The Army plans to spend at least $7 billion over the next five years to develop its new Ground Combat Vehicle and is determined to get a jump on the project, with $934 million slotted for work in 2011 and nearly $2 billion the next year in what is clearly an accelerated development. The GCV will replace the FCS manned ground vehicles, cancelled last year, as the base model for future combat vehicles; the Army has said the initial vehicle will be an infantry carrier

Reviews of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review are pouring in from Washington’s defense cognoscenti and so far they come with a strong tilt towards disappointed. The lack of any real news or major program or policy shifts has led a number of defense wonks to question the value of the whole QDR process.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a clear signal to Democrats who might be eager to make cuts to the Defense Department’s budget: if you cut us below current levels you will “have to sacrifice force structure. We cannot do it any other way.” Making such cuts will mean that the United States will suffer from “a reduction in military capability and a reduction in our flexibility.” Gates was replying to a question from Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who cited the Obama administration’s domestic spending freeze, adding that the U.S. “may need to trim defense budgets as well.”

The Missile Defense Agency is struggling with lousy quality control among its contractors, its executive director said today. David Altwegg told reporters that he and his colleagues stood watching a recent THAAD test. A drogue parachute pulled the target out of a C-17. “We all stood there and watched it fall into the water,” said an obviously disgusted Altweg. A failure review board was convened and found the test failed due to “a quality control problem.”

Today, 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, and an additional $102 billion in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, formerly known as the supplemental war requests. 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.

The Humvee, which replaced the Jeep, will no longer be bought by the Army. While the service won’t buy any more Humvees, the Army is not getting rid of them. “The Army is not buying more Humvees but other people buy Humvees so the line is not terminated. We envision the Humvee to be an enduring part of the Army fleet for a long time,” Army Lt. Gen. Edgar Stanton, the military deputy in the Army comptroller’s office, told reporters during a Q and A session after the Army budget briefing.

Much will be made of a few reluctant acknowledgements of reality. The Navy won’t plan on, for now, a new cruiser it can’t afford even under the wildest budget growth assumptions. The Army will continue redesigning the vehicles for its “system of system” target hunting technologies that we now know can’t find even primitive enemies. The Air Force will have to wait, but just a bit, for a new bomber to try, yet again, to attack what it called decades ago “critical nodes.” The Marine Corps will declare a return to its amphibious warfare heritage: to fight its way onto hostile shores — something it has not done since 1945.

The chief of the Army’s aviation branch recently said that Afghanistan is America’s third helicopter war; Vietnam and Iraq being the first two. That explains why DOD is requesting $9.6 billion for new rotary wing aircraft in the 2011 budget, according to a draft review making the rounds in Washington. It also urges the services to boost their pilot training so they can get more helicopters to Afghanistan.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, said the Army, stretched by eight years of war in two distant theaters, would find it difficult to cope with another conflict such as Korea. Casey said in remarks at the Brookings Institution today that the Army would have to “freeze” forces in Iraq should fighting break out in another theater and could manage an “80 percent solution” to such a threat. He said that would rise to about 90 percent “when Iraq draws down.”

It is official. The two major theater war strategy — blueprint for American power for almost a quarter century — is no more. In the long run, that is likely to be the most significant change outlined by the Quadrennial Defense Review. This QDR acknowledges the need for a robust force capable of protecting U.S. interests against a multiplicity of threats. But it is “no longer appropriate to speak of major regional conflicts as the sole or even the primary template for sizing, shaping and evaluating US forces.”

If you were hoping that shear thickening fluids, carbon nanotubes and lightweight flexible armor was just around the corner, you’ll need to put those hopes on hold and keep reading your sci-​​fi books. Despite the US and allied militaries’ best efforts to lighten one of the biggest culprits of a trooper’s heavy load, armor manufacturers are having a hard time making quantum leaps in increased protection and weight savings.

The Pentagon has “dodged the bullet” in the fiscal 2011 budget but will almost certainly face demands for cuts next year. That was the fundamental assessment of strategy and budget experts at the respected Center for Strategy and Budgetary Assessments, a thinktank and consulting shop on which senior military leaders often rely. “I can tell you there is no way the defense budget will be immune to budget reduction efforts,” Stan Collender, one of Washington’s most respected budget wallahs, said at CSBA’s annual budget briefing.

You spot an IED from a Predator or the guy on point spots it. An armored vehicle rolls up and zaps it with a laser, blowing the sucker up. No one has to don a suit or get out of a vehicle. Neat, huh? Boeing has tested just such a laser system and it looks like the sort of system that could really make a difference to troops in the field today. If it’s far enough along to actually rumble over broken terrain, fire and be maintained in the middle of nowhere, this is the sort of weapon that might help change the balance between IED makers and us.

Capitol Republicans have been banging heads over the last few weeks, trying to figure out how to counter the expected results of the soon-to-be-released Quadrennial Defense Review. The greatest challenge for the Republicans is simple: Robert Gates, who has drawn the mantle of this QDR tight about his shoulders, stands behind the decisions arrived at during the QDR and he was appointed by a Republican. His national security credentials are impeccable and no one can accuse him of being weak on national defense or a misguided Democrat.

Editor’s note: After speaking with an Air Force official, I’ve changed the headline on this story to better reflect Gen. Schwartz’s focus on finding alternatives to GPS to be used when operating in denied environments.

The Pentagon will probably send the U-2 to Haiti so its unique multi-spectral imagery capabilities can be put to use spotting breaks in water and gas lines, chemical spills and similar problems. “My expectation is that we hope to get that deployed soon,” Col. Bradley Butz, vice commander of the Air Force’s 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Va., told reporters this morning. The U-2 contains unique multi-spectral imagery equipment (the seven-band SYERS 2) that Global Hawk and Predator don’t possess.

Early reports of the demise of Lockheed Martin’s MULE program were exaggerated. The company put out a statement clarifying that the Pentagon killed only the countermine and transport versions of the Multifunctional Utility/Logistics and Equipment (MULE) unmanned ground vehicle program, as it is fondly known. “The termination order does not affect, and work continues on, the Armed Robotic Vehicle (ARV) variant of the MULE, which accounts for approximately 90 percent of total anticipated MULE production program,” according to a Lockheed Martin spokesman.

The U.S. bombing campaign targeting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other extremist groups in Pakistan, continues to escalate, according to a a data rich analysis put together by the invaluable Long War Journal. The U.S. carried out 53 drone strikes in Pakistan last year, compared to 36 in 2008, a 47 percent increase. With multiple bombing runs already in 2010, LWJ says to expect the intensity of the campaign to match or beat least year’s pace.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Scales says the Army should build a “universal carrier,” able to operate as a “mother ship” for squad sized teams for its future Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), the follow on effort to the cancelled FCS family of vehicles. It should come with tracks for off-road mobility, heavy enough firepower to dispatch enemy infantry, and all of the latest and greatest networks and sensors. It should also be a joint vehicle, he says, since current wars show a convergence in how soldiers, Marines and special operators fight at the tactical level.

The Army has released the final version of its Capstone Concept, shifting the service’s big ideas from preparing to fight mechanized battles on open battlefields to waging complex wars amongst the people against a hybrid mixture of adversaries. The new pub pushes the idea of “operational adaptability,” demanding intellectually agile soldiers who can rapidly adapt to complexity and a shifting and shadowy enemy.