Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

198 • Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck is Hereincluded in its approved modernization budget into the out-years to repair, overhauland replace equipment damaged, destroyed or worn-out in combat operations inIraq and Afghanistan. On top of these immediate funding requirements, the Army isfaced with the steady growth in operations and maintenance (O&M) costs that haveplagued all the services over the past decades. In its annual report to Congress in early2008, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported 3 those costs grew steadily byan annual average of $2,000 per active-duty service member from 1980 to 2001 beforehitting the spike resulting from the aforementioned combat operations that havebeen funded to a great extent by supplemental budget requests. Excluding potentialunbudgeted costs for the continuing GWOT, the CBO projects a similar rate of O&Mcost growth in the future. Furthermore, the Army and Marine Corps will requireyet additional billions in funding in the coming years to accommodate the plannedincrease of 92,000 in their combined active duty end strength.For its future modernization, the Army has built the bulk of its plan around itsFuture Combat Systems (FCS). Planned as a revolutionary, “leap ahead” system, itwould form the centerpiece of its ground combat forces to be fielded between FY 2015and FY 2020. Army plans describe FCS as a mobile, deployable, lethal and survivableplatform, incorporating advanced technology components to enable a significantincrease in combat effectiveness. The program consists of an integrated family ofadvanced, networked combat and sustainment systems; unmanned ground and airvehicles; and unattended sensors and munitions intended to equip the Army’s newtransformational modular combat brigades. Within a system-of-systems architecture,FCS now features 14 major systems (already down from its 2003 plan that called for18 new systems) plus other enabling systems along with an overarching networkintended to provide information superiority and survivability.The FCS program was approved in May 2003 to begin its System Design andDevelopment (SDD) phase of development. FCS plans then called for the ambitiousdevelopment of the 18 individual systems that included armored ground vehicles,unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), as well as several classes of unmanned aerialvehicles (UAVs). At that time, the Army planned to stand up an experimental FCSbrigade in 2008 equipped with all the new systems.Since that time the program has undergone numerous far-reaching restructurings. ByJuly 2004, the Army announced that it planned early delivery or “spin out” of selectedFCS systems vice the earlier plan to deliver all the systems simultaneously. This new plancalled for a phased approach to “spin out” mature FCS equipment to existing forces,provided the equipment demonstrated military utility during testing, slated to begin inFY 2008. The Army, however, planned to test spinout hardware using surrogate radiosbecause technical issues had delayed development of its family of new radios. As of theexisting schedule, production-representative radios would not be available for testinguntil at least 2009, after the production decision for spinout items.