Futuristic family of army vehicles losing momentum.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: DEFENSE WATCH

A looming defense budget crunch, a shift in military priorities and growing uneasiness about the state of technology are conspiring to disrupt the Army's largest ever procurement project, the Future Combat Systems.

The early signs that the Army began to seriously question the merits of FCS came more than a year ago, when Chief of Staff" Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, warned that FCS would have to perform better than the Abrams tank. The FCS family of 18 vehicles, which are to be connected by a single command-and-control network, originally was intended to replace every combat platform the Army operates today.

The Army so far has committed $21 billion to the program, and expects to spend at least $100 billion more by the time all the pieces of FCS enter service in 2016.

Congress, for its part, recently began to sour on FCS after having stood behind it for the past three years. The House proposed cutting $400 million from the $3.4 billion FCS budget the Army requested for 2006. Earlier this year, the Armed Services Committee chastised the program in a lengthy report.

The committee says it is disappointed by rising costs and failures to deliver the promised technologies. Between fiscal years 2004 and 2009, the estimated cost of FCS rose from $19 billion to $30 billion. Other problems that HASC highlighted include "reliance on immature technology, over-dependence on contractors for program management and a lack of government systems engineering and cost analysis expertise."

"FCS has been hit from both sides at a four-way crossing," says Dan Goure, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute. The war in Iraq, particularly, has cast a new light on high-tech weapons as a surefire means of beating the enemy. In non-traditional urban warfare, many observers contend, a system such as FCS could have limited value because it is based on the notion that light, speedy vehicles equipped with advanced sensors can replace heavy armor. With suicide bombs and buried roadside explosives killing U.S. troops in Iraq on a daily basis, Army leaders are questioning whether FCS can produce a "survivable" vehicle, Goure notes.

As a poster child for "network-centric" warfare, FCS epitomizes the military's over-reliance on technology. "Among the casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan is 'net-centric' warfare," says retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales. This thinking also is gaining acceptance in the Marine Corps. "Technology can assist as an enabler, but this kind of war is...