ARTICLE

May 2004

Army Future Combat Systems Face High Risk of Failure, Cautions Study

by Frank Colucci

The Army is taking unnecessary financial risks as it develops its next-generation weapon systems, said the General Accounting Office. Specifically, the congressional watchdog agency pointed to the Future Combat Systems, a program designed to replace current weapons and vehicles with new vehicles and aircraft, all integrated in a single command-and-control network.

The Army budgeted nearly $15 billion for the program through 2009, and plans to introduce new systems by 2010. The long-term plan is to field up to 15 FCS brigades, called “units of actions,” at a cost of more than $90 billion.

“FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources,” said a GAO report released in April. “Three-fourths of FCS needed technologies were still immature when the program started. The first prototypes of FCS will not be delivered until just before the production decision. Full demonstration of FCS ability to work as an overarching system will not occur until after production has begun.”

Based upon the experiences of past programs, the FCS strategy is likely to result in cost overruns and delays, according to GAO. “Because it is promising to deliver unprecedented performance capabilities, the Army has little choice but to meet a very high standard and has limited flexibility in cutting FCS requirements. Because the cost already dominates its investment budget, the Army may find it difficult to find other programs to cut in order to further fund FCS.”

Networking so many disparate systems is one of the riskiest parts of the program, said GAO. FCS will have 18 types of vehicles and 34 million lines of software code. With just five years between program start and a production decision, the potential for trouble is high. “Assuming everything goes as planned, the FCS program will begin production before all of its systems have been demonstrated. If all FCS elements are not ready at the production decision, Army plans still call for going forward with production and fielding,” said the GAO report. “Based on the lessons learned from best practices and the experiences of past programs, FCS is susceptible to discovering costly problems in late development and early production.”

The Army began system development and demonstration in May 2003 and plans to make an FCS production decision in 2008.

Among the concerns is a potential bandwidth shortage, which could cripple the program, said GAO. “The information-centric nature of FCS operations will require a great deal of bandwidth to allow large amounts of information to be transmitted across the wireless network. However, the radio frequency spectrum is a finite resource, and there is a great deal of competition and demand for it.”

An internal study revealed that FCS bandwidth demand was 10 times greater than what was actually available. As a result, said GAO, the Army made a number of changes to the network design to use bandwidth more efficiently and to reduce demand. GAO warned that the FCS could be vulnerable to cyber attacks. “The Army is developing specialized protection techniques, as there is only limited commercial or government software currently available that will adequately protect a mobile network like the one proposed for FCS.”

Paul L. Francis, director of acquisition and sourcing management at GAO, told lawmakers at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee that the Army should consider alternatives to the current FCS strategy.

One option would be to focus first on the development and demonstration of its most critical capabilities, such as the network. This could be done via technology demonstrations, to reduce technical and integration risks, before proceeding with an acquisition program.

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