Army's New Combat Vehicle To Undergo Additional Tests.

The Army's choice for its Interim Armored Vehicle (IAV)--intended to replace the current generation of heavier tanks and other armored vehicles as part of the service's transformation into a lighter, more deployable force-may have run into a roadblock on Capitol Hill.

The Army was scheduled, in November, to select one of four existing medium-weight vehicles to become the IAV, the main combat vehicle for the new Initial Brigade Combat Teams, or IBCTs, now taking shape in Fort Lewis, Wash. At press time, no decision had been announced.

The Army is making the changes in order to be able to respond more quickly to rapidly unfolding international crises, such as Kosovo. The air campaign against Yugoslavia lasted little more than two months, leaving the Army little time to get its heavy weaponry into place.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki has said that he wants to be able to deploy a brigade within 96 hours of notification, a division within 120 hours and five divisions within 30 days.

The big hold-up to rapid deployment, Army officials agreed, is the 70-ton Abrams MlA2 main battle tank, made by General Dynamics Land Systems, of Sterling Heights, Mich. Designed in the 1980s to fight Soviet forces on the plains of Central Europe, the Abrams is too big to fit on the C-130 aircraft--the backbone of the U.S. military air transport system. Even the huge C-17 can carry only one Abrams at a time.

All of the candidates for the IAV weigh about one third as much as an Abrams and will fit easily on a C-130. The Army plans to begin deploying the IAV next March, Lt. Gen. Paul J. Kern, director of the Army Acquisition Corps, told the 2000 Combat Vehicles Conference at Fort Knox, Ky. But those plans may have to be changed as a result of the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill just signed into law.

That bill provides $1.3 billion--$750 million more than the Clinton administration sought--to buy IAVs for the new brigades currently in the works and to bolster research and development of the next generation of armored vehicles, known as the Future Combat System, or FCS.

Conferees from the Senate and House of Representatives, in a report working out the differences between the versions passed by the two bodies, said they were "encouraged by the Army's vision of the future, particularly the capabilities of future combat vehicles and automotive advanced technologies." They added $46 million to the president's $458 million request for FCS research and development.

The additional funding should help the Army meet what Shinseki--speaking at a recent meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA)--called "two key milestones" in developing the FCS:

* In 2003, the Army plans to select the best technologies and concepts to go into the next phase of the FCS project, detailed design and demonstration.

* In 2006, the service intends to begin the engineering manufacturing development stage.

To ensure that those milestones are met, the Army has established a Future Combat System Task Force, to be headed by a general officer.

"We will be in production in '08 and moving to first unit equipped by the end of the decade," Shinseki said. "Is this too ambitious? Well, that's what everybody said last year.

"It is ambitious," he said, "and it will take bold and decisive action to sustain and build on the momentum that we have already generated this past year with solid, bipartisan congressional support."

When it came to the IAV, however, Congress added strings to the increased funding. The bill requires the Pentagon to:

* Test the IAV side-by-side against the medium-weight vehicles now being used by the service.

* Report the results of the testing to the congressional defense committees before procurement of IAVs for additional brigades.

* Provide a plan, by March 1, 2001, "that charts a clear course" for the Army transformation initiative through fiscal year 2012, according to a Senate report.

The conferees said they "strongly support" the transformation effort and "look forward to receiving a well-defined road map" that lays out how the Army intends to accomplish it.

Until Congress gets the test results, however, 20 percent of the money appropriated for IAVs in 2001 will be withheld, the legislators agreed.

The Army complained that the tests were unnecessary and would delay development of its new, lighter brigades.

"In my judgment," Shinseki wrote to the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, "such a comparison will provide marginal insights, while placing a significant drain on very limited resources, including money, time, readiness and soldiers."

The requirements were placed in the legislation largely at the insistence of Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate AirLand Forces Subcommittee. Santorum was up for reelection this year, and his state includes two factories of United Defense L.P. (UDLP), which makes the Army's 40-year-old line of medium-weight combat vehicles, the M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier.

A Senate staff member denied that the testing is intended simply to benefit UDLP. Work on the M-113, he pointed out, currently is being done at UDLP's plant in Anniston, Ala.--in partnership with the Anniston Army Depot--not in Santorum's home state. The Senate simply wants to make sure that the IAVs truly are needed, the Senate staffer insisted.

"The IAVs are going to be around for 20 or 30 years," he said in a telephone interview. "Yeah, they're interim, but in name only. Doesn't the Army already have something it can use?"

The answer is "yes," UDLP spokesman Doug Coffey told National Defense. "The Army has between 14,000 and 17,000 M-113s in use right now. It's a vehicle that the Army knows a lot about."

The M-113, introduced in 1960, comprises 46 percent of the U.S. combat vehicle fleet, Coffey said. The latest version--the M-113A3, with an improved transmission and engine--was fielded between 1987 and 1992, he noted. It is a 27,200-pound vehicle that can carry 11 infantry personnel, plus a crew of two.

In fact, a variant of the M-113--known as the Mobile Tactical Vehicle Light, or MTVL--is one of the four finalists under consideration for the IAV. The MTVL is more powerful than even the latest version of the M-113, with 400 hp engine, compared to 275 hp for the M113A3, Coffey explained. The higher horsepower enables the MTVL to handle heavier payloads and more armor protection, he said.

Both the M-113 and the MTVL are tracked vehicles, capable of sustained speeds of 41 mph on level roads. Another of the finalists, the Bionix Infantry Carrier--developed by VT Kinetics Inc., a Huntsville, Ala.-based subsidiary of Singapore Technologies Engineering--is also tracked. It has a maximum speed of 46 mph.

The other two vehicles under consideration are wheeled, with maximum speeds of 62 mph. They are:

* The Light Armored Vehicle, Generation III (LAV III), offered by General Motors Defense of London, Ontario, and GDLS.

* The Pandur, produced by Steyr-Daimler-Puch, of Austria, and a GDLS subsidiary, AV Technology, of Shelby Township, Mich.

The higher speed of the wheeled vehicles is attractive to Army planners, because of the emphasis that the new brigades are placing on increased mobility. In fact, the new units at Fort Lewis are training with LAV IIIs borrowed from the Canadian army.

"The main focus is on dismounted infantry operations, supported by direct fire from medium-weight vehicles," Lt. Col. Peter W. Rose II, chief of the Mounted Force Transformation Division at the Army's Armor Center at Fort Knox.

Changing the Paradigm

"Tactical mobility and situational awareness are changing the paradigm," he told the Combat Vehicles Conference. "Now, the emphasis is on finding out what's going on, before engaging the enemy." This, he said, allows the U.S. force "to chose the time and place of combat."

So important is the issue of mobility that Shinseki has said that he is willing to consider having the Army switch from an all-tracked fleet of combat vehicles to one that is all-wheeled. In a 1999 speech, he asked:

"Can we, in time, go to an all-wheeled vehicle fleet, where even the follow-on to today's armored vehicles come in at 50- to 70 percent less tonnage? I think the answer is yes, and we're going to ask the questions and then go where the answers are."

UDLP officials cited studies comparing LAV and MTVL operations in wet soil conditions, similar to those found in Central Europe and Korea, where the Army someday may find itself fighting.

In the European terrain, the LAV was denied access to more than 22 percent of steep areas, the UDLP study said, while the MTVL was denied access to less than 5 percent. In the Korean scenario, the LAV was denied access to more than 32 percent of the steep terrain, while the MTVL is denied access to 8 percent, according to the study.

Army officials insisted that both tracks and wheels were still under consideration for the IAV. "The jury's still out," said Rose. "It could be a wheeled or a tracked system."

Earlier this year at Fort Knox, the Army tested 35 potential IAVs currently in use by the United States and its allies, including Canada, France Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and Turkey. Then, at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., four finalists were evaluated.

Whichever model is selected for the IAV, it will have to be tested against the Army's M-113, in order to comply with the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill. According to an agreement by both houses of Congress, the new tests will be conducted by the Army, but the testing process will be monitored by the Defense Department's director of test and evaluation, Philip E. Coyle III.

Details of the testing are still being ironed out, Coyle told National Defense. The tests, he said, will be careful to weigh the merits of wheels versus tracks. "We're going to run them up hills and down hills," he said. "We're going to run them in mud, in sand, on roads. Don't you worry, they'll get a thorough workout."

The Army is free to begin buying IAVs--perhaps as many as 2,000 of them--before the tests are complete, in order to equip the two brigades currently being organized, according to the legislation.

The Army plans to stand up the first brigade in December 2001, Shinseki told the AUSA. The second one, he said, will be fielded "as soon as possible, thereafter." But until Congress receives the test results:

* Twenty percent of the 2001 funding for IAVs is to be held back. The Senate had asked that 40 percent of the funds be withheld, but the percentage was reduced in the legislation's final version.

* The Army cannot order vehicles for the four additional medium-weight brigades that are planned through fiscal 2006.

These units may need up to 5,000 more vehicles, costing as much as $5 billion, according to one industry source, who declined to be identified.

The Senate originally proposed that the Army report the results of the tests to Congress by March 1, 2002. But the Army said it could not meet that deadline, and the final legislation did not set a specific date.

"They asked us not to do anything to impede their ability to kick start this thing," said a Senate staffer. "And we tried not to."

Shinseki was relieved that the testing requirements were not as drastic as the Senate originally proposed, according to a spokesman. Still, the tests "will take years" to complete, Coyle cautioned. Many Army officials remained concerned that the tests would delay the transformation process. Outfitting the second brigade, for example, could be set back, they warned.

Even without the latest testing requirements, Kern told the Combat Vehicles Conference, transformation has been tough enough.

"Transformation has got a lot of people moving in a lot of different directions," he said. "Change is hard stuff."

Nevertheless, Shinseki told the AUSA: "We are going to deliver on transformation. Our soldiers are counting on it. ...

"If you choose not to get on board, that's OK, but then get out of the way. The Army's on the march."