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House subcommittee concerned about Army GCV

While the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee fully funds the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle program in its markup of the 2011 defense authorization bill, it is concerned about the vehicle’s requirements, which it sees as “extremely ambitious” in some areas, according to congressional documents.

The subcommittee provides the $934.4 million requested by the Army to fund research and development for the new vehicle in 2011.

In a report accompanying its budget markup, the subcommittee expresses its support for the initial acquisition strategy for the GCV program, saying it “appears to be more disciplined, and focused on producing a single variant of a new ground combat vehicle with a design flexible enough to accommodate future upgrades.”

Army officials have said that for GCV, the service plans to follow Defense Department acquisition-reform guidelines that call for more extensive testing through the use of competitive prototypes.

The committee supports the idea of maintaining competition throughout the technology development, and the engineering and manufacturing development phases.

“However, the committee is concerned with some of the requirements in place for the GCV, which the committee believes are extremely ambitious in some areas,” the report reads. “The committee is concerned that, once again, the Army may be asking the defense industry to build a ‘gold-plated’ vehicle that may take longer to develop than planned and prove to be extremely expensive to procure.”

The Army has said it wants the new infantry carrier to have the survivability of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, the lethality of a Bradley fighting vehicle and the maneuverability of a Stryker.

“The committee believes the Army must carefully review the requirements for the GCV program and consider a more incremental approach that separates ‘needs’ from ‘wants.’ ”

The committee supports the program’s focus on vehicle and crew survivability, but is worried that other requirements, while desired, may prove “too costly and complex.”

Citing the inclusion of “non-lethal weapons, the ability to intercept direct and indirect fire threats, aggressive fuel efficiency improvements, and the ability to defeat heavily armored vehicles at extended range,” the committee says that requiring these capabilities in the initial GCV model “could needlessly complicate the vehicle’s design, and could be included as incremental upgrades at a later time.”

The committee also recommends the Army, in its analysis of alternatives, “carefully consider whether or not it is possible to upgrade current vehicles, including some foreign designs, to meet baseline GCV requirements on an accelerated schedule that could get a vehicle in the hands of troops more quickly than the current seven-year timeline.”

This echoes remarks from Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he said he’d like to see some time shaved off of the GCV schedule.

The Army's GCV effort is replacing the Future Combat Systems vehicle program, canceled last year by Gates.