FCS: Too big to succeed

The Future Combat System was the Army's attempt to buy the next generation of vehicles in a single project and by doing so to fully network them from the ground up.   According to numerous GAO reports, most recently on March 12, bthe program is failing due to its reliance on unproven technology (Here's the Army's response to the report).  Sec. Gates apparently found the GAO's case compelling and has recommended cutting and replanning the vehicle program of the FCS, effectively shattering the program.  With that summary completed, I'd like to take this moment to emphasize that I'm speaking for myself and not any institution that employs me.

Disclaimer out of the way, I'm with the summary of critics' views described by Noah Shachtman over at Wired: Danger Room:

When they first launched FCS six years ago, the Army's top generals made a bet — not just on the coming wars around the globe, but on the politics within the Beltway. Ordinarily, weapons systems are bought one class at a time: one particular tank, one particular network, a single model of a fighter jet. But in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Army saw several of its weapons programs killed off by the Pentagon brass. So the generals made a decision, to package what would ordinarily be dozens of programs — new vehicles, new robots, new networks — into a single effort called "Future Combat Systems." And they awarded the massive contract for the whole thing to a pair of companies, Boeing and SAIC. The executives and the generals said it was to make sure all the gear worked in concert. Critics countered that, by combining all those programs into one, it made FCS too bloated, too ungainly to ever work right. And by the way, they added, why was there so little government oversight of what Boeing and SAIC did?...

Bits of FCS will continue. Small ground robots and drones developed under the program will be "spun out" soon to the troops. But, if Gates has his way, the generals' original vision for Future Combat Systems is over. As one Capitol Hill source put it, "They wanted to make it too big to fail, and in the process, made it a failure."

To give the Army a little more credit, there's a reason to think that the networking would be easier if you're doing all the projects at once.  If you want a highly coupled network then the projects are by definition highly integrated.  However, while I can see the desirability of such a network, I think as presently conceived is far too complex to be achievable.   We do have a range of tools to deal with complexity, here's a series of workshops and reports from CSIS on the matter.  However, I'm skeptical of our ability to handle the ecosystem and emergent behavior of counterporary warfare via any  acquisition process, let alone a process as flawed as our present one.  I think instead we need to give warfighters robust tools and standards to mash-up loosely coupled systems.  In short, shoot for the internet and not for Windows Vista.

I thought I might disagree with the Armchair Generalist on this, but after a quick discussion in comments it appears that we're on the same page on complexity.  Instead, the Generalist's critique runs more towards Sec. Gates' emphasis on armored vehicles such as the MRAP:

I respect Gates' need to take charge of the FCS project and restructure it. I don't, however, believe he's thinking logically about the vehicle design. First of all, he's stated that at least 50% of the DOD programs are still oriented toward conventional warfare. Second, we've all seen the reports by people who've stated that the best way to avoid IEDs is to get OUT of the vehicles and walk around. Third, usually one accepts that there are tradeoffs between mission capability and protection. If Gates wants full protection, then the vehicle's going to weigh too much and cost too much. Not hard to figure out.

That makes sense to me, although I don't really have the relevant knowledge and experience to judget the mission capability and protection trade-offs that well.  I think it may be worth having vehicles that are so heavy that they take longer to get to the theater. On the other hand, some of our current vehicles are too heavy to operate in the challenging terrain of Afghanistan or to be able to manage some bridges in Iraq.  FCS attempted to maintain heavy armor survivability rates by striking first and via advances in armor technology.  That's not really going to work, lighter vehicles are going to take a survivability hit.  However, if this improves their ability to achieve their mission, then lives will be saved over the long term.

I actually only recently found the Armchair Generalist and Wired: Danger Room.  Still checking them out, but they both seem rather useful for information sources for my professional life.   If I'm still of that opinion in a week or two, I'll likely put them on the blog roll.