LAV-III: stuck
(click to view larger)

In late November 2008, Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND) announced its intention to combine 3 programs into one general set of upgrades to its armored vehicle fleets. The C$ 5 billion (about $4.3 billion) meta-program would include (1) a “close combat vehicle,” in order to perform as a tracked Infantry Fighting Vehicle or Armored Personnel Carrier alongside Canada’s new Leopard 2A6 tanks; (2) a new “Tactical Armored Patrol Vehicle”; and (3) upgrades the existing LAV-III wheeled APC fleet. In July 2009, A 4th project was added to field dedicated Armored Engineering Vehicles based on the Leopard 2, along with engineering-related attachments for Canada’s new Leopard 2 tanks.

The “Close Combat Vehicle” appears to be the most urgent purchase, but the stated procurement approach isn’t structured to deliver urgency. As things stand, all contracts are scheduled to take effect after Canada is slated to end its Afghan mission. “Tanks for the Lesson: Leopards, too, for Canada” discussed the LAV-IIIs’ limitations in key terrain within Afghanistan, and keeping them in the field requires a lot of maintenance. Canada’s M113 tracked APCs have been used successfully as a supplement, but the Canadians appear to be leaning toward a heavier vehicle for their future CCV…

• The Close Combat Vehicle
• The Armored Tactical Patrol Vehicle
• LAV-IIIs, and the RESET/RECAP Imperative
• Updates and Developments
• Additional Readings & Sources
  
  Continue Reading… »

Leo C2s, Afghanistan
(click to view full)

It would seem that the Canadian Forces are taking some of the lessons re-learned during Operation Medusa in Afghanistan to heart. Canada’s DND:

“The heavily protected direct fire capability of a main battle tank is an invaluable tool in the arsenal of any military. The intensity of recent conflicts in Central Asia and the Middle East has shown western militaries that tanks provide protection that cannot be matched by more lightly armoured wheeled vehicles…. [Canada’s existing Leopard C2/1A5] tanks have also provided the Canadian Forces (CF) with the capability to travel to locations that would otherwise be inaccessible to wheeled light armoured vehicles, including Taliban defensive positions.”

In October 2003, Canada was set to buy the Styker/LAV-III 105mm Mobile Gun System to replace its Leopard C2 tanks. In the end, however, the lessons of war have taken Canada down a very different path – one that now has them renewing the very tank fleet they were once intent on scrapping with one of the world’s best tanks, and backing away from the wheeled vehicles that were once the cornerstone of the Canadian Army’s transformation plan. This updated article includes a full chronology for Canada’s new Leopard 2 tanks, and adds information concerning DND’s exact plans and breakdowns for their new fleet. Which seems set to add some specialty vehicles, and important accessories…

• Why New Tanks Now?
• Choices, Choices: Leopard 2s For Canada
• Next Steps and Updates [updated]
• Additional Readings
  
  Continue Reading… »

Digital Range Training System
(click to view full)

Saab received a $12.4 million contract from lead integrator General Dynamics Information Technology to produce field simulators and moving and fixed targets for five gunnery ranges for the U.S. Army. The ranges are part of the Army’s Digital Range Training System (DRTS) program that provides live fire gunnery training facilities for soldiers in a training environment using live simulation and after action review capability with position location, video imagery and digital vehicle information. DID has more on the futuristic DRTS program…

Continue Reading… »

Raytheon: C4ISR Future?
(click to expand)

As video communications is integrated into robots, soldiers, and UAVs, and network-centric warfare becomes the organizing principle of American warfighting, front-line demands for bandwidth are rising faster than the US military can add it. The Transformation Communications Satellite (TSAT) System is part of a larger effort by the US military to address that need, and close the gap.

DID’s FOCUS articles offer in-depth, updated looks at significant military programs of record – and TSAT is certainly significant. The final price tag on the entire program has been quoted at anywhere from $14-25 billion through 2016, including the satellites, the ground operations system, the satellite operations center and the cost of operations and maintenance. Lockheed Martin and Boeing each won over $600 million in risk reduction contracts to develop key TSAT SS satellite system technologies, and TSAT’s $2 billion TMOS ground-based network operations contract was already underway.

The TSAT constellation’s central role in next-generation US military infrastructure makes it worthy of in-depth treatment – but its survival was never assured. There was always a risk that outside events and incremental competitors could spell its end, just as they spelled the end of Motorola’s infamous Iridium project. This FOCUS article examines that possibility, even as it offers an overview of the US military’s vision for its communications infrastructure, how TSAT fits, the program’s challenges, and complete coverage of contracts and significant events. New additions are highlighted in green for your convenience.

The latest developments revolve around the end of the program. Despite a positive recent report from the GAO, key components of TMOS/TSAT are being canceled outright as part of the program’s planned termination…

• Key Background – Why TSAT Is Thought to be Necessary (i.e. continue reading…)
• Key Background – The Big Picture: TSAT and the Transformational Communications Architecture
• Briefing – What Is TSAT?
• Briefing – TMOS: TSAT’s Ground Component
• Briefing – TSAT: Issues & Decisions
• Briefing – The AEHF Alternative, and Lessons Learned for TSAT
• Briefing – TSAT: Program
• Analysis – TSAT’s Competitors – and Its Fate
• News – TSAT: Timeline and Ongoing Developments [updated]
• Appendix A – Additional Readings & Sources
  
  Continue Reading… »

Is it?
(click to view full)

In February 2007, “2006 Carbine Competition: What Happened, Revealed” discussed an Army solicitation for competitive procurement of 5.56mm carbines, which was withdrawn once sole-source incumbent Colt dropped its prices. The DoD’s Inspector General got involved with a critical report, but the Army dissented, defending its practices as a sound negotiating approach that saved the taxpayer a lot of money on the contract. As it turns out, there’s a sequel. A major sequel, that’s only getting bigger with time.

It seemed like a routine request. Order more M4 carbines for US forces in the FY 2007 supplemental, FY 2008 budget, and FY 2008 supplemental funding bills. It has turned into anything but a routine exercise, however – with serving soldiers, journalists, and Senators casting a very critical eye on the effort and the rifle, and demanding open competition. With requests amounting to $375 million for weapons and $150 million in accessories, they say, the Army’s proposal amounts to an effort to replace the M16 as the USA’s primary battle rifle – using specifications that are around 15 years old, without a competition, and without considering whether better 5.56 mm alternatives might be available off the shelf. Meanwhile, the M4/M16 family is both praised and criticized for its current performance in the field.

DID explains the effort, the issues, and the options. The latest developments? The M4 and 3 competitors, including one M4 variant that can be converted from existing rifles, come out of a sandstorm reliability test – and the M4 finishes dead last, with more than 3.5x more jams than the 3rd place finisher. But the US Army publicly says that it doesn’t care. Low-grade political pressure has continued on Capitol Hill, and the Army appears to be backtracking now, with a competition that may even be open to all calibers. Is their latest information request to industry serious, or just a replay of past practices? Meanwhile, single-source contracts to Colt continue…

• The M4 Carbine
• Nobody Loves Me but My Mother – and She Could Be Jivin’ Too…
• The Cry for Competition: How Much Is That HK In the Window?
• Testing, Testing – Fairly?
• UPDATES: The Tests, Reactions, and Subsequent Developments
• Any Last Words?
• Appendix A: M4 Carbine Contracts Announced to Date [updated]
• Appendix B: Additional Readings & Sources – News & Developments
• Appendix C: Additional Readings & Sources – Weapons
  
  Continue Reading… »

ARTHUR on Bv206:
Fading away?
(click to view larger)

War is the ultimate test. Vanguard Mk2 robots were bought from a Canadian firm for Canada’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams. American troops were uncompromisingly negative about the Vangards, however, and the US Army had no national allegiance or past decisions to protect. They had already thrown the Vanguards out of theater, in favor of iRobot’s Packbot and QinetiQ’s TALON MTRS systems. Now, Canada appears to be finding itself on the “disgruntled foreign customer” end of that dynamic, and a new contract for counter-battery radars could be the result.

Norway and Sweden developed a surveillance and tracking radar called ARTHUR, and fielded the system on Bv206 vehicles in 1999. The system is used to track incoming artillery, mortar, and rocket projectiles, has a 40 km/ 25 mile range, and can be mounted on the all-terrain Bv series armored vehicles or placed on trucks. This mobile and very transportable system was been ordered by Sweden and Norway, and exported to the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Spain and the UK Royal Marines, who use the system as the “Mobile Artillery Monitoring Battlefield Radar program (MAMBA)”. Some ARTHUR systems have also been leased to Canada and Italy in support of peacekeeping operations.

Those leasing decisions may be about to create problems for the brand. Canadian forces have not been happy with ARTHUR’s performance in theater, and are actively canvassing alternatives that will help them pinpoint and reply to incoming artillery fire in Afghanistan…

Continue Reading… »

Land Warrior
(click to view full)

In the Pentagon’s April 2007 Selected Acquisition Report, the US Army’s $4 billion “Infantry-21” program – Land Warrior – lists as terminated. Which is true; Federal Computing Weekly has more. Noah Shachtman at WIRED’s Danger Room added that the soldiers weren’t that crazy about it, anyway:

“But as Alpha kicks in doors, rounds up terror suspects and peals off automatic fire in deafening six-shot bursts, not one of the soldiers bothers to check his radio or look into the eyepiece to find his buddies on the electronic maps. “It’s just a bunch of stuff we don’t use, taking the place of useful stuff like guns,” says Sgt. James Young, who leads a team of four M-240 machine-gunners perched on a balcony during this training exercise at Fort Lewis, Wash. “It makes you a slower, heavier target.”

Land Warrior was deployed to Iraq anyway in a slimmed down version, with the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team’s 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis, WA. Now, it appears that the program is set to return, in modified form…

Continue Reading… »

Dr. Gansler
(click to view full)

On Sept 4/07, “$5B in CENTCOM Contracting Under Scrutiny” discussed ongoing investigations related to the wartime staple of contracting fraud. In mid-September 2007, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren appointed the “Special Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations” to review contracting linked to the war effort. The 6-member commission was led by former Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Dr. Jacques Gansler, and now the report is in. Its blunt assessment? Many people have gone above and beyond the call of duty – but in the end a spiral of not enough people, too little training, and an antiquated system, equals serious problems managing contracting and fraud in Iraq. [Full report – PDF | Army article w. link to briefing video | Release: Army accepts report’s conclusions]

Secretary of the Army Geren pointed to post-Cold War cuts to the Army acquisition budget as one of the principal reasons behind the shortage of trained people, since it takes a number of years to restore that; at present, only 36% of those with contract oversight in Iraq and Kuwait are certified. Dr. Gansler, however, noted that the Army had 5 generals on the contracting force, and now has none. He recommended establishing an Army Contracting Agency and adding 5 generals to the Army contracting force, adding another 400 Soldiers and 1,000 Civilians, plus another 583 Army personnel to fill positions in the Defense Contract Management Agency.

Gansler acknowledged that “expeditionary contracting” is more demanding, because the needs of the operational commander are often immediate. This has been true since Wellington sent a reply to London from Spain, asking if they wanted him to oversee accounting or fight Napoleon. The question is how to implement valid shortcuts, while remaining within the law. In addition, products must often be purchased quickly from host-nation countries – indeed, involving host-nation businesses, who may have very different cultural standards and training, can be vital to military success. Making all of this work poses new challenges to military contracting, and success may require specific Congressional relief from statutory provisions such as Buy American, the Berry Amendment and Specialty Metals, and some civil service provisions. Not least of which is the proviso that contracting officers who volunteer to go to a war zone may lose their life insurance and medical benefits.

Overall, there is little question that the standard DoD contracting system is inadequate for dealing with the needs of expeditionary contracting in the modern world: too slow, too bureaucracy-laden, too nativist. The question is whether existing approaches to resolving that problem can be considered adequate either, and what should be done. The Gansler report is a first step toward offering answers.

(click to enlarge)

Case studies sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation (OFT) are working to present hard evidence that networked forces are far more effective in high-intensity conflict missions, and also point out how even less-than-perfect networks can be valuable. In all, more than 15 case studies examine the behavior of networked military organizations during exercises, combat operations and/or peacekeeping operations.

Need ‘em… read why

While some of them specifically explore U.S.-only military troops, others include coalition forces. The goal is to explore how network centricity affects warfighting while providing insights into what technologies warfighters need and, in some cases, do not need.

The case studies can be found online at the OFT, while a summary of the effort can be found in AFCEA’s Nov 2005 issue of Signal Magazine. DID has covered the Office of Force Transformation and its evolving influence in defense policy circles, and detailed some of the tactical/decision-related benefits ourselves in our coverage of the M1126 Stryker ICV in Iraq. Issues like net-centric warfare and transformation efforts in a number of countries have also been a focus, though readers should be cautioned that as powerful as these efforts and systems are, they have limitations.

Continue Reading… »

RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, CA received a $210.6 million cost-reimbursement plus fee-for-need contract to provide for RAND Project Air Force, Research of Air and Space Power. Originally known as Project RAND (an acronym for research and development), PAF was established in 1946 by General H. H. “Hap” Arnold as a way of retaining for the United States Air Force (USAF) the considerable benefits of civilian scientific thinking that had been demonstrated during World War II. Since its founding, PAF has focused entirely on studies and analyses rather than systems engineering or scientific laboratories. Publications include the F/A-18 E/F and F/A-22 program lessons learned report that DID covered earlier today.

This is a five-year option period, which extends the contract to a ten-year period. Solicitations began August 2005 and one proposal was received; work will now be complete in September 2015. The Air Force District Washington in Rosslyn, VA issued the contract (FA7014-06-C-0001). For more information, contact the 11th WG/PA at 202-767-7561.

Continue Reading… »