For a long time, I worried that we seemed to believe that victory was a given when we sent our ground forces into battle, and the main thing we needed to do was make our heavy armor more strategically deployable. The Future Combat Systems (FCS) took this false lesson too far by thinking we could replace our Abrams main battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles (for infantry and cavalry) with a 19-ton vehicle that could be easily deployed by air in any of our transports. That was ridiculous (see pp. 28-33).
Experience in Iraq showed that heavy armor is still valuable even in counter-insurgency. So I should be pleased that we have learned the lesson that heavy, well-protected vehicles aren't obsolete. Behold the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV):
In just a few years, the United States Army is expected to retire their iconic Bradley troop carrier. The Bradley’s replacement, the proposed GCV Infantry Fighting Vehicle, is a massive, highly modifiable ground combat vehicle that grew out of years of military and defense contractor studies. ...
Signorelli also stressed the GCV’s “growth and modularity”--the vehicle works as a tank once a few basic accessories are added; the vehicle can also be augmented with accessories including electric armor, jammers, and experimental energy weapons thanks to the in-vehicle electric power source.
The illustration shows an infantry fighting version of what is to be the chassis for a lot of different types of vehicle. But the article mostly speaks of the "tank," and since the article speaks of using it as a tank (smoothing out that rear bump for troop space to allow a larger turret, I assume), this could be what eventually replaces the Abrams as well as replacing the Bradley.
And get this:
The CBO was especially worried about the size of BAE’s hybrid GCV. With armor, the finished vehicle will weigh 70 to 84 tons, AOL Defense’s Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. reports.
I assume the tank version is what tops out at 84 tons--65 tons more than the old FCS concept's goal. And the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) thoughts on purchasing a troop carrier from abroad to save money neglect the tank version that the Army wants to sneak into this Bradley replacement program.
Even at 70 tons, that's a heavy vehicle for a troop carrier. So now I get to worry about our armor being too heavy. Seriously, I thought we had ways of lightening up even our heavy Abrams tanks yet an infantry fighting vehicle will weigh 70 tons? And despite the talk of electric armor, we clearly haven't abandoned the idea of passive armor since otherwise the vehicle wouldn't weigh that much. That's good. Even I can think of ways to defeat electric armor and other active systems. Unless the armor is modular and we anticipate removing passive armor when we get electric armor, of course. FCS dreams die hard, I guess.
Anyway, the reality of combat in Iraq trumped technology-based visions of wonder tanks that could abandon armor by the simple expedients of being too tough to see or by killing enemies first. So even if I can worry about learning too much of that lesson, I should be grateful, as I concluded in that August 2007 post above:
But I am glad to hear, after reading indications that the Army recognized the value of heavy armor, that evolved dinosaurs will roam the battlefields of the future and stomp on furry little mammals that get in their way.
If we fund it, of course. Perhaps the evolved Abrams really will be the Abrams replacement for combat many decades in the future.
