ARTICLE

January 2003

Army’s Future Combat System Shakes Up Procurement Culture

by Sandra I. Erwin

The Army soon will be soliciting industry bids for the next phase of the Future Combat System, a program that not only is unusual for its unorthodox approach to combat vehicle development, but also is managed by an aerospace firm, the Boeing Co. In this project, the Army is trying to complete in 18 months a process that typically would take five or six years.

Much of the technology that the Army needs to build the Future Combat System is on hand today. But it probably will take at least five years to orchestrate the pieces of what ultimately will be an intricate network of light combat vehicles.

The Army wants to have FCS in the field by 2008. That schedule is “aggressive,” but not unrealistic, said Maj. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III, chief of the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command.

The Army defines FCS as a collection of aerial and ground, manned and unmanned combat vehicles linked via a command-and-control network.

Contractors are hoping that the solicitation will answer many of their questions about the FCS acquisition strategy, which the Army still was hashing out in late November and early December, officials said.

Adding more uncertainty to the program is the speculation that a budget crunch at the Pentagon will force the Army to decelerate the effort and postpone the FCS deployment by at least two years.

Thompson is adamant that it would be a mistake to slow down FCS, because the program is gaining momentum, at a time when the Army is depending on FCS to forge ahead with its modernization campaign, known as Army transformation.

“FCS should not slow down,” Thomson said during an interview in Dearborn, Mich. When a high-profile program such as FCS intentionally gets delayed, the impetus is lost, Thompson suggested. “If you say you are going to slow down, people will take the foot off the accelerator, which is not what you want to do.”

Further, the Army’s contractors and in-house labs view the FCS as a do-or-die program, likely to consume most of the service’s research, development and acquisition dollars in the decades ahead. For that reason, Thomson said, it’s important for the Army to engage contractors sooner than later. “The industry is not necessarily interested in something that is so far into the future that they can’t see the dollars and business opportunities,” he noted.

The more formidable obstacle in this program, Thompson said, is not money or technology, but rather an ingrained culture that resists change. In FCS, “the barriers we are breaking down are process barriers and attitude barriers about doing things the same old way,” he said. “You are seeing, I think, dramatic changes in the way we’ve done business in the last 18 months or so, to get the capability in 2008.”

The potential roadblocks that may preclude the fielding of FCS in 2008, he stressed, are “attitude and culture ... Leaving behind old processes is 90 percent of what needs to happen.”

Experts cautioned that the technical difficulties in this program are not to be underestimated. Nobody has ever built a family of 16-ton light combat vehicles and robots that operate in a wireless network. But Thompson remains optimistic. “The technology that we need for 2008 is out there today,” he said. “The integration [of the technology] during the next five years will be a significant but doable challenge.”

Making this happen will require a different mindset than what the Army has been used to, he noted. “We need to get away from the culture that does things in a sequential approach and start doing things with the tools available today, in a collaborative environment, using modeling and simulation.”

Thompson said the Army has spent lots of time coordinating the FCS requirements documents, white papers, doctrine manuals and mission-needs statement. “We think we have the conceptual underpinnings—not perfect, but well along and well developed.”

Mapping out the procurement strategy is the Army’s acquisition chief, Claude M. Bolton Jr.

He explained that even though Boeing is the “lead systems integrator,” only the Army will make final decisions as to what vehicles and what technologies will be chosen for FCS. “The LSI is my agent,” he told National Defense. “I have a final say as to which companies we go with.”

The latest scuttlebutt in the industry is that General Dynamics Land Systems and United Defense LP will split the work for the FCS platform design, development and production. Others speculated that GD will get the contract for all the direct-fire vehicles and United Defense will build the indirect-fire platforms.

But Bolton dismissed such rumors. “We are not doing percentages,” he said. “We are looking for the best.”

But he is hopeful that the FCS program will help draw small businesses to the Army’s industrial base, Bolton said.

People familiar with Bolton’s thinking about FCS said that he wants the vehicles to have “integrated avionics,” much like airplanes. Before becoming the Army’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, Bolton was an Air Force general in charge of managing large procurement programs.

Advanced electronics, however, could drive up the cost of Army vehicles, beyond what the service might be willing to pay, said one industry official. Avionics usually amounts to 5 percent of the cost of a helicopter, he said. In a ground combat vehicle, however, the electronics easily could make up 30-40 percent of the price, said the industry official.

Bolton, meanwhile, said he views the FCS as a business, rather than as a technology challenge. “We’ve invented no new technology” since the Army awarded Boeing the LSI contract, about nine months ago, Bolton said.

Whatever acquisition strategy is adopted, it will have to be finalized by April, when the FCS program will move into the “system development and demonstration.” One thing that is certain is that the program will pursue a “block approach,” where the first iteration only is a baseline system, to be improved in subsequent “block upgrades,” as technology matures.

“The block approach really is the way to go,” said Thompson. “The FCS Block I will not give us all the objective capabilities. ... We will not try to design all the requirements in the first systems that are fielded, but recognize that the technology will come along over time.”

Magnitude of Project
An FCS basic unit—with about 2,245 soldiers—will have 369 ground vehicles and at least 66 unpiloted aircraft.

The ground vehicles will be broken down as follows: 54 troop carriers, 80 command-and-control vehicles, 54 direct-fire platforms, 27 reconnaissance and surveillance vehicles, 18 indirect-fire cannons, 24 mortars, eight recovery and maintenance vehicles and 32 medevac platforms.

The ground robotic systems will include 31 armed vehicles and 54 load-carrying mules.

The Army’s Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center already has been developing an array of technologies targeted at FCS, such as ballistic protection, engines and robotics.

TARDEC spent $227 million this fiscal year on FCS-related research and development work. On survivability technologies alone, TARDEC will spend $250 million through 2007.

Ballistic protection appears to be the long pole in the tent, given that the FCS vehicles have to weigh no more than 16 tons. No matter how advanced the current technology might be, the Army does not expect that FCS will survive a direct hit from an anti-tank missile. Scientists are working on a suite of survivability technologies that could provide FCS some level of protection, said Thomas Bagwell, acting executive director for research at TARDEC.

In the FCS Block I, the goal is to protect the vehicle against 14.5 mm rounds and 155 mm artillery shells and fragmentation, in addition to residual protection against chemical energy, said Bagwell during a presentation to contractors in Dearborn, Mich.

TARDEC has been experimenting with “encapsulated ceramic armor,” a new technology that is seen as potentially a viable alternative to steel, against kinetic-energy threats.

One expert said that encapsulated ceramics would likely be placed in the front of the vehicle. The sides of the vehicles tend to be more vulnerable to rocket-propelled grenades, the expert said. RPGs generally can be defeated with reactive armor and electromagnetic armor.

Bagwell said that electromagnetic armor is a desirable technology for FCS, but unlikely to be ready for Block I. “It’s a high risk,” he said. “If we get some breakthroughs, it may happen.” For Block II, “we want to take out cannon warheads.”

The active protection for Block I is an integrated suite of sensors, radar and a commander’s decision aid, explained Bagwell. It can detect, track and deploy countermeasures against chemical-energy threats, antitank guided missiles, RPGs and high-energy munitions. TARDEC scientists have been testing the active-protection suite at Yuma Proving Ground for nearly a year. “We integrated sensor suite, radar, countermeasures and armor into a Bradley test vehicle,” said Bagwell.

The next step is to try to defeat a chemical-energy threat on the move, at about 10 km per hour, he said. To do that, the available technologies are active protection countermeasures to intercept the round, or electronic warfare—spoofing or jamming.

Also part of Block I are signature management technologies, to make the FCS less visible to enemy sensors. “We are looking at ways to reduce the radar, thermal and visual signatures,” said Bagwell. “New materials and new coatings will allow us to achieve that.” These technologies, however, are too expensive to be considered for FCS Block I, he said.

In Block II, the vehicles may see “full spectrum active protection” against both chemical and kinetic-energy munitions, all around the vehicle, said Bagwell. TARDEC is evaluating advanced search radars that can track the kinetic energy rod or interceptor.

In the propulsion arena, the FCS is likely to feature a hybrid-electric power system, Bagwell said.

Battery performance is a significant stumbling block, said several experts. The technology is improving, but not fast enough to meet the ambitious FCS schedule, they said.

TARDEC awarded three contracts for companies to build prototype hybrid FCS engines: one turbine and two diesel. The turbine engine is by Honeywell Aerospace. The two diesels are from Detroit Diesel and Cummings.

Last month, Honeywell announced that its gas turbine engine successfully demonstrated hybrid-electric propulsion power on a prototype FCS 16-ton vehicle developed by United Defense. The engine is a derivative of an auxiliary power unit used in the Boeing 737 and Airbus A319, 320 and 321 aircraft.

In the United Defense vehicle, the engine drives a 300 kw generator that powers the vehicle. It also works with batteries, which may be used as energy sources for various accessories on the vehicle during silent watch or slow-moving stealthy operations.

The FCS engine program is apt to rekindle the diesel-vs.-turbine debate of three years ago, when the Army was choosing a new engine for the Abrams tank and the now-defunct Crusader howitzer. The Honeywell 1,500 horsepower LV-100 turbine won that competition, amid controversy that the Army was overlooking the fuel efficiencies of diesel engines. Army officials at the time said that a turbine was preferable, because it’s lighter and more compact than a diesel engine.

Joe Krell, program manager at Honeywell, said the company is “capturing lessons learned from the LV-100” program. At 500 horsepower, the FCS engine is not only much smaller, he said, but “not nearly as complex as the LV-100.”

A competing demonstrator vehicle—by General Dynamics Land Systems—has a series hybrid-electric drive with permanent magnet in-hub motors. “This yields an independent eight-wheel drive and improved mobility,” said a company spokesman. Powering the hybrid drive is a militarized MTU diesel commercial engine.

In a light vehicle like the FCS, the priority is to increase the power density, said Bagwell. “We want to go from a power density of 3 horsepower per cubic foot (what’s available today) to 6 horsepower per cubic foot. This will give us the weight savings.” A smaller engine is desirable, because it diminishes the heat signature of the vehicle.

Bagwell did not discount the possibility that none of the three engines sponsored by TARDEC will be chosen. “The fact that we have three engine programs doesn’t mean that we are not open to any other engine programs out there.”

It appears that Boeing will be responsible for the engine selection. “We are waiting to see what the vehicle integrator is deciding,” said Bagwell. “They may pick one of these three engines. Or they may pick something else. So we will have to adjust our program based on that.”

As the FCS program moves along, another burning question that many in the industry are asking is whether FCS will be an all-wheeled fleet or possibly a combination of wheeled and tracked platforms. The growing consensus is that the Army will seek a mix of wheels and tracks, sources said. Boeing, however, denied that such a decision has been made. “We are staying away from specifying tracks or wheels,” said Ignacio Cardenas, program manager at Boeing. During a presentation, Cardenas told contractors that “Boeing is not ready to say that there’ll be both tracks and wheels.”

The director of TARDEC, Richard E. McClelland, said that his office plans to sponsor a tracks-vs.-wheel study, to explore various options. “We’d like to have our cake and eat it too,” he said at an industry conference. “We’d like to have a vehicle that has wheels and can get a track added,” for greater mobility off road.

An industry source said that, originally, the plan was for FCS to be “all wheels.” Subsequently, the Army “recognized the need for tracks” to meet certain mission requirements. A recent addition to the FCS operational requirements document notes that FCS will need to perform a fair amount of off-road missions. “If you read between the lines,” the source said, “the mission profile requirement implies that there’ll be tracked vehicles.”

Robotic Vehicles
The FCS robotic platforms are proceeding along in their development, said Bagwell, but the Block I vehicles will not operate autonomously, as the Army had hoped. They will require a human operator to control them from a command center or a vehicle.

The upshot is that FCS will need “soldier-machine interface” technologies that are more advanced than what typically are found in current combat vehicles. The plan is to develop a “multifunction crew station” that automates many of the functions performed today by human operators. Instead of a three-soldier crew, the Army wants to go down to two.

“These two soldiers will be asked to do a lot of tasks,” said Bagwell. “We do that by having fly-by-wire controls, embedded simulation and training, intelligent driving decision aids, automatic route planning, indirect vision driving using FLIR [forward looking infrared] and stereo cameras.”

The FCS crewmembers will control both ground robots and aerial drones. The ground vehicles will include a small robot (less than 30 pounds) for urban reconnaissance, a 1-ton or 2-ton mule (multifunction logistics and equipment vehicle) that will hold up to 1,200 pounds of cargo, a 5.3-ton armored reconnaissance vehicle to support maneuver forces and a 2.5-ton assault vehicle that will accompany the dismounted infantry.

Another technology that TARDEC researchers are fine-tuning is the ability for robots to follow a leader, which also would be a robot. Under this concept, a mounted or dismounted leader would leave “electronic bread crumbs” for the robotic vehicle to navigate, said Bagwell. But there are limits to how far apart in space and time the vehicles can operate. “We want to grow eventually to 24 hours’ separation, greater than 2 km,” he said. The vehicles rely on FLIR, stereo cameras and laser radar to identify the terrain.

Initially, only two followers will be assigned to the leader. But the Army is considering going up to 5-10 vehicles, Bagwell said.

McClelland said that the robotics technology still needs improvements, and that TARDEC did not receive as much funding as had been anticipated. “We thought we would get a fat congressional add on,” he said at an industry conference. “It didn’t happen.”

A most pressing concern in the FCS block I, he said, is for the robots to identify pedestrians and landmarks. “We have not worked in the area of small vehicle mobility,” McClelland said. “That is a major issue for us.”

On the logistics side, TARDEC is funding technologies that can produce water or purify contaminated water in the field. To keep FCS units light and mobile, the Army does not plan to load them up with extra supplies of water, making these water-generating technologies all the more important, said Bagwell.

FCS units will be expected to stay out in the field for three to seven days without resupply. On average, each soldier requires four to five gallons of water a day.

TARDEC is pursuing two technologies that produce water. One system makes water from the humidity in the air. The other creates water from the vehicle’s exhaust. These devices will help the Army reduce water storage by 66 percent, Bagwell said.

The more promising alternative is the water-from-exhaust system, he said. In theory, under ideal conditions, the system could produce 1 gallon of water for each gallon of petroleum consumed. Realistically, the system only will produce about half a gallon of water.

The efficiency depends on the engine, said one industry expert. A diesel engine would help generate more water than a turbine engine, which requires more cooling. The system also needs to be miniaturized, to make it transportable. With today’s equipment, the expert said, “the more water you make, the bigger the equipment.”

“A lot of testing has been done with a Humvee—taking the exhaust gas and purifying it,” said Bagwell. The Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, drank the water a year ago. “He is still alive,” Bagwell joked.

The contractor working on this project—LexCarb, of Lexington, Ky.—sent a water sample to the Environmental Protection Agency. According to Bagwell, “It was a higher quality than the [drinking] water in Louisville.”

The water-from-air technology, if it works, could be incorporated into future FCS block upgrades. In the decades ahead, the Army may even go as far as seeking to produce water from body fluids, said Bagwell. The last time that TARDEC approached soldiers about this, he said, “they chased me out of the room.” The notion is not too far fetched, he said. “The technology is there. NASA is doing it.”

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