The new family of vehicles known as the Future Combat Systems (FCS) was originally seen as a light 19-ton vehicle that could be flown around the globe from the continental United States (CONUS) and inserted into combat at a moment's notice. It is to replace our heavy main battle tanks (MBT).
Five years ago I wrote about my skepticism that we needed to go so light and asserted that the MBT has proven itself in battle:
It may be unwise to rely solely on a light FCS if the Army needs a survivable system. If it can find a way around deploying from CONUS, future heavy systems would not need to conform to the tradeoffs necessary for the FCS to get to the theater quickly, and they might exhibit the same dominance as today’s MBTs. Pre-positioned future heavy systems, perhaps afloat, should not be overlooked. Where pre-positioning is impractical, sealift from CONUS must be faster. We may even need to explore deploying more forces overseas to get ground troops closer to potential trouble spots for the initial rapid response.
Now the Army is upping the weight of the FCS as the protection issue has been highlighted, per Colonel Charles Bush:
The first bump came in 2004, when the planned weight was upped to 24 tons. In 2006, the weight was raised again as designers sought to build a vehicle that could withstand rocket-propelled grenades, heavy and light machine-gun fire, anti-tank guided missiles and tank rounds.
The vehicles are slated to have active protection systems and lightweight composite and add-on armor, but the vehicles kept getting heavier.
“Survivability is the coin of the realm,” Bush said.
He and other planners had originally conceived 18-ton vehicles that could be flown aboard a C-130 airlifter, but “the physics were not there to meet our objectives,” Bush said. “If you are shooting a 100-pound projectile 20 miles, the force of that shot would present stability challenges for a 14-ton chassis.”
An 18-ton vehicle might only have met 75 percent of Army requirements, Bush said.
The 27-ton vehicles will be deployed aboard C-17 Globemaster IIIs, three to a plane. If need be, the cannon or mortar can be disassembled from a vehicle and the components flown to a location aboard two C-130s, Bush said.
A C-130 can land more places than a C-17, which needs a hardened landing strip, he noted, but a C-130 could only fly the vehicles about 500 nautical miles — and the vehicles would come off the C-17s ready to go.
I don't believe that 27 tons is enough to protect the vehicle from direct fire unless we have made some tremendous advances in active protection devices.
Nor do I think that we need to lighten up our main combat vehicle so that it can be airlifted to go into combat in hours or days. When will we need more than a small number of such vehicles for use with vertical envelopment maneuvers or token trip wires? Does anybody really think we will need this speed for a war? In what world do you live in if you think that we can airlift several brigades of troops, convene Congress while the soldiers are in the air, and offload the FCS units directly into combat with an authorization to use force fresh off the printer?
Even moving a brigade of our light Strykers would take about the same time by air or sea if the destination is South Korea (or Taiwan). Much like either the Persian Gulf War or the Iraq War, we will have plenty of time to ship our Army overseas before we commit to war.
If we still need speed, why not look into more prepositioned equipment on land in anticipated theaters or on ships that can move to the vicinity when a crisis arises or to meet up with troops flown in? Why not examine forward deploying combat brigades instead of pulling almost all back to the continental United States? Why not expand fast sealift?
And if we need a small number of light vehicles for our airmobile or airborne forces, we can build those, too.
I don't think the main battle tank with all its protection provided by bulky passive armor is obsolete. The FCS will not be the wonder tank. Bank on it.
