The U.S. Army is adopting more agile and flexible procurement plans in response to lessons learned from the Pentagon's decision to halt the $160 billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) modernization program.
"One of the things we learned from FCS was, we tried to go too fast and the technology wasn't there," Army Chief of Staff General George Casey told reporters on Monday at an Association of the U.S. Army conference.
"We're going to strike the right balance between leveraging technology that's available so that we're not doing wishful thinking, but at the same time are pressing the system as fast as we can," Casey said.
Indeed.
Ahem (go to the May-June 2002 issue for ""Equipping the Objective Force"):
Although different authors project capabilities, some ordinary and some fantastic, the overall tenor of the debate has a science fair quality. If you could wish for a future combat vehicle, it would be nice to receive one that was beyond your wildest dreams. Reality is likely to be far less comforting in its ability to reconcile the Army’s need for power and deployability. It must not count on fielding a system that “pushes the boundaries of technology well beyond what is achievable today.” It may be as reasonable just to skip the inconvenient task of building an FCS and just wish for victory.The reality of our Abrams and Bradleys in combat demonstrated that we don't need science fair dreams to win our wars.
