FCS undergoes another round of restructuring By Dawn S. Onley Editor For the third time in as many years, the Army has restructured its Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.
A plan unveiled in early February seeks
to strike a balance between equipping the
current force and modernizing the future
force, according to a senior acquisition official
in the Army. Four of the 18 vehicles
that constitute FCS will be deferred under
the restructuring.
The changes are expected to take
$3.4 billion from the FCS budget during
the next five years, said Army Maj. Gen.
Jeffrey Sorenson, deputy for acquisition
and systems management.
“Clearly, we’ve had to go through a very
difficult period here in terms of making
sure we can modernize as well as support
the current operations and the current
force,” Sorenson told the American Forces
Press Service. “It was a balancing act with
respect to funding priorities in modernization
as well as making sure the current force
is taken care of.”
In 2004 and again in 2005, the Army restructured
the business components of FCS
on the heels of sharp criticism from legislators
and the Government Accountability
Office. The Army also created an Army
Modular Force Integration Office to ensure
technologies are moved into troop systems
as soon as they are available.
FCS is a program designed to link 18
manned and unmanned vehicles to a computer
network.
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