Future Combat Systems: Point, Click, Shoot

The Washington Post today has an overview of Future Combat Systems, which tries to place the $200 billion project in the broader context of Army modernization:

In the Army's vision, the war of the future is increasingly combat by mouse clicks. It's as networked as the Internet, as mobile as a cellphone, as intuitive as a video game. The Army has a name for this vision: Future Combat Systems, or FCS. The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say.

Greg Grant did an excellent (arguably better) historical overview last year, but the Post article also underscores what is at the center of current FCS problems: the software.

The Army isn't as far along with the software that will connect the drones, robots and weapons in a network.
The software development is an "unprecedented undertaking," the largest in Defense Department history, according to a March report by the GAO,
Congress's investigative arm. In 2003, when the project began, the Army estimated it would need 33.7 million lines of code; it's now 63.8
million.

But John Morrocco, a spokesman for Boeing, which is developing key parts of the software, said a third of the code has been delivered.

Another problem is that the Army is giving itself only a dozen years from the time of the program's official launch to field a brigade with eight manned combat vehicles linked with six unmanned vehicles, drones, robots and sensors involving about 50 critical technologies, said Paul L. Francis, the GAO's director of acquisition and sourcing management. "We've never done a tank in five years," he said. That alone could take 10 to 15 years, involving about five critical technologies, he said.

According to Defense Department best practices, the Army should not have launched Future Combat Systems until critical technologies were more mature, the GAO said. "We're not saying they're not making progress," Francis said. But he added, "They're getting to the point they should've been in 2003."

Look at the timeline the Post
has FCS (15 brigades fielded with FCS in 2030), then calculate in the usual delays for such complex programs. It makes you wonder what warfare will look like by the time the Army really does field FCS, and whether it will resemble anything like the scenarios envisioned back in
1995.

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