Army Approaches Decision on Interim Combat Vehicle.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's vision for a lighter, more deployable force--needed to fight rapidly developing regional wars, such as Kosovo--is beginning to assume a recognizable form on the dusty fields of military bases around the country.

At Fort Lewis, just outside of Tacoma, Wash., two prototypical units, known as Initial Brigade Combat Teams, or IBCTs, are working to develop tactics, techniques and procedures for the new force.

Shinseki's plan calls for the new brigades to trade in many of their 70-ton Abrams ranks for mobile gun systems that weigh perhaps as little as a third of that and can be loaded on to a C-130 Hercules air transport. The new brigades are intended to be models for the entire Army. It will take at least another decade, Shinseki estimates, to complete the service's transformation into what he calls "the Objective Force."

The Army hasn't decided yet what kind of vehicle it wants to replace the Abrams over the long run. The Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are working on a "Future Combat System," which may be equipped with such technologies as high-energy lasers and electromagnetic guns. But such a vehicle won't be ready for at least 12 years, Army officials said. (related story p.33)

The Army, meanwhile, is working on developing lighter brigades that will help transition between the current Army and the Objective Force. The first two brigades to begin the transition into lighter, more mobile units are the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, explained Maj. Gen. James M. Dubik, deputy commanding general for transformation in the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). Both are part of the Army's I Corps, which is based at Fort Lewis.

Final Stages

The new units currently are training with 12-ton Light Armored Vehicles, Generation III (LAV IIIs), borrowed from Canada. TRADOC is in the final stages of selecting what it calls an "interim armored vehicle (IAV)" for the Army to use during the next several years.

The IAV must be lighter than the tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and artillery pieces currently used by the Army, officials said. It also must be available in a single platform that can be used for all of the vehicles needed in a brigade, from a command and control vehicle, to the anti-rank and reconnaissance versions, officials noted.

At the Army's Armor Center, at Fort Knox, Ky., TRADOC earlier this year evaluated 35 vehicles already in use by friendly armed forces around the world. Among them were models from the United States and six other countries--Canada, France, Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and Turkey.

Within Fort Knox's 109,000-square mile reservation, located 30 miles southwest of Louisville, the vehicles tested were required to demonstrate the ability to:

* Deploy aboard C-130 aircraft, rail and other heavy equipment transport systems during day and night.

* Operate with agility on and off-road under third-world, urban and rural conditions.

* Overcome obstacles, such as barricades, rubble, concertina wire and chain-link fences, at Fort Knox's new Mounted Urban Combat Training Site (related story p.32).

* Ford streams and swim lakes.

* Conduct live fire at all hours of the day under a full range of conflict, from full-scale combat to peacekeeping operations.

Army officials are being tight-lipped about how the various vehicles performed in the Fort Knox rests. However, when the Army decided to conduct 30 days of additional rests, in June, at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, only four teams of contractors sent vehicles. The models were:

* The LAV III, made by General Motors Defense, of London, Ontario, and licensed for sale within the United States by General Dynamics Corporation, of Falls Church, Va.

* The 30-ton Pandur 6 x 6 LAV, produced by Steyr-Daimler-Puch, of Austria, and also licensed for U.S. sale by General Dynamics.

* The 27-ton M113 Armored Track Vehicle, manufactured by United Defense, of Arlington, Va.

* The 40-ton Bionix Infantry Fighting Vehicle, made by Singapore Technologies Kinetics and licensed for U.S. sale by Textron Marine and Land Systems, of New Orleans.

Two of the four--the LAV III and the Pandur--are wheeled. The other two are tracked. Test results, however, do not favor either system, said Col. Donald Schenk, manager of the Brigade Combat Team program at the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM). "In the performance area to date, there is no remarkable benefit for either wheels or tracks in straight, technical performance," he said.

The vehicle likely to be chosen, in the view of many industry analysts, is the LAV III, which already is being used to train the new brigades at Fort Lewis. Also, industry insiders noted, the Marine Corps has been using a version of the LAV for almost 15 years. (related story p. 31)

"We'd like to believe that we have the inside track," said Jim Flynn, marketing and sales manager for General Motors Defense. "But it all boils down to performance. We think that we're competitive."

The Army is scheduled to choose a platform by the end of this month. Because the vehicles under consideration are already in production, the purchase is considered "off-the-shelf," officials said, and they plan to move quickly. Deployment of the new vehicles is scheduled to begin by March 31, 2001.

Initially, the Army expects to order more than 1,900 vehicles, said Eric Emmerton, a TACOM spokesman.

TACOM won't discuss cost in public yet, but an industry source estimated the price at about $1.5 billion. Furthermore, he noted, the Army eventually could need an additional 5,000 vehicles, costing another $4 billion.

"That's where we are, and it's very exciting," Maj. Gen. B.B. Bell, the Army's chief of armor, told the recent 2000 Armor Conference at Fort Knox.

A New Configuration

The new brigades "have crossed the line of departure," said Dubik. The first two combat reams will feature significantly different organizations from the Army's current brigade configuration, he noted. Each will consist primarily of four battalions--three infantry, one artillery and one reconnaissance.

The reconnaissance battalion will be a significant change, Dubik said. Known as the RSTA (reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting and acquisition) squadron, it will give the brigade greatly increased intelligence-gathering capability, he noted.

Another big shift will take place in the artillery battalion, which is turning in its Paladin self-propelled 155 mm howitzers, with a combat-loaded weight of 64,000 pounds, for towed 155 mm howitzers, weighing 16,000 pounds.

The new brigades also will include their own engineer, military intelligence and signal companies, Dubik said. Another major change is the organization of the companies within the infantry battalions, he added.

Traditionally, Army battalions and companies have been organized as pure units, such as infantry or tanks, with the various elements mixed as needed for each mission, Dubik noted. In the new brigades, he said, the companies will be combined arms teams, consisting primarily of medium-weight armored gun systems, infantry and mortars. This is a big change, Dubik said.

"You can feel the excitement," he noted. "This is the leading edge of the Army. But it's also high anxiety. A lot of people are wondering, 'What's going to happen to my job assignment?'

"We're talking about transforming the entire Army," Dubik said. "You can't do that without problems. But they're the kinds of problems we want. Transformation is about creating our future."

The first unit to switch to the new design--the 3rd Brigade--is scheduled to he ready for worldwide deployment by December 2001, Dubik told the conference. The second is to follow a year later.

Shinseki wants to have five of the new brigades by 2003. "One or two brigades isn't enough," he told the Armor Conference. "You don't get enough force until you get to five."

Shinseki's oft-stated goal is for the Army to have the ability to place a combat-capable brigade anywhere in the world, regardless of ports or airfields, within 96 hours.

Currently, Shinseki told the conferees, "we can put a brigade into Kuwait within 96 hours. The question is, can we put a second brigade and a third one and a full division in there with some intensity? It may nor be very surprising to you that we can't."

Right now, Shinseki said, "we have a force that is bifurcated. We have the best heavy divisions in the world." He added: "But it's a challenge to get them to where they're needed." The light divisions are "magnificent," Shinseki said, but they aren't "prepared to slug it out. They lack staying power."

A Medium-Weight Force

What the Army would like to develop is a medium-weight force and a combat vehicle to match, said Bell. "If we had a 40-ton tank, we could run all over the Balkans--or anywhere else in Central Europe," he said.

During the 1999 war with Yugoslavia, however, the U.S. Army was equipped with the 70-ton Abrams, Bell noted. "There was a very real threat that the Army was going to be asked to conduct a ground war," Bell said. "It would have likely taken four months just to move the formation to the attack phase."

Leadership wanted to move faster, but "we couldn't deliver," Bell said. Meanwhile, "the Serbs deployed, while we watched from the other side of bridges that we couldn't get across," because the Abrams tanks were too big, Bell said.

"We don't want that. It ain't right, and we ought to be able to do something about it."

Army leaders ate counting on the soon-to-be-selected IAVs to resolve the service's weight problem. But many are concerned that the new vehicles--while lighter than the Abrams--lack sufficient armor to survive a battle with heavy tanks. Bell conceded that survivability is a concern, asking:

"How do you build a light platform that performs like an Abrams?" On this topic, he said, the Army needs to think like the Air Force. "The Air Force does not accept being hit." He said. "The reason is obvious: It's usually quite lethal."

Army tanks, on the other hand, "have always taken the hit and defeated it with armor," Bell said. With the IAVs, he said, that strategy has to change.

The Army needs to develop a capability to defeat an adversary's ability to target its vehicles, Bell said. "Our ability to do that is minimal, if not zero," he noted.

Also needed, Bell commented, is a way to defeat inbound munitions. That won't be easy, he said. "You've got one or two seconds, max, to defeat that munition. That's tough."

Still, Bell is optimistic. "The scientists today are telling us there are some possibilities out there," he said. "There is a lot of excitement in the field."

It will be years, however, before any new technology is ready for use, Shinseki warned. "Between now and 2010, there will be no change," he said. "What you see is what we'll take to war."

In the meantime, Army leaders said, the IAVs will have to rely upon existing technology for protection. If necessary, they noted, IAVs can outrun heavier tanks.

The LAV III, for example, is capable of speeds in excess of 60 mph on paved surfaces, compared to 45 miles per hour for an Abrams. IAVs also can be equipped with additional armor that can be put on and taken off, as needed.

It is important, Bell said, to remember that the new brigades "are not designed to fight armor battles, but to respond quickly to small-scale contingencies," where the enemy is not likely to have sophisticated tanks.

When heavy tanks are needed, Bell said, the Abrams remains available. In fact, the Army has contracted with General Dynamics to upgrade more than 1,100 older M1 tanks to the new M1A2 configuration.

The M1A2 program provides a commander's independent thermal viewer, an improved weapon station, position-navigation equipment and a distributed data and power architecture, an embedded diagnostic system and improved fire-control technology. A radio interface unit allows the rapid transfer of digital situational data and overlays to compatible systems anywhere on the battlefield.

"This tank has served us well and will continue to do so for many years to come," Bell said. "This is the tank that's going to lead us into battle for much of the 21st century."