Existing technologies cobbled into a new-start design would yield a superior combat vehicle than bolting the same gear onto the most advanced version of the Army’s current fleet of tanks and troop carriers, Army and industry officials agree.
“There are some capabilities that exist today that we could integrate into a new platform that would provide us with a lot more protection and survivability and lethality,” said Lt. Col. Desmond V. Bailey, director of concept and capability development and integration at the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence.
The question of what technologies were available today should the Army embark on development of new combat vehicle was repeatedly raised Tuesday during a forum on Army platforms hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army at its headquarters outside Washington, D.C.
In the 36 years since the M1 Abrams main battle tank entered service, significant progress has been made in armor, communication and weapon technologies. Those and other capabilities like counter-unmanned systems, electronic warfare systems and directed energy weapons were mentioned by uniformed, civilian and retired service officials as technologies that likely would be baseline requirements for a new combat vehicle.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, chief of the Army’s Capabilities Integration Center and its future maneuver warfare guru, said mature existing technologies “absolutely” could be assembled into a superior combat vehicle in the near term.
He noted improvements in power and energy generations that would allow vehicles to be more fuel efficient and therefore able to operate more independent of a logistics tail while also generating power for offboard systems. Smaller transmissions and other automotive advances in suspension would allow a decrease in volume under armor, which in turn reduces size and weight and logistics demand, he said.
Lethality improvements in energetics can make smaller-caliber weapons more destructive while directed-energy weapons have proven effective against enemy optics, unmanned aerial systems and guided munitions, McMaster said.
Seemingly benign emerging technologies like 3rd generation forward-looking infrared (FLIR) are being retrofitted onto existing platforms and should be integrated from the get-go of a new-start vehicle, he said.
“It’s time,” McMaster said. “Those technologies are mature and we see them appearing on other combat vehicles.”
Brig. Gen. David P. Komar, Director, Capabilities Developments Directorate Army Capabilities Integration Center United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, said, “I don’t think our M1A1, M1A2, etc. and even the future is designed for this type of contested electromagnetic spectrum and we have to start from the ground up thinking how do we harden it and still maintain the ability to communicate, coordinate, conduct mission command under a high-threat condition,” Komar said. “That’s going to be critical and I don’t think you can start with where we are today.”
Retired Brig. Gen. James Moran, who now serves as vice president of Army systems, defense, space and security for Boeing [BA], cited basic improvements in diesel engine technology as an example. The Abrams tank runs on a powerful but complex and fuel-guzzling Honeywell [HON] AGT1500C turbine engine.
“You could put a diesel engine in a combat vehicle and reduce … having to refuel twice a day to once a day,” Moran said. “Just think about the impact of that operationally. … We could put diesel engines – even in our current combat vehicles – and reduce fuel consumption by 50 percent.”
Moran said he tried to launch a program to replace the Abrams engine when he was the Army’s tank project manager, but could not muster support for the effort. Moran also called into question the need for more than three soldiers to crew a tank. Adding an auto-loader capability or designing one into a new vehicle would allow engineers to shrink the interior volume of the vehicle, the only way to significantly reduce the weight of an armored vehicle,he said.
“There is no reason we cannot have a three-man combat vehicle, but there are other reasons why we don’t want to go to a three-man vehicle,” Moran said. “The key to weight on a combat vehicle, which goes to deployability and other logistics issues, is reducing the interior volume. The more interior volume you have, the more the vehicle weighs.”
He also called for the adoption of active protection systems for new and existing combat vehicles.
“They are not perfect, but they are available,” Moran said. “Those three things alone would reduce your logistics footprint, reduce the weight of the vehicle and improve your deployability and maneuverability and improve your survivability.”
“I don’t think a large improvement needs to be made in lethality, but those other three things we could do today and have a better vehicle.”
Bailey said the Army should seek technologies that obscure combat vehicles to enemy sensors. He also mentioned river-fording, integrated air defense and electronic warfare and jamming as desired capabilities for a new vehicle.
“We may not be able to make a tank invisible, but if I can make my tank look like 40 tanks to the enemy sensors, then I think I’m achieving a level of obscuration,” Bailey said.
Key to integrating capabilities into a tech-heavy vehicle at a time when software and hardware advance at breakneck speeds is the establishment of open-architecture systems in a new combat vehicle, Komar said.
In any new vehicle, the Army should require “open architecture systems so that we can easily adapt as new technologies are available and we can insert those,” Komar said.