The idea is to use as much mature technology as possible, and to ensure competition and construction of full vehicle prototypes all the way through the engineering and design phase, he said.
Indeed, I've blogged about the problem of leaping ahead many times, including here and here where I addressed the hopes for the Future Combat Systems that I dubbed "wonder tanks". These posts generally took off from an article of mine that Military Review published 8 years ago (see article starting at p. 28), where I addressed the technology aspect in one part:
Building the FCS, however, is a high-risk venture. The Army should not spend whatever it takes attempting to meld multiple revolutionary technologies into one vehicle for all missions. The FCS should be different from the Abrams and Bradley but must be designed with near-term technology that incorporates modular improvements if the Army is to turn “gee whiz” ideas into actual hardware.
I think the article is still a good starting point to evaluating what we need in a new armored fighting vehicle to replace our Abrams and Bradley vehicles.
Mature is good. Let's build actual hardware.
