that its future combat vehicles would be smaller and lighter, relying more on missiles, better communications and lots of electronic gadgets. All this was called FCS, and it would change everything. Then came 2003, and three American divisions invaded Iraq and, within three weeks, had seized Baghdad and conquered the country. When the dust had settled, and the battles were carefully examined, it was discovered that the key to rapid victory were the "obsolete" M-1 tanks and M-2 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, doing what they were designed to do.
This didn't faze the FCS developers, for the 20-30 ton FCS vehicles could have done the same thing. The key was being resistant to the RPG rockets, which the M-1 and M-2 were. But that got people thinking. We got all these M-1s and M-2s, and money is tight, and the FCS crowd are asking for over $100 billion to buy new armored vehicles that might not be as effective. Why not just keep upgrading the armor we got, and we know works? This bold idea, reeking of practicality and thrift, received a cool reception. The FCS proponents had spent years of effort to get enough political support for the money to start flowing. And now these retards, with their experience in Iraq, want to face the future with refurbs? The "retards", in the end, had the stronger argument.
The FCS was seen as a breakthrough system. Actually, it's over fifty systems (depending on how you count them), and a lot of technologies that haven't been invented yet. Many in the army were unsure about how FCS would do in combat. This "tried and true" crew responded with an offer to try out each of the new technologies as they become available. Whenever that might be. Eventually, the brass at the Pentagon agreed with this. Meanwhile, FCS faced a more formidable problem than reality checks after 2003; lack of money. Not only was Iraq reminding everyone how well existing armor works, but it sucked up the billions that FCS was hoping to feast on.
FCS was nothing if not ambitious, with its plan to militarize many new technologies before anyone else did, and give the army powerful armored vehicles that could be airlifted anywhere in the world in a few days, and then be easier to maintain because the FCS vehicles guzzled a lot less fuel. But that depends on the air force coming up with more transports (C-17s), something the air force has been reluctant to do. The air force has its own FCS (the F-22 and F-35), and that's where all their money is going.
What a lot of officers, and troops, began to see was a need for evolution, not revolution. There's no longer any big land army out there that needs to be shut down. The Red Army is gone, the Chinese army is largely obsolete and shrinking, the North Korean army is falling apart, and the Iranians are more concerned about another civil war. The few nations that are still building new tanks are trying to keep up with the M-1, not leap-frog it using unproven technologies. Continued efforts to keep FCS alive ended up becoming evolutionary as well, because the money just wasn't there for anything radically new. Thus the M-1, M-2, and Stryker rapidly evolved, and proved that, as weapons, they were far from dead. NLOS-C, a new self-propelled artillery system, was built from the wreckage of the cancelled Crusader system. While technically FCS, it was more of an evolved system, and it was the only FCS vehicle to survive.
But there was another factor at work in undermining FCS, and it was called RFI (Rapid Fielding Initiative). One of the little noticed after-effects of the Afghanistan campaign was the establishment, in early 2002, of the Rapid Fielding Initiative. This was an army program that recognized that American army troops did not always have the best weapons and equipment. RFI was intended to do something about that, and do it quickly.
You could see RFI coming. There were three existing trends pushing it. First, there was a lot more new technology coming on the market that troops could use. Some of it came from the companies that created equipment for the hiking and camping market (boots, rucksacks, all manner of outdoor clothing). Other stuff came from hunting suppliers (new gun sights). There was a flood of new electronic gear, like lighter and more reliable GPS receivers and computer gear.
The second trend was that the troops were all on the Internet, and like never before, were in touch with each other via military related message boards, listservs, Facebook pages and chat rooms. Troops have always been coming up with new ideas about how to use civilian gear for military purposes. But before the Internet came along, each soldiers discovery spread slowly. Now, information about new discoveries gets spread army wide within hours.
Finally, there was SOCOM (Special Operations Command), which had long possessed its own RFI powers, and budget to go with it. SOCOM could buy neat new weapons, as well as equipment. SOCOM could also afford to buy expensive stuff (night vision gear and satellite phones). SOCOM personnel were on the Internet as well. By 2001, thousands of soldiers were speculating on the Internet how much more effective they could be if they had SOCOMs freedom to quickly get new stuff that allowed them to do their job better.
When American troops went into Afghanistan in early October, 2001, it was several hundred SOCOM Special Forces operators that did most of the work. Once the media got to the Special Forces guys, stories started coming out about the non-standard gear they were using. American infantrymen being sent to Afghanistan saw those stories, as did people in the Pentagon. Connections started to get made. Among other things, someone in the Pentagon realized that the army would not look too good if too many journalists interviewed too many troops who had bought civilian equipment with their own money. Especially if the new equipment, from a civilian supplier, was obviously superior to the stuff the government was giving the troops. With this kind of incentive, the Rapid Fielding Initiative was quickly set up and became a big success.
The Iraq campaign gave the RFI another workout. A typical incident involved all the raids troops had to make and the problems with getting through sturdy locked doors. Some troops knew of special equipment police departments used, others knew of special equipment fire fighters used to break into burning buildings. The proper equipment was soon in the troops hands, and many lives, both American and Iraqi, were saved. Stories came back from Afghanistan and Iraq about how great the RFI gear was and all was well with the troops and the brass in the Pentagon.
So eventually FCS became, in effect, a part of RFI. It's another example of what happens when carefully constructed plans encounter reality. Reality always wins. In this case, FSC as a program was killed by RFI, while FSC as a collection of good, or at least promising, ideas, lived on.
They are old as hell, rebuilt several times over, and it's time to get a newer turbine that uses less fuel, have better self diagnostics, are quieter yet, more reliable....etc. Many of the pieces for the AGT1500 have to be “re-manufactured” at this point, with some of the original firms behind the motor not even in existence anymore. What we're using is essentially turbine technology from the 60s with the exception of some of the electronics/updates they made. But in it's basic design, it's an ancient motor. We can do sooooooooo much better today if we developed a newer turbine based on some other existing helicopter engine that incorporates some of the newer technologies in how turbines are designed, materials, and electronics.
The point I was trying to make is that conceptually the turbine is a good thing, not a bad one. You can take nearly any argument and use what is actually a net benefit and argue the opposite. Think of Iraq and the concept of taking the war to the enemy. This same argument can be turned around and used against the Iraq war, stating that before we invaded, AQ wasn't there. Likewise some try to argue that the concept of a turbine is a bad idea and advocate the use of a diesel which CANNOT deliver the power as efficiently under load, CANNOT deliver the same power given a weight or volume, CANNOT deal with extreme climates as well........... The Bradley (M2) will run into problems from dust and sand, extreme heat or cold before the M1 will, and it has a name brand industrial grade bad ass 903 ci diesel. The turbine concept is the better way to go for a whole slew of reasons to include reliability and maintenance. Ever see how tight and inaccessible a diesel power pack is in some of these other MBTs? How much they can get too without pulling it all together?
The M1 wasn't designed to be a pillbox, a mobile bunker at a TCP. Though it is used as such today, that's not what the tank was designed for nor what he's really good at. He was designed for maneuver warfare, a mobile defense, fighting against other armored vehicles on the rolling Western plains of Europe. While we design things more open ended than many of our allies because we are in S. Korea, Sinai......... we are a more global force with a broad spectrum of uses, the M1 was NEVER made to do what he's doing today in Iraq. Like the Lem on Apollo 13, he's out of his role, but he's doing OK at what we're using hm for today. Bottom line, the M1 was designed for armored warfare, to bust up T72s, BMP2s.......... as the Red horde comes across the border. Everything about him was made to kill other tanks, originally.
His fast reload times, thermals, later the CITV, HMG and main gun which allow dual target engagement (Which your crew practiced at gunnery- i.e. engage an enemy MBT and BTR simultaneously), stand off range, shoot on the move capability, the type of armor and where it is, the type of ammunition we carried and what it can do, the stab system, turret speed (very fast) so if I see a TGT I can lay on him before he can on me............. The M1 was made to kill Soviet armor not much unlike the AH64, which today is also struggling to find a role, seeing how the “smallest” weapon he has is a 30mm chain gun with exploding rounds. We are adapting these machines to meet the needs we have today, with new Hellfires that are made for greater effects on buildings, upgrades that make the M1 more useful in an urban environment doing what we do today.......... But many of the weapons we have: MLRS (M270), AH64, or the M1 were designed for an armored slugfest where the mechanized forces of the Warsaw Pact and NATO duke it out. That said, because he's so massively armored and the design is very robust (i.e. no internal stowage of ammo, fuel outside the bulkheads, low spalling inner skin, made to take T10 mines and survive........) makes him a decent mobile pillbox even though that's not what he was meant to do. He's very survivable against many IEDs, even though that's not really what he was meant to deal with. How useful do you think the M270 has been in Iraq ever since 2003 when major ground combat ended? How many times has DPICM been fired since 2004?
The M1 is being used in a way for which he was never intended and he's doing good. The high fuel consumption in idle (which is a fact), is a by product of his design and what he was meant for originally. But the bottom line is that the turbine is a good thing, just not this moment are its advantages brought to light, but they were in 1991 and 2003 during the major ground combat phases when many M1s were used for what they were intended to do.
The Israelis learned in Lebanon 2006 that heavy armor (not “light” armored vehicles) are still the kings of land war. Like us, they went into Lebanon thinking that the best way to fight in urban warfare is to ditch heavy MBTs and go in light. Now that they have learned their leason, they are rearming their MBTs for urban warfare and ditching the Stryker vehicle types.
Red6, How does the Abrams compare to the German Leopard 2a6?
Also, how concerned should we be about Russian MBTs like the T-90 and upcoming T-95?
I haven’t been paying much attention to the Stryker but I thought it was doing well. No?
It works well as a light vehicle, it just isn’t as good at urban warfare as a badass 70 ton Abrams.
Outstanding post.
Regards,
We need a FCS.
Technology is rapidly making the old massively armored MBTs of the past obsolete. Developments in artillery, aircraft, mine, anti tank rockets and missiles in regards to:
Cost
Effectiveness of penetration and behind armor effect (Warhead)
Guidance
Reliability
As well as top/dive attack technology, low signature at launch, small back blast, fire and forget capabilities have made the old massively armored beasts a relict of the past.
You cannot armor a vehicle from every direction like the front turret on an M1. The idea of using brute “armor” to protect oneself on the battlefield is today in its waning days. Like the advent of the tank which changed warfare from the trenches to maneuver, today the cheap, reliable, and highly effective technologies regards ATGMs, mines, arty dispensed anti tank weapons, and air dropped or launched systems is turning the concept of armor on it’s head. Those that deny this reality are living with the idea of a frontal assault after the advent of the machine gun. They are still thinking trench warfare, after the advent of the tank. Their thinking is surpassed by the technologies ALREADY proliferating today.
We need to rethink armored maneuver warfare, and we need to do it quickly! Otherwise we will get caught with our pants down.
Politicians think short term, and today other issues like the economy dominate the news/press. We have a liberal government that sees these wars and the DoD at large as a giant cow they want to milk and a slow bleed has already begun with cuts on FCS, F22, Zumwald, missile defense, our nuclear arsenal............ However, we are setting ourselves up for failure. We NEED to think about a replacement of the M1, M2, M88, M113, M270...... the entire fleet of armor. Conceptually they are not what we need and they are technologically passed over by time. What we will do is essentially attempt to adapt vehicles made to fight a cold war, designs when the RPG7 made it’s debut in 1967 for wars we’re fighting in Afghanistan, and against modern weapons that come from the top etc. It’s not going to work well!
The RPG made its debut in Vietnam, and that’s why we we put fences around our armored vehicles. The entire Chobham concept of armor we had was made to effectively protect against weapon systems that were new at that time. The problem is that like the M60 was inadequate in it’s protection after the advent of the mass proliferated RPG, today the M1 is inadequate because of the technology that allows these warheads to be so damn effective, come from the top, have tandem warheads, reach out to 5000 meters on the ground and 8000 to 10000 from a helicopter, low back blast (fired from small enclosed area), low signature (hard to detect), highly reliable, and worst of all ****cheap****. These weapons are proliferating and even the non-guided long range systems, the simple old RPG nowadays has advanced warheads with enormous capabilities.
The need to penetrate the enemy, to achieve shock, get through obstacle belts, to maneuver on the ground against other enemy forces remains. But how we do it needs to be rethought, like NOW.
Forget the T-whatever or Western tanks to include the M1. They are ill suited to deal with the diverse missions we have today, they can’t operate in most the terrain, they can’t be moved to a theater of operation easily or quickly, they are logistically difficult to support, and the new threat systems out there is making much of their armor less and less significant by the day. We need to develop something that can do what we need it to do today, post Cold War and to deal with the new threats. This will probably end up being something like a FCS, where you have a baseline armor combined with an active protective system, improved mobility, signature reduction, and unprecedented situational awareness. They might have killed FCS today, but all they did was kill a bunch of US troops. Someday, not even in the distant future like the sudden epiphany that we need more armored HMMWVs (We recognized the need in 1993 already) or Interceptor body armor (1997 we already had initial low rate production but it was to expensive for an administration talking about a “Peace Dividend”), things all deemed to expensive years past, we’ll recognize the need “after” the obvious is explained to the American public by way of dead troops. Then a politician will throw himself in front of this issue. -IMHO
The Stryker does well because while some talk crap, he’s actually quite well protected against an IED, better than a HMMWV, Bradley, M113 or many other vehicles and is well suited for what we do.
The problem is that what you end up doing in a peace-enforcement or many other missions other than war, requires you to drive hundreds of miles, doing convoy security, patrols........ Tracked vehicles don’t really have an advantage in the city other than they can pivot-steer and the tracks are less prone to Molotov-cocktails etc. You don’t really have an advantage with a tracked vehicle until you pass about the 35 ton mark when it comes to capability in terrain (generally speaking when it comes to design). The wheeled vehicles give you better fuel economy, lower maintenance when used a lot, they are quieter, and they go faster as well as having higher ground clearance. What use is an M1 that can’t keep up with a convoy? The most significant factor in over pressure protection from a blast bellow is distance! That’s why all these anti-mine/IED protective vehicle may they be US, South African....whatever, sit so high off the ground. The Stryker actually gives you a very high degree of protection, but the Stryker is also used in those areas where these IED/mines are a major issue.
Hint: The Germans never lost a MBT or Tornado in combat, they also never used them or even really employed them in any hot spot where they could get lost. When you drive a Stryker with convoys day in and out, use them in cities and areas that are known “hot spots” and then loose some, it’s not because the vehicle is defective as some dim-wits think, but because you are exposing them to risk. They’re being used. Even our M1 spends much his time sitting in a FOB somewhere. Tracks don’t last long when driving hundreds of miles on pavement, tanks suck fuel, they are too slow, they can’t carry troops........... they are loud, you can’t move them around quickly within the theater. The weapon systems they carry don’t bring you much. The most effective weapon on an M1 is the commanders 50cal and coax. The Stryker isn’t the end all answer, but he’s definitely needed and a decent answer for what we’re trying to accomplish. -IMHO
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