Future Combat Systems

Template:TOC-right Expected to begin full deployment in 2010, Future Combat Systems are an integrated, network-centric set of techologies and equipment for enhanced warfighting by the United States Army. Most components are in advanced testing, whie some are in operation.

These systems will unquestionably be expensive. The key question is whether the greater cost will be justified by greater efficiencies, including the ability both to field smaller forces and to lower risk among the troops of those forces. In the Fiscal Year 2007 appropriation, while $3.4 billion for the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program was appropriated for FCS, the U.S. Department of Defense is required to submit "independent cost estimate[s] of the core FCS program, FCS spinouts and FCS complementary systems." "Spinouts" are the systems that are being sent to combat units in the field, before the full FCS deployments begin; they focus on systems needed by Infantry Brigade Combat Teams.

Shared among all the components is:

• A system-of-systems common operating environment (SOSCOE): it supports multiple mission-critical applications by using a nonproprietary, standards-based architecture and COTS computing hardware adapted for military applications.
• Battle command (BC) software: this includes mission planning and preparation, situation understanding with a common operational picture, mission execution, and warfighter-machine interface (WMI) applications.
• Tactical and Strategic Communications, using Increment 3 of the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T).
• Intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance (ISR) sensors: these are a distributed, networked array of multispectral sensors that provide a "see first" capability that is rapidly shared across the FCS network.

Aside from all the unmanned sensors, combat vehicles, crew-served weapons, and other features, it cannot be overemphasized that FCS includes the idea of the "soldier as a system" (SaaS), which includes a highly trained soldier, equipped with engineered clothing, personal equipment, and even food. While the fully FCS-equipped soldier is not quite the Mobile Infantry of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or the "Borg" of the Star Trek universe, many of the SaaS features, in active field testing, give many observers a sense that science fiction has become reality. The soldier is the most important of the systems.

While the project literature often speaks of 13 or 14 subsystems, there are several logical groups of systems.

Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition (IRSTA)

ISR systems, arguably, are the second most important component of FCS after the soldier, continuing a widespread Army saying, "If you can find it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it." Wise adversaries know, therefore, that their first imperative is not to be found; the first part of actual warfare is the reconnaissance-counterreconnaissance duel. The priority given to this system and mission is already obvious in brigade combat teams, which operate with RSTA systems that take up an unprecedented amount of resources in units of brigade size: the RSTA Squadron and Military Intelligence Company.

Unattended ground sensors (UGS) are a major component, for genneral tactical and urban-specific environments. While ISR is not the only functions for the FCS UAVs, they strongly support ISR.

Weapons and manned combat vehicles

The actual systems that ISRTA directs fall into two categories, kinetic kill and non-kinetic-kill. Kinetic kill mechanisms continue the principles of traditional weaponry: physical destruction of the target by explosive force, heat or mechanical impact. Most of the kinetic weapons are Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS), so they can shelter while firing and have their projectiles guided into the target.

Nonkinetic kill, however, using such things as electronic warfare and information operations can neutralize enemy capabilities rather than destroy them. Clearly, the enemy has to use electronics for electronic warfare to be relevant, but electronic warfare is not the only aspect of nonkinetic kill. Information operations include psychological warfare; the principle that the wisest general is the one who wins without fighting goes back to Sun Tzu in 400 BC. BCTs, even before FCS, make psychological warfare, humanitarian relief, and other parts of information operations, effective against low-technology enemies, a basic part of planning. Both for intelligence and information operations, indeed, one of the perceived critical shortfalls is a lack of linguists.

NLOS cannon (NLOS-C)

Of the non-individual kinetic kill mechanisms, among the first is the Non-line-of-sight cannon (NLOS-C). Physically, it is an advanced 155mm howitzer, self-propelled on a manned vehicle. Ammunition handling, loading and firing are mechanized and automatic, provide an unprecedentedly high rate of fire. Most munitions fired will be guided shells with great accuracy.

In addition, the fire control compputing system allows Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact (MRSI). MRSI is a technique in which a single cannon can put a burst of multiple projectiles in the air, with trajectories calculated such that they will impact near-simultaneously. MRSI salvoes begin by firing the first shell in a trajectory that will have the longest flight time, and then following with automatically loaded shells in individually computed trajectories, each with a shorter flight time.

Additional funding, in Fiscal Year 2007, was $112.3 million. As of February 2008, one thousand test shells had been fired from a preproduction platform. The first NLOS-C shell was fired, from a fully automatic platform, on September 23, 2008.

NLOS mortar (NLOS-M)

An intelligent mortar is intended for closer engagement distances, as well as certain engagement geometries, than is practical with the NLOS-C howitzer-based system.

NLOS launch system (NLOS-LS)

• Non-line-of-sight launch system (NLOS-LS): a family of missiles and a highly deployable, platform-independent container launch unit.

Intelligent munitions system (IMS)

While unintelligent antipersonnel land mines are being banned by treaty, the mine ban, Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, is specific to that type. Also known as the Ottawa Treaty, it does not preclude antitank mines with even the minimum mechanical fuzes that prevent them from being detonated by anything lighter than a large vehicle, posing little risk to civilians.

The IMS incorporates far more intelligent sensors than the simple weight-actuated fuze of an antitank mine. Indeed, individual IMS components may be "man-in-the-loop": their unattended action is limited to detecting a possible target and requesting human consent to engage it. Autonomous IMS weapons are highly selective; they might, for example, attack a presumed tank only if it met the predefined and specific acoustic and magnetic signatures (i.e., geophysical MASINT) of a specific tank model. "Man-in-the-loop", or "command detonated mines" such as the U.S. M18A1 Claymore are excepted from antipersonnel land mine treaties.

Unmanned aerial vehicles

There are four classes of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), ranging from Class I units that can be carried in backpacks, larger vehicle-carried Class II, to Class III battalion-level resources and Class IV at Brigade Combat Team control.

Class I and II are primarily for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA), to let soldiers send a robot ahead of them. At classes III and IV, additional functions join basic RSTA, as a multifunction system with the range and endurance to provide communications relay, weather information, chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear (CBRN) survey, and airborne detection of land mines. The Class IV UAV is operational as the MQ-8.

Unmanned ground vehicles

• Armed robotic vehicle (ARV): has an assault variant and an RSTA variant, both of which share a common chassis.
• Small unmanned ground vehicle (SUGV): a small, lightweight, man-portable UGV that can conduct military operations in urban terrain tunnels, sewers, and caves.
• Multifunctional utility/logistics and equipment (MULE) vehicle: a 2.5-ton unmanned ground vehicle that supports dismounted operations and includes a chassis, autonomous navigation system, operator control unit, and three mission-equipment packages.

Mounted combat system (MCS)

provides direct and beyond-line-of-sight offensive firepower.