In August 2003 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published the first of what later became annual reports to congress on the progress of FCS. This report explained, “The Army believes that nontraditional fighting tactics coupled with an extensive information network will compensate for the loss of size and armor mass by utilizing information superiority and synchronized operations to see, engage, and destroy the enemy before the enemy detects the
future forces.”
But what is to become of this force if it engages against a robust enemy force which had its own versions of UAVs that could detect US Forces; has precision fired weapons that are as lethal as ours; has the capability to employ electromagnetic devices that jam radio signals; or that possesses the ability to shoot down the satellites upon which the entire information system depends? As stunning as it may seem, this question was answered – and subsequently ignored –in the fall of 2002 when the Army conducted a simulation exercise against what was termed “enhanced enemy threat” and the results were catastrophic for the FCS system.
In an interview with Larz Welo, a former employee of Advanced Systems Technology (AST) who participated as a member of the opposition force, he told me the exercise (using the Janus simulation system) was designed to examine what might happen if an FCS organization fought against a well equipped, modern force. Mr. Welo worked for AST from 2001 to 2003 and took part in over 100 Janus simulations using various FCS scenarios. The vast majority of the scenarios were against foes using inferior technology with average to poor equipment – like the Iraqi enemy we faced in Desert Storm and OIF I. Unsurprisingly, during those engagements FCS won every engagement – every engagement. But when matched against an enemy force that had the same or better technology, the FCS force was routed.
According to Mr. Welo, there were three iterations of the experiment. The “Blue Force” (the US side) was composed of an FCS Brigade Combat Team (FBCT) equipped with all the threshold capabilities expected to be fielded in the 2016 timeframe. The “Red Force” – the enemy force –was a larger force than Blue, and primarily composed of “legacy” forces, which means they were outfitted with current or old equipment. It also, however, included a number of “enhanced” forces composed of expected future capabilities including advanced tanks, artillery and APC platforms, as well as UAS and anti-aircraft systems currently under development in various countries. In the first run of the simulation, the Red force “played very cautiously,” but still rendered Blue force combat ineffective “before they were even halfway to their objective,” Mr. Welo recalled. The next iteration, however, proved catastrophic for Blue:“In the second run, the Red commander decided to be very aggressive. First, we waited until the air was full of Blue Force UAVs, ground attack jets, and other aviation assets. We had previously deployed our anti-air assets but up until that point had kept them turned off. We then simultaneously turned them all on to overwhelm Blue’s ability to counter them and destroyed virtually all of the Blue air assets within 5 minutes. Next we launched all of our UAVs. Although many were shot down by Blue, we had more UAVs than they did missiles. We then massed all our legacy and enhanced forces in the area together in a massive armored spear-head attack and charged at the assembly area with about two battalions. The Global Hawk (used by the Blue Force) continued to fly so that blue forces could use precision fires to destroy many of our elements while they were still out of direct fire range. But Red had precision fires of their own and the surviving Red UAVs identified the most critical elements of the Blue force, which we then engaged with artillery and guided missiles (ATGM) from the tanks.
“When the charge came within 4 km of the Blue forces,” he continued, “the (Red) tanks began to engage with direct fire and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. When Blue attempted to maneuver away, their signature reduction was neutralized and they were immediately shot. Their Active Protection System was unable to help them against the tank’s ATGMs (guided missiles) and Sabots (tank main gun rounds). Blue suffered unbelievable casualties and the run
was ended.” As previously mentioned, though this exercise was conducted in support of what’s known in the Acquisition world as “Milestone B” – which determines if the system is valid and is funded to the next level – no changes were made to either the mix of platforms nor to the concepts behind FCS. Mr. Welo provided a possible explanation as to why this might be.
“The green suiters (uniformed members of the Army) that were in charge of the gamers were split in their opinion on the implications of the results,” he explained. “Those who participated in my Red camp said we should run more simulations against an enhanced threat because of the possibility that in the future this could become a real-world disaster, and those that fought with the Blue camp argued that the simulation data and parameters were flawed and that the USA would not be this outmatched any time within the next 50 years. The “neutral” green suiters seemed puzzled at the power of the enhanced threat, and seemed to believe that the result was unlikely to ever happen in real life and not a scenario that was very profitable.”
I wrote articles in the Armed Forces Journal in both 2005 and 2008 warning of the dangers posed by FCS if dramatic changes were not made. My warnings were not simply ignored, but I was removed from my position in the Operations department of the program and physically moved out of the building so that I would no longer have access or knowledge of the program’s development. But less than a year and a half from the date of my last article on FCS, the Secretary of Defense first cancelled the vehicle portion of the program, and subsequently abandoned the entire program, citing almost verbatim the warnings I had raised
