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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