Visionaries foresee radically different military vehicles.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Tactical Vehicles

Unlike jet fighters, no one ever talks about 4th or 5th generation military vehicles.

Trucks, wheeled and tracked combat systems have tended to be on a more evolutionary than revolutionary path when it comes to new technologies.

These steps have been painfully slow, and in some cases, have failed to materialize at all. The Army's Future Combat Systems was cancelled and the Marine Corps expeditionary fighting vehicle shared the same fate. It took the Corps 25 years to find out that its dream of a new ship-to-shore troop transporter would come to naught.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has waded into this problem. Its Adaptive Vehicle Make program announced last year seeks to reinvent the way vehicles are designed and built. It is looking to revamp and speed up the entire acquisition process, from the drawing board to the assembly line.

The DARPA program will not come to fruition in time to assist efforts to develop the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a replacement for the Humvee, and the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle. Both acquisition programs are moving at the usual pace: more like a Sherman tank than a Ferrari.

Nevertheless, some experts believe a revolution may be on the horizon. It may not come in time for these two ongoing programs, but future vehicles have a chance of being radically different from what they are today.

All the military has to do is scrap its moribund acquisition system, said James Canton, CEO and chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a San Francisco-based think tank.

"Let's blow up the paradigm of what vehicles are about," he said. "We need to rip up the blueprints we have now. If you don't have a design in six months, what's the point? I mean, there are lives at risk. Twenty-five years to produce something is just not acceptable," said Canton, who is also a consultant to defense contractors and the U.S. military.

Canton has a vision for agile, morphable, intelligent, autonomous vehicles. They may or may not have drivers. They have suites of sensors connected to a cloud. They can operate in water, and perhaps, fly or jump over rough terrain.

Canton is a futurist, but the future is now for these concepts, he said.

"A lot of that technology is here today," he said. He has looked at designs for amphibious vehicles made by companies that are small and entrepreneurial, and "they can't get the light of day" from the military. The system keeps away innovation unless it is produced by the "usual suspects...