The Army is drafting a combat vehicle modernization strategy to assess mobility, protection and lethality across the service to prioritize combat vehicle development efforts.
Director of Army Capabilities Integration Center and Deputy Commanding General, Futures, Army Training and Doctrine Command Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said Thursday the service, in its draft strategy, will also describe the strengths and weaknesses of armored brigade combat teams, Stryker brigade combat teams and infantry brigade combat teams. McMaster said the Army will then magnify the strengths of those formations with its development efforts and compensate for what it determines are weaknesses.
Photo: General Dynamics Ordnance & Tactical Systems
The goal of the strategy, McMaster said, is to maintain superiority across all formations.
“We don’t want fair fights,” McMaster told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington.
McMaster did not say when the Army would release the strategy and a spokesman did not return requests for comment Thursday.
The Army has a variety of armored vehicles, both tracked and wheeled, but budget uncertainties and sequestration have led to raids on modernization money. Plans for new vehicles have been scrapped and plans to upgrade vehicles have increased while leaders talk about keeping vehicles “ready and relevant” out to 2060 and beyond.
Only the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and a potential Ultralight Combat Vehicle (ULCV) are planned, to date, as new starts, even as service leaders warn of increased financial pressure as sequestration returns in fiscal year 2016. U.S. superiority is at stake, some say, as adversaries gain capabilities and U.S. technological edge recedes.
The Army is slated to start a competition by the end of March for its ULCV. Though it won’t be fielded as a combat vehicle, according to the Army, it will serve as a research and development (R&D) platform that will ultimately yield data that can be used by other service agencies and program managers to develop their own vehicles and equipment in the future.
The ULCV is a hybrid vehicle that includes lightweight advanced material armor, lightweight wheels and tires and other automotive systems, blast-mitigating underbody technology and advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) equipment inside. General Dynamics [GD] and Marvin Group-unit Flyer Defense are teaming to offer their lightweight Flyer 72 vehicle. A potential competitor is Polaris Defense’s DAGOR (Defense Daily, Oct. 14). Polaris Defense did not respond to a request for comment by press time.