Budget cuts have forced the Army to scale back its long-range precision strike plans, but moving forward with two programs will help the service fill holes in its capabilities and reduce maintenance costs, officials said at the Precision Strike Annual Review on Wednesday.
The Army revamped its Long-Range Investment Requirements Analysis (LIRA) in light of sequestration cuts, and the 2016 plan is noticeably trimmer than previous ones, said Lt. Col. Francis Moss, the head of an Army Headquarters’ force development team on precision fires requirements.
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Instead of having two different laser locator designators in the inventory, the Army will have to make do with one, Moss said. It will have only one fire support vehicle instead of the three that were planned, with the final product likely being a package of equipment that can go on any ground vehicle. It can only keep one radar system, even though two new radar systems are about to come online to replace the two legacy systems being divested. The Army will only have one launcher and one towed howitzer even though it had planned for two of each. And it will have to choose between investing in a replacement for either the Excalibur precision munition or the Precision-Guided Kit that is less accurate than Excalibur but can be attached to dumb rounds already in the Army’s stockpile.
Disappointing as it is to have to replace several systems with only one due to fiscal constraints, Moss said it was better than the alternative the Army has tried in recent years–extending the life of old systems to keep their capabilities in the force.
“We had aging systems that could not be maintained, and they were blowing the budget,” he said. “So even though we would go, ‘oh, well we’ll stretch it out in acquisition,’ we transferred the pain to the sustainers.”
The Army, therefore, wasn’t actually saving any money. By divesting those old systems and seeking new ones–even if the systems don’t do as much as the old ones collectively did–the training, logistics and maintenance tails shrink and “this portfolio is actually balanced,” Moss said.
Two of the new systems coming onboard fall under the precision fires rockets and missiles program office within the Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space. Program manager Col. Gary Stephens said at the conference that the Long-Range Precision Fires program would fill a gap left when several Army Tactical Missile Systems leave the inventory as they age out or when a new cluster munitions policy goes into effect in 2018.
After a material development decision in November, the Army is working through an Analysis of Alternatives for the LRPF. Stephens said the process should wrap up at the end of this calendar year. Though several options are being weighed, he said the Army is already planning what a new-start program might look like.
“If it’s a new start, then we will posture ourselves to get to Milestone A in [fiscal year 2015], with the intent to award contracts in FY ’16, that’s when the money shows up, to enter the technology maturation and risk reduction phase,” Stephens said. “The acquisition strategy is not written, it’s not signed by the [defense acquisition executive] yet, but…our intent is to pick two contractors, have a full and open competition.”
More than that, he said he expects the tech maturation process would yield prototypes that would go through flight tests, not just data from computer simulations.
“I would encourage the contractors out there to look at your [internal research and development] investments–I’ll tell you, our number one technology risk that we see with the system as best described today is the booster,” Stephens said, noting that based on anticipated distance requirements and more, the Army would need a 15- to 17-inch diameter motor, which it doesn’t have in the inventory now. “We’re tracking the booster as one of the most significant technology risks, schedule risks, so we encourage people to look at that.”
Stephens also briefed the audience on the progress of his Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) Alternative Warhead program, meant to fill in the area weapon gap left by the GMLRS Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition variant, which does not meet the new cluster munitions requirements.
At the program’s Milestone B in February 2012, the Army tried to leverage existing technologies to reduce the amount of testing and evaluation that would be needed. The Alternative Warhead uses the same motor, sensors and more as the GMLRS Unitary variant but exchanges the precision warhead for an area warhead. Stephens said the effort is proving successful in saving time and money for the Army–the Alternative Warhead should hit Milestone C and a full-rate production decision in May 2015, earlier than expected.
“We did a lot of schedule savings, we’re going to put a capability in the field a lot faster than originally predicted, and we did save money doing it,” he said. He noted that, due to budget constraints, the Army is actively seeking a Foreign Military Sales customer for the first buy, scheduled for its first production delivery in May 2016, and hitting initial operational capability a month later.
“The Army needs help with quantity in the first buy years, so we’re doing about everything that we can to attack some of the budget issues,” Stephens said.