Have you guys considered looking across the Atlantic for a new vehicle family? There are two fully developed medium weight tracked vehicle families, one of which already has an excellent combat record: The CV90 family and the ASCOD family. Both could easily be licenced and then adapted to the US Army’s needs and manufactured in the US (thus creating more jobs than FCS has done so far and probably ever will). There is also a wide range of fresh wheeled vehicles on stock, all of which are a hell of a lot better protected than the Stryker.

No offence, but what’s the use of re-inventing the wheel ONCE AGAIN? The Marines already use the Finnish Patria design for their LAV-25 successor. So could the Army.

Otherwise … hey, there’s always the Future Future Future Future Future Future Combat Systems solution, available in 2104 for only about 1 Trillion bucks.

Want to know what the FCS vehicles look like? They look like Strykers because that is where the money has already gone.

The Army sets the requirements…the LSI executes them. The KPPs can only be changed by the CSA or maybe the TRADOC CG. ASAALT and the LSI and contractors have to meet those requirements. The role of the LSI is similar to a general contractor building a house — they supervise all the other folks working on it to make sure they build it to the architect’s plan. Bitching that is not the case doesn’t make it true.

The NLOS-C needs to be on the larger 40 ton chassis (although with lower armor protection requirements it may weigh less). A modern 155mm SPH really does need to be a 52 cal ordanance.

Next would be to include optional uparmor kits. A 4 ton kit for the 16 ton chassis, 4 ton & 8 ton kits for the 32 ton chassis & a 8 ton kit for the 40 ton chassis.

Note my MAJOR issue with the FCS is that we don’t need 15 Brigades of them (or at least we don’t need them to be REPLACING “traditional” heavy Brigades).

In fact, in keeping with the modular theme, all “medium” & “heavy” units could eventually be ‘interchangable’ with all vehicles excluding the tanks being the same. You just ‘insert’ the appropriate tank (40 ton “medium” [with out without uparmor kits] or 60 ton “heavy”) based on the situation.

Every tracked vehicle in our inventory has a flat hull. It may not be ideal when you encounter a mine, but at least you have a solid low resistance surface to direct the blast across the bottom of the vehicle and out the other side. It’s certainly not be mentioned as a glaring defect in the M1, M2 and M113 families. Yet it’s a program killer for the FCS vehicles.

Armored hummers on the other hand have an inverted ‘V’ bottom. The channel in the underside where the tunnel for the drive shaft runs acts as a blast trap and actually concentrates the force of an explosion against the floor of the vehicle — which greatly increases the chance of a floor breech. When the floor does breech the armor shell works to contain and amplify the blast. That design is the reason that an IED that does minor damage to an MRAP, striker or tracked kills everyone inside an armored hummer.

I guess that what I’m wondering is why are the FCS designs that actually provide better protection against mines than the vehicles we currently have are dead, but we still make armored hummers with no plans to stop?

But back on subject, the Army could consider 3 families of vehicles that include:

1) 40-ton medium tank and recovery vehicles

2) 32-ton (vs. prior 27-ton) infantry carrier vehicles, NLOS-Cannons, and C2 Vehicles exploiting substantial R&D already performed by FCS

3) 16-ton smaller Recon & Scout vehicles, evacuation/treatment vehicles, and mortar vehicles

This would facilitate:

1) Two 40-ton tanks per C-17 (40 + 40 = 80 tons)
2) Two of the 32-ton family of vehicles per C-17 plus one of the lighter, smaller vehicles (32-ton + 32-ton + 16-ton = 160 ton)
3) Five of the 16-ton family of vehicles (5 x 16 = 80 tons)

The last smaller tracked vehicle (M-113 size)could also become the common basis for a small fire team vehicle (half a squad) equipping either:
– one air-mechanized infantry battalion per FCS BCT
– one air-mechanized infantry company per FCS and heavy BCT combined arms battalion
– or an all new air-mechanized BCT.

Such smaller well-armored vehicles could also be task-organized or organic to air assault and light infantry BCTs to add armored firepower/protection against enemy armor and artillery. At 32,000 lbs, each vehicle would be reasonable enough in size for rotary wing (CH-53K size) and C-130J transport.

All vehicles would have permanent V-Hulls for IED protection. Although, I’m puzzled that the Army was already planning a FCS V-hull kit, yet seemingly got no credit for it while the EFV without any possibility for a V-hull and with more total vulnerable Marines on board gets to skate on by.

As for MRAPs, they would ideally fit in National Guard BCTs of all types because their height would facilitate travel over flooded roads and safeguard troops in the event of a nuclear terrorist incident. The elevated platform that would provide a better buffer from ground fall-out. Armored vehicles are some of the best for shielding from radiation, especially if sandbags are added on the floor.

You could also consider adding MRAPs to civil affairs and engineer/EOD units and perhaps new units created specifically for counterinsurgency. But MRAPs are no substitute for shorter, less rollover-prone, more maneuverable/sustainable/deployable, and less ATGM-targetable JLTV in most BCTs.

The above compromises in armored vehicle design would cause a minor change in the FCS BCT armored vehicle deployment from 108 C-17s (3 vehicles x 108 C-17s = 324 vehicles) to a new FCS BCT whose armored vehicles would be transported by 120 C-17s as outlined below:

1) 35 C-17 sorties carrying tanks and recovery vehicles (70 vehicles total)
2) 85 C-17 sorties carrying two 32-ton vehicles + one 16-ton vehicle (170 32-ton vehicles + 85 16-ton vehicles)

Another integrated option could include re-engined and strengthened C-17s to keep the Long Beach assembly line open perhaps allowing 32-ton vehicles to be increased in weight to 34–35 tons. This also would allow tanks to increase in size to 42–43 tons.

It would be prudent to retain the family of vehicles concept that has proven itself in optimizing R&D and production costs, and maintainability ala Stryker. I can see value in separating the vehicle producers from FCS because the LSI otherwise wants its share of the profits on $90 billion. But having two vehicle producers ala FCS BAE/General Dynamics does allows you to introduce a competitive aspect during production. I’m just not sure two competitors would save anything with 3 families of vehicles on 6 different production lines.

The Army should continue to approach future armored vehicle weight/space/power trade-off requirements as an integrated whole rather than a hodgepodge of separate vehicle R&D, separate sustainability/maintainability, and unsynchronized airlift/sealift requirements.