The Army’s new brigade combat teams are not likely to be
deployable within 96 hours, but they will nevertheless be much more
mobile and faster to respond than any comparable unit today, officials
said. The 96-hour timeline was the goal set nearly two years ago
by the Army chief of staff.
Maj. Gen. Joseph L. Yakovac Jr., the Army’s program executive
officer for ground combat systems, said that efforts to reduce the
weight of the BCTs are a must, but also stressed that the 96-hour
deployment is “only a goal and not a requirement.”
These brigades will be “significantly faster than the comparative
brigades,” he told National Defense during a combat vehicles
conference in Fort Knox, Ky., sponsored by the National Defense
Industrial Association.
He explained that the follow-on force to the BCT, which will have
a new vehicle called the Future Combat System, will be required
to deploy in four days.
The brigade’s workhorse will be the Stryker, an eight-wheel
light armored vehicle that is also known as the LAV III. Each of
six planned brigades will have approximately 300 Strykers. The first
vehicles are to be delivered this month at Fort Lewis, Wash. A brigade
of 309 vehicles will be operational in spring 2003 and a second
one by 2004. By 2007, the Army plans to equip brigades in Alaska,
Fort Polk, La., Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and the Pennsylvania
Army National Guard.
Last year, the Army estimated that deploying a BCT will require
217 trips by C-17 heavy-lift planes—half the airlift needed
to move a heavy brigade. But the Army wants the vehicles to fit
on smaller C-130 Hercules, because the Air Force has hundreds of
those, compared to only a few dozen C-17s.
The Army awarded a $4 billion contract in November 2000 to a consortium
of General Motors Defense, of Canada, and General Dynamics Land
Systems, of Sterling Heights, Mich., for the development and production
of up to 2,131 LAV IIIs.
Responding to criticism that the Stryker may be too heavy for the
C-130, Yakovac cautioned that there is more than one definition
of C-130 transportability and that it’s important to understand
the role that these brigades will play in combat. “When you
get down to the weight issue, you’ve got to remember we have
said this BCT is not a force entry unit.” During a news conference
last year, he made a similar point: “We don’t anticipate
C-130s going into a hot drop zone to get these vehicles off, and
so what you have is a vehicle that’s capable of coming off,
doing minimal reconfiguration and being totally combat-ready.”
The weight of the vehicle by itself is within the payload limitations
of the Hercules. A personnel carrier variant of the Canadian LAV
III weighs approximately 35,860 pounds. The maximum allowable payload
on a C-130 ranges between 44,000 and 45,000 pounds.
The problem is that the Army has an additional 5,750 pounds of
equipment that comes with each vehicle, Yakovac said. The Army’s
goal is for the vehicle and the equipment—including ammunition
and a half a tank of fuel for the Stryker—to weigh 38,000
pounds altogether. The vehicle alone weighs 34,500 pounds. It’s
slightly lighter than the Canadian version, because it does not
have the turret.
If the Army meets the 38,000-pound limit, it would be able to fly
the vehicles up to 1,000 nautical miles without an Air Force waiver
for exceeding the maximum aircraft weight allowed on a fixed runway.
Yakovac pointed out that if the flying distance were reduced to
500 nautical miles, the payload could go up to 42,000 pounds. “The
issue is not the gross weight ... it is really the mission.”
A General Dynamics spokesperson said the company is working to
reduce the weight of the Stryker, but he declined to specify the
current weight of the vehicle. Yakovac said he expects that the
weight will be reduced by the time the Army fields its fourth brigade,
in about three years.
The contractors also are working on replacing the armor in the
Stryker. The Army recently discovered that the existing armor did
not meet its requirement and stopped payments on the contract until
the problem was fixed. The Army has specified that the vehicles
must be able to withstand hits from 7.62 mm infantry machinegun,
12.7 mm heavy machinegun and 14.5 mm Russian heavy machinegun ammunition.
General Dynamics is installing a new dense ceramic armor, which
is supposed to meet the requirements. However, some industry insiders
said that the new armor would increase the weight of the Stryker
by another 235 pounds. The company said it has implemented an aggressive
program to reduce the weight.
The schedule for the deployment of the Stryker has slowed down
somewhat, because more testing was needed, said Yakovac. “The
big problem is getting the testing of the vehicle done,” he
said. “The risk to me is in the timeline and making sure that
we can control the weight.”
Col. David Ogg, the program manager for the Brigade Combat Team,
said that the initial operational testing and evaluation (IOT&E)
will be done with the second brigade, rather than the first.
“I am not sure how we are going to evaluate capability,”
said Yakovac. “Or how to capture capability out of the IOT&E.
We are working with the operational test community to make sure
that it is captured in that test. ... It is a tremendous challenge
to us.”
Yakovac noted that there is congressional language in the fiscal
2001 defense bill that limits the Army from putting a third brigade
on contract before conducting comparative testing between the Stryker
and the M113 armored personnel carrier.
But Yakovac said the Army did not believe that particular test
was necessary and that it would be a waste of $20 million. “We
have enough information available today, everything that we would
learn from a comparison we already have.” The Army currently
is working to obtain a waiver that would preclude the comparative
test.
The Stryker comes in two basic variants—the infantry carrier
vehicle and the 105 mm mobile gun system. The MGS will have the
same gun tube as the M-1 Abrams tank. But the MGS development has
yet to be completed, and it may be several years before they reach
the field.
“We are looking seriously at the weight issue for the MGS,”
said Pete Keating, a spokesman for General Dynamics.
Brig. Gen. John M. Brown III, the Army’s deputy commander
for transformation at the Training and Doctrine Command, said that
the first BCT, at Ft. Lewis, is already training under a doctrine
specifically developed for these units. He said every soldier was
given new training manuals. Before the first BCT reaches initial
operational capability, every manual will be approved, he said.
“Our normal production cycle on those has been about five
years.”
The conflict in Afghanistan has prompted TRADOC to question whether
the Army has the right mix of training on the use of joint fire
and joint effects. “We don’t have a direct pipeline
to anyone in Afghanistan, but we do receive queries to direct concepts
and redirect training,” Brown said.