ARTICLE

September 2000

Twenty-Ton Combat Vehicle Slated for 2012

Technologies to focus on lethality, survivability and hybrid power systems

by Sandra I. Erwin

On April 15, 2003, Army officials plan to brief the chief of staff on the outcome of a three-year effort to design a new combat vehicle. But in a departure from previous vehicle programs, the chief will not see "prototypes." He most likely will see a computer simulation with three-dimensional models.

The Army lieutenant colonel in charge of the new combat vehicle program, Marion H. Van Fosson, said he might be retired already from the Army by that time. But that should not matter, he said, because in this program, the "good ideas" mostly will come from the contractors. Van Fosson, ultimately, wants the chief to evaluate "concepts," rather than prototypes, because this new platform will not follow the predictable patterns of previous vehicle programs.

The Army plans to spend $3 billion on research work toward this vehicle during the next five years. But the contractors are not being asked to design a stand-alone vehicle, but rather a "vision" of how entire units equipped with these vehicles would perform in combat. Van Fosson believes that is the only way the Army will get the capabilities it needs. "I hate to use the word prototype because prototypes tend to turn into reality," he said during a conference sponsored by the Association of the U.S. Army, in Tysons Corner, Va.

Experience has taught him, Van Fosson said, that any time soldiers see a live prototype of a system, they immediately want to know when it will be available. In his program, the goal is not to build a vehicle mock-up, full of bells and whistles, but to conceive a "system of systems"-a network of lightweight combat vehicles, which will not only execute firing missions, collect and distribute intelligence, but also will direct troupes of high-tech robots.

In 2003, the chief, the secretary of the Army and the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will review the contractors' proposals and decide whether to select one or more concepts and build a prototype, or "technology demonstrator," said Van Fosson. DARPA is a partner and co-investor in the program, called the Future Combat System, or FCS. The goal is to have a new vehicle delivered to Army units by 2012.

The FCS will be the platform for what the Army calls the "objective force," explained Maj. Gen. Daniel R. Zanini, Army deputy chief of staff for combat developments. That force will be lighter than the current heavy armor units but will pack more firepower than today's light units. It will respond to contingencies on short notice and will require much less logistics support than the current force, said Zanini.

For that reason, the Army needs a multi-purpose vehicle that is adaptable for various missions, is easy to maintain and support, provides multiple firepower options, and can move fast enough to avoid enemy fire, Zanini said. The FCS will be designed to:

• Improve command-and-control links between sensors and shooters.
• Enhance sensor capabilities to see the terrain, weather conditions, friendly and enemy force locations, presence of non-combatants, and detect potential threats.
• Direct unmanned air and ground vehicles, which would function as reconnaissance, surveillance or attack platforms.

Designing a vehicle that is 70 percent lighter and 50 percent smaller than a current tank is a "significant technology challenge," said A. Michael Andrews, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology.

"It's not just lightening the vehicle, but lightening the force," he told the conference. The FCS only will be successful if it helps slash the logistics support burden, Andrews said. Today, only 20 percent of what soldiers bring to the battlefield is war-fighting equipment. "The 80 percent is that long train of support," he said. "As we design the FCS, [we want to] attack that problem."

The FCS will have multiple applications: infantry carrier, air defense platform, missile launcher, ambulance, direct and indirect fire. But regardless of the application, officials stressed, it will operate as part of a network of vehicles that will share a common picture of the battlefield.

Four industry teams are competing in the first phase of the program. The Boeing Company leads a team of eight firms. TRW Inc. leads Team Gladiator, which has six companies. Team Full Spectrum, which has 10 companies, is led by SAIC. The fourth competitor, called Team Focus Vision, has 13 members and is led jointly by General Dynamics Land Systems and the Raytheon Company.

During the initial phase of the program, the companies will be producing engineering models, force-on-force models and small-unit engagement models, said Van Fosson. The concept design phase is scheduled for completion by October 2001. Two out of the four teams will be selected for the second phase, in May 2002. If the chief of staff decides to move ahead with any of the concepts in April, 2003, prototypes would be built for the engineering and manufacturing development phase, which would begin in 2006.

The stakes in this competition are huge, for obvious reasons. For land-vehicle contractors, the FCS selection will be a make-or-break award, since the Army is expected to invest most of its vehicle dollars in FCS for decades to come.

Lethality
For FCS, the Army is considering several firepower options, ranging from electromagnetic guns and directed energy weapons, to kinetic energy missiles and conventional cannon for direct and indirect fire.

"We want Abrams-like lethality with a 105 mm cannon," said Andrews. A number of smart munitions are being proposed for this gun. Among them is an extended-range fire-and-forget kinetic energy munition made by Alliant Techsystems, called the TERM-KE, which has common components with the 120mm rounds used in the Abrams. The TERM-KE has a multi-mode guidance suite, including millimeter wave, global positioning system and semi-active laser sensors.

For the vertical-launch, direct and indirect fire variants of FCS, the Army is seeking a compact kinetic energy missile (CKEM), which ideally would be 4-feet long and weigh 50 pounds, said Andrews. It would essentially be a miniaturized version of the LOSAT (line-of-sight antitank) missile the Army is buying for light infantry forces. That missile is about 10 feet long and weighs 177 pounds.

CKEM would have a range of up to 5 km with potential for growth up to 8 km, said William C. McCorkle Jr., director of the Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center. The Army, he said, wants the missile to be used against both air and ground targets. There are four contractors currently working on CKEM concepts, such as a unitized body version, one with a separable motor and one with an individualized motor.

"Our goal is [to field a] launch-platform independent, lightweight quick-kill, as quick as a cannon but without the recoil, LOSAT-like lethality, fire on the move capability," said George W. Snyder, Army program manager for CKEM. He cautioned, however, that "lethal compact-size kinetic energy missiles are not achievable with today's technology."

Industry experts at the conference, who did not want to be quoted by name, agreed that the CKEM goals are overly ambitious.

Developing a compact, low-signature propulsion system is one of the most challenging areas of the CKEM program, said Snyder. Another technologically demanding effort is to develop guidance and control components that can withstand the high forces of gravity involved in the firing. Guidance sensors being considered are millimeter wave, laser, inertial and terminal homing systems.

Two contractor proposals will be selected in 2003, in order to stay apace of the FCS program schedule, said Snyder.

Another weapon that is being considered for FCS, McCorkle said, is a common missile, or modernized Hellfire, which would replace both the TOW optically-guided antitank and the Hellfire laser-guided missiles. The common missile would give FCS a long range, beyond line-of-sight capability, he explained.

The common missile would be used in existing platforms, but it could support the FCS, said Gregory S. Haynes, program manager for the common missile science and technology program. Much of the work on the common missile program, he said, currently focuses on seekers, propulsion, guidance and warheads. It is scheduled to enter production in 2008. "By the time FCS is available in 2012, about 10,000 missiles could be produced," said Haynes.

Randy Buff, a scientist at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said his office is considering the use of high-energy laser weapons for FCS. A lightweight solid-state laser could be incorporated for active defense against rockets, artillery, mortars, said Buff. For FCS, there is potential for a laser-based capability against antitank missiles. The Army has built a 15 kW laser prototype and plans to build a 100 kW solid-state laser in the near future, he added. "Our goal is to design systems against tactical missiles such as infrared guided, wire guided and optically guided."

Survivability
The "traditional survivability" that is expected in the Abrams tank is "a major challenge for lighter combat vehicles," said Van Fosson. Ideally, he said, FCS would have "medium" armor capability to "avoid cheap kills."

Providing ballistic protection is relatively easy in a 70-ton vehicle, where 36 tons of armor can be applied, said Bruce Burns, a scientist at the Army Research Laboratory. For a 20-ton vehicle, the armor would have to be reduced to 8.6 tons.

The lab is conducting a five-year $105 million program to develop lightweight ballistic protection. It is a two-tiered approach that includes active protection and armor, said Burns.

Active protection would be needed to defeat antitank missiles and large gun-fired kinetic energy projectiles, which are the "fastest moving threat we face today," he said. To defeat large kinetic energy threats, Burns explained, the FCS would use a "counter-munition" to divert the incoming projectile. The idea is to try to shift the momentum and energy of the round from the base armor of the vehicle.

"If you break it up near the vehicle, you have to absorb the residual debris," said Burns. "The base armor would have to be able to handle that debris." There may be cases, he said, "when the armor can better deal with the threat than active protection." Medium-caliber kinetic energy rounds from a rapid-fire cannon "are best addressed by an armor package."

The FCS skin would have to be able to absorb damage from fragments and from machine gun fire, he said. "We are considering explosive reactive armor, non-explosive reactive armor, smart armor, electromagnetic armor. For the base armor structure, we have a choice of metals, ceramics, laminations, encapsulations and insulators."

Smart armor, which is more desirable against kinetic-energy rounds, has sensors that detect an incoming threat, as well as its impact location, projectile velocity and diameter, said Burns. A microprocessor determines optimum time to "initiate" the armor. A "highly efficient armor defeat mechanism" interacts with the penetrator, causing it to break up into fragments or to divert away from the vehicle, explained Burns.

Electromagnetic armor is used against shaped charges, he said. That type of armor has two plates. When a shaped charge penetrates the space between the two plates, the large plate disrupts the shaped charge.

In the FCS, said Burns, the armor protection is near the bow, so the rear is more vulnerable. "You have to rely on other technologies for crew survivability," he said. Electronics in the FCS also must be hardened, said Burns, in order to survive the shock after being hit.

In the active protection arena, the goal is a "single universal countermeasure against large-caliber threats, focusing on tube-launched kinetic energy" systems, said James A. Soltesz, a researcher at the Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center.

Electronic warfare techniques, such as deception, spoofing and jamming, he said, are one way to protect the vehicle. In active protection, "we are talking about physically disrupting the threat sufficiently far from the vehicle so it can survive."

Current active protection systems achieve a 51 percent success rate, said Soltesz. "We want to get to 90 percent effectiveness by 2006." The Army's active protection system essentially consists of an infrared cueing system, which turns on a dual-frequency radar that tracks small kinetic energy rounds. The countermeasure is an unguided rocket with a squib in it, which is used to deflect, disrupt, or "hard-kill" antitank weapons such as tank rounds, missiles and artillery fire.

Power Systems
DARPA is working on propulsion technologies for the FCS and, so far, it appears that a hybrid power system is the most viable solution, said Marilyn Freeman, DARPA program manager. The hybrid-electric drive currently being tested consists of a battery and a diesel engine.

"We need more fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as lighter and more survivable platforms," she told the conference. For the FCS, additionally, the Army is looking for "affordable high-power electrical system architectures and components to generate power, store energy, condition power and distribute hundreds of kilowatts continuously," she said.

DARPA has worked on a number of military hybrid-electric vehicle prototypes, such as an M113 personnel carrier, a Bradley infantry vehicle, and a Humvee truck. For the FCS, however, "you would design the vehicle from the get-go with the hybrid-electric drive," said Freeman.

These technologies are being tested under DARPA's combat hybrid power systems (CHPS) program. The agency so far has invested $55 million in this effort since 1997, Freeman said. The program is being moved from DARPA to the Army's research and engineering center in Michigan, at the end of this year.

CHPS is a notional 15-ton vehicle with many of the features and capabilities the Army wants in the FCS. It has a reduced acoustic, thermal and visual signature, advanced electric-based weapons, dynamic armor, active protection countermeasures. "That does not necessarily mean that 15 tons is the right weight for FCS. But it's in the ballpark," said Freeman. "Digital models allow us to test alternatives such as different types of batteries."

The batteries would be recharged on the move, depending on the terrain, Freeman said. "If you are going uphill, you will drain the power. If you are going downhill, you recharge the batteries, assuming that is the protocol that was established."

The CHPS program also aims to reduce fossil fuel requirements by 35-45 percent, through the use of lightweight compact components and centralized power management. The system weight would be cut by 25-35 percent. Even though the CHPS hybrid system currently consists of a diesel engine and batteries, in the future, it could accommodate fuel cells, she explained. "The system is designed so you can put different pieces in, different technologies. I would hope that the Army will consider alternative fuels."

The hybrid system can take on many different forms, but essentially with the hybrid-electric system, when surge power is required for acceleration, it comes from an energy storage system rather than from the engine, David S. Elmes, told National Defense. Elmes is general manager of defense operations at Perkins Engines Company Ltd., in the United Kingdom. The company makes commercial and military engines for a variety of vehicles.

"The thoughts behind hybridizing the driveline is to reduce the amount of generated horsepower. This way the engine can run at constant speed, constant power and, consequently, run more efficiently," Elmes said.

This feature alone could manifest savings in fuel consumption of up to 15 percent or more, he said. "The fact that you are running with a smaller engine will elicit extra fuel savings as well. Hence the theory says you should be able to obtain massive savings."

There are a number of small engines out there that could easily power a 20-ton vehicle, said Elmes.

"The issue for any combat vehicle is packaging," he added. The standard commercial engines tend to be "in line" configuration and therefore "less amenable to innovative packaging solutions," said Elmes. "Electric transmissions, or hybrid solutions offer the standard commercial engine a lot more flexibility when it comes to packaging.

"Small engines are not the issue," he said. "The issue is small propulsion systems. ... You must be able to offer a package-engine, transmission (mechanical or electric), steering and braking included, cooling group, control system, filters, air cleaners, low maintenance." The smaller the package as a whole, the lighter the vehicle, the greater the internal volume for soldiers, ammunition, fuel, and other items, Elmes said.

Making small engines is not difficult, he said. "However, what is really needed is a small, fully integrated propulsion system, be it mechanical, electric or a combination of the two."

The 45 percent reduction in fossil fuel the Army is seeking should not be hard to achieve, according to Elmes. "You do not need hybrid systems to achieve that sort of saving. That can be done today using a conventional propulsion system. With a hybrid system, much greater savings should be achievable."

Perkins Ltd. is not involved in the FCS program currently, said Elmes, but the company is working on proposals for all four teams. "It is our aim to work with all of the consortia on projects of this nature. Back all horses if you will, one of them is bound to win."

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