It’s only taken $50 billion in extra cash, a heap of missed deadlines and redrawn requirements, and a war that’s lasted about two years too long. But the Pentagon may finally be ready to start putting the axe to the Army’s leviathan modernization program, Future Combat Systems.
Inside Defense reports that FCS is on a “short list of…weapon system programs that could be terminated or significantly pared back.”
“They are looking to slip it to the right or kill it,” said a source familiar with FCS options advanced by the Pentagon’s office of program analysis and evaluation.
Army officials are working to convince Pentagon leaders, including England, to reconsider cutting or even terminating FCS, the service’s only major new-start development program.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker is scheduled to meet Friday with England and again make the case for the program, a briefing that is expected to discuss FCS’ relevance to today’s challenges.
Whoops! Make that $70 billion in cost overruns. The Defense Department quietly released a “selected acquisition report” this week saying that FCS would now run $161 billion — up from 2003’s $92 billion estimate. So we’re talking a 75% increase. And remember, folks, that’s only down payment. Because $161 billion only pays for modernizing a third of the Army’s troops.
The only FCS system to come in on budget and to work is the one pictured. The Interim Artillery Vehicle. It meets the weight (C-130 transportable) specification too.
Noah – good synopsis.
Now this is some good news! Yes, – cancel the program already! The Army recently changed the requirements to drop the C-130s as the required transport platform, a key requirement from DAY 1 BTW. Now watch Boeing beg for more money to now redo much of the Engineering to now optimize all these phantom Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV) Platforms for larger aircraft, delaying the program yet again. Watch Boeing grab another 25%/year cost growth too. And to add insult to injury, the per-vehicle production cost estimate for the FCS MGVs is almost 10-times an Abrams or Bradley due to all the electronics, this is BEFORE they have been fattened up. Yeah — the Army will be able to buy 1000’s of those at that price. No one wants to talk about that!
And does JTRS work? .. NO.
And is IMS going to work? ..NO.
Is UGS going to work? ..NO.
And are all the funky unmanned platforms going to work? .. NO.
And will the mobile wireless ad-hoc network work? .. NO.
And will WIN-T work? .. NO.
What a collosal train-wreck.
And General Dynamics just can’t wait for this program to be cancelled since they have a corner on the ground vehicle market and will reap much of the reprogrammed money.
There should have been active 3rd party oversight 3 years ago to limit the insanity on this program. How much has been spent and what is there to show for it now? … basically nothing. And they are suppose to roll-out vehicles beginning in 2008? …. Not bloody likely!!
Will costs continue to rise … of course!
Drive a stake through its heart I say.
No kidding, Art. I love me some big-ticket defense hardware, but this FCS is a POS. In this day and age, it’s a lot smarter and cost-effective to stick with old reliable platforms and simply update update update. You save money, avoid megabillion-dollar bungles and end up with equipment the troops can use instead of whizbang toys that work only on paper.
David,
That works great until it costs more to keep the updated systems running than it would to replace them. And even then, the machines will wear out & be used up eventually. Cheaper in the short run, but you do have to think of the long term as well.
I’d go with the last poster; you can’t update old platforms for ever. What FCS suffered from are three things, two endemic in US military programs. One, poorly thought out user requirements. FCS should be two sets of vehicles, one 30-35 ton Bradley/Abrams replacement, and a 8-10 ton airmobile (BMD, CVR(T)) vehicle; these are reasonable engineering goals. Two, flowing as a consequence of the first error, the excessive use of unproven technology in an attempt to resolve the ditchomy, including such silly items as writing new OS’s for the software. Three, and this is a more FCS only error, the excessive systems analysis and interdependencies of the whole system.
Yes, cancelling this program is a lot easier and costs a hell of a lot more than fixing the problem. It also ensures every program from now on is a similar failure.
Keep paying the contractors profit on development. Keep making it profitable for them to screw up. Then whine about why they do. Cancel their program. Hire a new contractor. Start the whining again. Repeat until someone gets tired of hearing the whining and kicks our ass.
FCS is only the most recent example of Pentagon acquisition blunders. Unfortunately, this is what happens is you have Generals in charge of these particular programs who are in it to either get their next star or set themselves up for retirement in a nice, defense contractor position. What’s worse is when you have politicians meddling because it keeps their constituents employed and them in the office.
This has been going on since the Bradley debacle, continued with the B-1 bomber, and is now going on with the goldplating of the F22 and JSF. It will continue to go on as long as the goevernment has the final say on whether these get cancelled. Read the books, “National Defense: The gold plating of the B1 Bomber”, “The Pentagon Wars”, and “Grand Theft Pentagon” for a good, accurate look at how Defense Acauisitions work,
Folks, as much as I hate to say it, the FCS will probably not get cancelled. There’s too much political clout invested. I pray that I’m wrong. If not, this program will never die because too much has been invested. They’ll continue to scale back requirements and get one quarter of what they wanted for 10 times the cost. Why not? Have you ever heard of the government punishing the contractors for not performing.
As someone who works in defense acquisitions, it sickens me to see how the government wastes money because our leadership doesn’t have the balls to pull the plug on a dying program. Common sense doesn’t factor into decisions, promotions do. If a program dies under someone’s watch, it career suicide. Sadly, the only way to fix it is by removing all the old school leadership and starting over with a cultural change. You know this won’t happen. So, for those who can, invest in the Defense industry. The government won’t let them go out of business.
PO’d Taxpayer,
I’d like to hear more about the Bradley debacle. The B-1 and F-22 problems are common knowledge (I think) but so much time has passed, and the system has performed so well, that I’m having a hard time tracking ANYTHING down on the Bradley acquisition controversy.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the B-1 was cancelled to make room for the B-2 (which had rendered it obsolete) which was in turn cut partly because the B-1 could do the job just as well in the post-USSR wold?
The Bradley started off badly. We had too many generals trying to add so many things to this system that it no longer met the initial requirement of being a light armored vehicle designed to move troops efficiently. This story is taught as the example of how NOT to do acquisitions in defense acquisition schools.
There’s a book called, “The Pentagon Wars” by James Burton that documents this story. Some stories include, the armor not withstanding to Soviet missiles (key requirement), having the fuel tanks inside the vehicle and putting the troops at risk of being burned alive, and how these deficiencies were doctored by the Army so the program could continue on to its next milestone. Read the book, it will be a real eye-opener. It was so comical that HBO did a movie on these incidents.
HBO did indeed make a movie about “The Pentagon Wars”. Excellent movie. Carey Elwes as the Air Force office protagonist, and Kelsey Grammer as his nemesis, General Partridge. I believe you can rent it at Blockbuster.
At some point they made the Bradley amphibious. What’s really telling is that they say that the Israelis bought off on the initial design before they screwed with it, and the factory making the Bradleys made two versions – the screwed up one and the original one. Guess who bought which one?