Home » Land » Army Dishes $1 Billion for GCV; Design Pending

Army Dishes $1 Billion for GCV; Design Pending

By Greg Grant Monday, February 1st, 2010 4:46 pm
Posted in Land, Policy

The Army requested $143 billion for 2011 in the base budget, a modest increase over the $140 billion the service received last year from congress. But that’s not all. The Army requested an additional $102 billion in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, formerly known as the supplemental war requests. The vast majority of the OCO request is for military personnel and operations and maintenance, only $9 billion goes towards procurement.

For research, development and acquisition, the Army is asking for $31.6 billion. A large chunk of that, nearly $6 billion, goes to buying new helicopters and drones. The Army is adding a twelfth Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) in 2011 and is beginning to buy new helicopters to outfit a thirteenth by 2015. As for drones, the plan is to ultimately equip each of the 10 active divisions with a Sky Warrior company for reconnaissance, surveillance and strike missions.

While the design of the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), the replacement for the cancelled FCS ground vehicles, has yet to be finalized, the Army is still spending nearly $1 billion on the program. Army budget chief, Lt. Gen. Edgar Stanton, gave a rather fuzzy answer to a reporter’s question about where the money is going if the vehicle design is still up in the air. Apparently, all that money is going towards design and other development efforts. We’ll try to run down more information on that one.

Here are some quick hits from the Army’s 2011 shopping list:

• $1.3 billion to buy 48 UH-60M Blackhawk and 24 HH-60M medical mission helicopters
• $1.1 billion for 40 new CH-47F Chinook helicopters
• $494 million to buy 16 new Apache Block III aircraft
• $394 million to upgrade existing Apache Block II models
• $459 million to buy 26 MQ-1 Sky Warrior drones
• $682.7 million to buy Infantry Brigade Combat Team modernization packages
• $1.6 billion for continued development and testing of other networking and battle command capability packages
• $480 million to buy 78 Patriot PAC-3 missiles
• $164 million to buy 715 Javelin missile
• $291 million to buy 2,592 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles
• $414 million for M1A2 Abrams System Enhancement Program (SEP)
• $447 million to buy 83 Stryker wheeled vehicles
• $918 million for 2,959 medium and heavy trucks
• $421 million for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical communications system

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	William C. February 1st, 2010 at 11:26 pm Very good regarding the GCV, there is plenty of potential there. Most of the other developments are good to see as well. However the OH-58 Kiowa still needs a replacement sooner or later,and there is hardly any mention of other air defense systems other than Patriot PAC-3. Still, it is a shame to see the other services did not fare as well.
	FormerDirtDart February 2nd, 2010 at 12:21 am “Here are some quick hits from the Army’s 2011 shopping list:” mean this list is not all inclusive. There is a whole lot more items in the budget. But I do agree that OH-58 replacement needs to be identified sooner not later
	William C. February 2nd, 2010 at 12:44 am Another thing to consider is if we will see any major work on a “M1A3” upgrade for the Abrams beginning in 2011. The Chinese have several advanced variants of their Type 99 MBT in development and the Russian “T-95″ may finally be shown this year.
	BOOMER February 2nd, 2010 at 8:34 am William — if you take a look at the Jan contracts signed on the home page you will see there is an upgrade program for the Abrahms. Another thing you will see is how most of the Army’s budget is eaten up by the ARMY corp of engineers. for a long time I have felt that this organizations responsibilities should be taken over by a civilian agency since it mostly involves DYKES — DAMS-RIVER & LAKE dredgings –DAMS-ROADS, I dont see any defensive aspect to any of these programs but they are taking more than half of the ARMY’s budget which should be spent on troops and equipment.
	BOOMER February 2nd, 2010 at 10:39 am If you want to see waist and how the govt is being over charged look at the money being spent on the items above, I mean I could build strykers in my garage using off the shelf parts so how come 83 of them cost 447 million??? I could but a lot more than 2000 10 ton and semi trucks for 918 million. Someone needs to open a SAMS club for military equipment, I thought you got better deals buying in bulk, we would be better off having the individual units purchase these items from retail vendors with better warranties than we are actualy getting directly from the contractors.
	HasBeen February 2nd, 2010 at 7:39 pm I think the acquisition costs are ridiculous. We’re making very expensive targets. We may have to re-think the way we are going to fight our wars so that it can be affordable.
	soonergrunt February 2nd, 2010 at 4:03 pm There are some interesting programs being pursued at the moment, but the official program to replace OH-58 is currently on hold following the cancellation of the ARH-70 project. EADS is working on an armed version of the UH-72 Lakota and Boeing is working on an AH-6S (stretched, updated version of AH-6) and Bell is supposed to be working on a newer version of the ARH-70.