Army Approaches Decision on Interim Combat Vehicle.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's vision for a lighter, more deployable force--needed to fight rapidly developing regional wars, such as Kosovo--is beginning to assume a recognizable form on the dusty fields of military bases around the country.

At Fort Lewis, just outside of Tacoma, Wash., two prototypical units, known as Initial Brigade Combat Teams, or IBCTs, are working to develop tactics, techniques and procedures for the new force.

Shinseki's plan calls for the new brigades to trade in many of their 70-ton Abrams ranks for mobile gun systems that weigh perhaps as little as a third of that and can be loaded on to a C-130 Hercules air transport. The new brigades are intended to be models for the entire Army. It will take at least another decade, Shinseki estimates, to complete the service's transformation into what he calls "the Objective Force."

The Army hasn't decided yet what kind of vehicle it wants to replace the Abrams over the long run. The Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are working on a "Future Combat System," which may be equipped with such technologies as high-energy lasers and electromagnetic guns. But such a vehicle won't be ready for at least 12 years, Army officials said. (related story p.33)

The Army, meanwhile, is working on developing lighter brigades that will help transition between the current Army and the Objective Force. The first two brigades to begin the transition into lighter, more mobile units are the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, explained Maj. Gen. James M. Dubik, deputy commanding general for transformation in the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). Both are part of the Army's I Corps, which is based at Fort Lewis.

Final Stages

The new units currently are training with 12-ton Light Armored Vehicles, Generation III (LAV IIIs), borrowed from Canada. TRADOC is in the final stages of selecting what it calls an "interim armored vehicle (IAV)" for the Army to use during the next several years.

The IAV must be lighter than the tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and artillery pieces currently used by the Army, officials said. It also must be available in a single platform that can be used for all of the vehicles needed in a brigade, from a command and control vehicle, to the anti-rank and reconnaissance versions, officials noted.

At the Army's Armor Center, at Fort Knox, Ky., TRADOC earlier this year evaluated 35 vehicles already in use by friendly armed forces around the world. Among them were models from the United States and six other countries--Canada, France, Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and Turkey.

Within Fort Knox's...