CHARLESTON, S.C. — “Future Combat Systems 20-ton cannon in 2008: fact or fiction?” an artillery officer asked in a 2003 military journal.
The answer four years later is “fiction.”
Officials working on the Army modernization program admitted that they will not reach the preferred weight for the FCS family of combat vehicles.
“Will we get to 20 tons? I don’t see that happening,” Paul Rogers, executive director of the Army’s tank automotive research and development and engineering center, said at a National Defense Industrial Association science and technology conference.
The higher the weight of the vehicles, the fewer options commanders will have to transport brigades to distant battlefields on short notice.
The non-line-of-sight cannon is one of the eight systems that will sit atop a common chassis. FCS plans currently call for the long-range artillery vehicle to be the first to reach combat brigades for evaluation.
The manned vehicles are currently seven to nine tons over the preferred 20-ton mark, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The report identified armor as the main factor adding weight to the vehicles. That number may be whittled down, Rogers said. TARDEC is working on breakthrough armor technologies, he said. The system will provide all the protection specified in the requirements documents for the two-soldier crews operating the vehicles, he added.
“I think we will get to the protection levels necessary to meet the FCS requirement, and the weight goal will always be a challenge. You always want something lighter,” he added.
Along with the cannon, the common chassis will be used for the non-line-of-sight mortar, the mounted combat system, and vehicles designed to carry infantry, perform reconnaissance and surveillance, medical
missions, command and control and maintenance.
Original plans called for the cannon to be transported on a C-130 aircraft. Maj. Charles J. Emerson, writing in Field Artillery magazine in 2003, asked, “Can a modern automated artillery piece (FCS cannon) be created under 20 tons?” The cancelled Crusader program came in at 40 tons, he noted.
Protection for the crew is a large part of the answer, he suggested. Unlike artillery pieces of old, the FCS concept of operations calls for the NLOS-cannon to keep pace on the battlefield with Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, which require heavy armor to protect occupants.
Lighter, more advanced armor “will play a big part in the FCS family of vehicles’ achieving C-130 deployability and remaining survivable,” Emerson wrote.
Bits and pieces of the cannon may still make it on C-130s, but not a fully loaded system, which would include the crew, ammunition, fuel and everything needed to begin operations soon after the aircraft’s wheels touch ground, officials told National Defense.
A spokesman for BAE Systems’ armament systems division in Minneapolis, Minn., the lead contractor for the cannon, said current weight projections for a fully combat ready cannon stand at 27 tons.
“We’re not ever planning on putting that monster on a C-130 because the cannon is going to be heavy,” said an engineer working on the project, who declined to be named.
Daniel Zanini, deputy FCS program manager and senior vice president at system integrator SAIC, said the program will meet its goal of fielding a brigade anywhere in the world rapidly.
“We’re capable of putting three of the [cannon] systems fully loaded with soldiers on a [larger] C-17,” he said. “We’re able to take C-17s places today where when we first started this program, you couldn’t do,” he said.
When FCS was first conceived earlier in the decade, large transport aircraft would only land on secure airfields, he noted. Operations in Afghanistan, for example, have shown that is no longer the case. “The mission of being able to take a brigade combat team anywhere in the world anytime on short notice without asking permission for landing rights, and having it combat capable when it arrives — that mission is there, and the program is meeting that requirement,” Zanini said.
The added weight may also drive the requirements for a new generation of helicopters. For short hops, the Pentagon is considering a joint heavy lift helicopter. The as yet unfunded program is seen as a way for the Army to transport an FCS vehicle quickly on the battlefield. The Defense Department asked helicopter manufacturers to explain their concepts for an aircraft that could lift 29 tons. The studies are due this summer.
Of the eight vehicles that will use the common chassis, the cannon will be the vanguard, Zanini explained. The most challenging problems for the vehicles are being funneled into the cannon program, so the bugs will be worked out by the time the other seven systems are integrated onto the chassis, he said. The first NLOS-cannon prototypes are due for delivery in 2008.
The common chassis will share the same hybrid engines, suspension systems and lightweight band track. The Army hopes using one chassis instead of eight will reduce the cost of the program, the logistical burden on the battlefield and make maintenance easier.
Rogers said, “the weight challenge is always at the forefront of everything FCS is doing.”
Army laboratories are investigating materials that are going to “provide significant breakthrough in our armor weight challenge,” he said.
GAO reported that the Army Research Laboratory is anticipating a technology readiness level rating of “six” on its new armor formulation by 2008. Six on the technology maturity scale allows for tests of a prototype in a laboratory or simulated operational environment.
Meanwhile, weight continues to be a problem throughout the FCS program, GAO contended. About 950 weight reduction initiatives are being considered just for the manned ground vehicles, GAO said.
As far as protecting the crew, anti-tank mines remain a threat, GAO added.
“The Army recognizes that there is a probability, given the weight constraints on FCS platforms and evolving blast mitigation technology, that the FCS hull and crew restraints will not protect the crew from life threatening injury due to anti-tank blast mines equal to (or greater than) the threshold requirement,” the report said.
Meanwhile, “all of the unmanned and manned ground vehicles and several other FCS systems are expected to have difficulty meeting their assigned weight targets,” GAO said.
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