FCS Lessons Learned

The Danger Room ran an article last week commenting on SecDef Gates' views on the Future Combat System project. You already know, probably, that he's not real keen on it. But I think that Gates is taking the wrong lessons from it. What Gates said:

Parts of the Army's Future Combat Systems program have already demonstrated their adaptability and relevance. For example, the connectivity of Warfighter Information Network will dramatically increase the agility and situational awareness of the Army's combat formations. And we'll accelerate its development and field it, along with proven FCS spinoff capabilities, across the entire Army.  

 

 But the FCS vehicle program was, despite some adjustments, designed using the same basic assumptions as when FCS was first designed nine years ago. The premise behind the design of these vehicles was that lower weight, greater fuel efficiency and, above all, near-total situational awareness would compensate for less heavy armor -- a premise that I believe was belied by the close-quarters combat, urban warfare and increasingly lethal forms of ambush that we've seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan and that we are likely to see elsewhere as other adversaries probe for and find ways to turn our strengths against us.

 

Though the Army currently holds a comfortable margin of dominance over any other conventional ground force, the service clearly must have a new, modernized fleet of combat vehicles to replace the Cold War inventory. But before we spend 10 years and $90 billion, and before we send young soldiers downrange, we had better be sure to get it right, or as close to right as we can. So I'm recommending that we cancel the existing FCS vehicle program, reevaluate the requirements, technology and approach in light of our combat and operational experience in two wars; and then re-launch a new Army vehicle modernization program.

I respect Gates' need to take charge of the FCS project and restructure it. I don't, however, believe he's thinking logically about the vehicle design. First of all, he's stated that at least 50% of the DOD programs are still oriented toward conventional warfare. Second, we've all seen the reports by people who've stated that the best way to avoid IEDs is to get OUT of the vehicles and walk around. Third, usually one accepts that there are tradeoffs between mission capability and protection. If Gates wants full protection, then the vehicle's going to weigh too much and cost too much. Not hard to figure out.

I think the Army originally wanted to recreate the "big five" acquisition projects of the 1970s - the Abrams tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Patriot missile, the Apache attack helicopter, and the Blackhawk utility vehicle. They were not all managed by the same office, but the way the Army sold the five systems was that they all complimented each other. The Army leadership was able to sell the concept as a package, and someone probably said, hell, why not try that again? What could go wrong?

It wasn't that the Army leadership thought "it's so big, it can't fail" but rather "we need the concept as a whole to work." But then they screwed up with the really unrealistic requirements and the refusal to address the ambitious schedule and costs. There's no end of acquisition tools to manage this, but they just didn't follow through. So I don't regret seeing FCS restructured, but I don't get Gates and his logic.

Comments

[Greg Sanders]

I think that attempting to do them all a single project magnified the difficulties with system engineering. Each of the projects was technically interdependent on the other projects which dramatically raises the complexity of the whole. Facing the fundamental flaws in one program and redesigning the requirements is that much harder when you have to work out the implications for all the affiliated programs. I suspect that just selling the programs together has less implications for the requirements.

I'd say the main logic defenders would point to is that by making the systems all interdependent you have the best shot of creating a highly integrated network that fully exploits the possibilities of having everyone talk to one another. I personally tend to think that we don't in fact have the tools to pull it off and that there's a practical upper-bound to the amount of complexity we can handle.

Not that the points you raise about the vehicle program aren't valid, I just think that a similarly complex program that was better based on the current operating environment would still run into heaps of trouble.

All that said, for a range of views on how we can handle complexity (as compared to merely complicated projects) CSIS's Defense-Industrial Group hosted a range of complexity workshops leading to an edited volume in which authors described and at times support various possible tools.

[J.]

Very good points. Absolutely agree that the program needs to be less complex and less interdependent to succeed. I just found Gates infatuation with MRAP design disturbing and I think there is a simpler, less sinister reason for the Army's desire for this "family of systems."

[IndispensableDestiny]

The "Big Five" was really the big seven. MLRS proved successful. DIVAD did not.