BACKGROUND: Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) * FCS operates as a system-of-systems * Whole greater than sum of parts. * Net-centric * Enables soldiers to perceive, comprehend, shape, and dominate the future battlefield * Network provides the synergistic glue for FCS * Performance not dependent on single element, but on success of the system-of-systems (SoS).
This report summarizes the research findings of a short-time-frame study conducted by RAND Arroyo Center to support the Army Science Board (ASB) Summer Study 2000 "Technical and Tactical Opportunities for Revolutionary Advances in Rapidly Deployable Joint Ground Forces in the 2015-2020 Era. The purpose of the RAND research was to explore a range of advanced technologies for potential contribution to the Future Combat Systems program; it is intended to be a think piece and is not a guide to the contractors charged with designing the Future Combat Systems. This research represents only one part of the ASB study, focusing specifically on force effectiveness in a notional small-scale contingency and on the associated spectrum of challenges that such a situation might entail. In conducting the study, the research team interacted with various members of the ASB, drawing extensively on their forward-looking ideas and ultimately integrating many of them into the research. High-resolution combat modeling and simulation was used to assess many key aspects of force performance, environmental factors, and system-of-systems interactions within the context of the scenario. This work should be of interest to defense policymakers, military technologists, and concept developers.
This report summarizes the research findings of a short-time-frame study conducted by RAND Arroyo Center to support the Army Science Board (ASB) Summer Study 2000 "Technical and Tactical Opportunities for Revolutionary Advances in Rapidly Deployable Joint Ground Forces in the 2015-2020 Era. The purpose of the RAND research was to explore a range of advanced technologies for potential contribution to the Future Combat Systems program; it is intended to be a think piece and is not a guide to the contractors charged with designing the Future Combat Systems. This research represents only one part of the ASB study, focusing specifically on force effectiveness in a notional small-scale contingency and on the associated spectrum of challenges that such a situation might entail. In conducting the study, the research team interacted with various members of the ASB, drawing extensively on their forward-looking ideas and ultimately integrating many of them into the research. High-resolution combat modeling and simulation was used to assess many key aspects of force performance, environmental factors, and system-of-systems interactions within the context of the scenario. This work should be of interest to defense policymakers, military technologists, and concept developers.
The U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems program aimed to field an ambitious system of systems, with novel technologies integrated via an advanced wireless network. The largest and most ambitious planned acquisition program in the Army's history, it was cancelled in 2009, and some of its efforts transitioned to follow-on programs. This report documents the program's complex history and draws lessons from its experiences.
The Future Combat Systems (FCS) effort employs "leap-ahead" technologies and concepts to provide unprecedented levels of situational understanding and synchronization of effects. The same high level of technical sophistication used to develop Future Combat System (FCS) hardware and software should apply to the development of the soldier-machine interface (SMI). Guidance is needed to ensure that FCS SMI design is a soldier-centered process that accommodates a system-of-systems approach to warfighting; includes all soldiers, mounted and dismounted; and is effective across the full spectrum of warfare. To address this need, the authors first reviewed relevant literature in three domains: contemporary philosophies of design; specific published guidance from military, academic, and industrial sources; and current interface practices for command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) functions. Based on these reviews, an integrative model was devised to describe the interaction among four sets of variables: operational variables, battlespace, sensory modalities, and echelon. The model indicates that as battlespace complexity increases, so does the bandwidth requirement for human information processing. Despite the tentative nature of the model, it can be used for devising FCS design guidelines. For instance, the model suggests that the auditory modality might provide the common link across echelons. The model also suggests that visual displays might be appropriate to all echelons during planning, when all warfighters have increased time available to process data, but that they would not be appropriate for lower-echelon warfighters during execution phases. The report describes 10 C4ISR interface concepts/products that are either directly or indirectly related to the FCS. (7 tables, 23 figures, 250 refs.).
Modeling, simulation, and analysis (MS&A) is a crucial tool for military affairs. MS&A is one of the announced pillars of a strategy for transforming the U.S. military. Yet changes in the enterprise of MS&A have not kept pace with the new demands arising from rapid changes in DOD processes and missions or with the rapid changes in the technology available to meet those demands. To help address those concerns, DOD asked the NRC to identify shortcomings in current practice of MS&A and suggest where and how they should be resolved. This report provides an assessment of the changing mission of DOD and environment in which it must operate, an identification of high-level opportunities for MS&A research to address the expanded mission, approaches for improving the interface between MS&A practitioners and decision makers, a discussion of training and continuing education of MS&A practitioners, and an examination of the need for coordinated military science research to support MS&A.
The Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is the U.S. Army's ambitious attempt to modernize its forces in a systematic way, so that everything interoperates properly. This "system of systems" approach contrasts with the "stove-pipe" solutions of the past in which individual systems were designed to meet specific requirements, but with much less thought about how they would interact in the overall force. The "stove-pipe" approach has worked well enough in the past because the self-contained requirements were more important than how well a platform could interact with other platforms. But as we move further in the digital age where information superiority and speed of action are such key enablers of the force, it has become increasingly critical to tie the entire force together. The Army has gambled that the best way to do this is to design the future force holistically, fielding a sum that is greater than its parts. However, the enormity of the task was not originally apparent to its designers. This fact is becoming increasingly clear to Congress as the Army has been forced to increase funding requests and extend timelines several times. In reaction, Congress is considering a number of actions including the cancellation of the program. This paper examines the status of the FCS program and provides several recommendations on how the FCS program office could reduce risk while still bringing critical new technology to the U.S. Army in a timely manner.
The U.S. Army Tank and Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC), in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Human Research and Engineering Directorate, is using TARDEC's Ride Motion Simulator (RMS) to address design requirements for future force systems. Future force systems are envisioned to be lightweight, highly-mobile vehicles that will utilize complex information systems to ensure, for example, both Soldier survivability and system lethality. One of the major challenges and program risks identified by Future Combat Systems is that, in these future systems, Soldiers will need to be able to maintain their high levels of performance even when their vehicles are moving over terrain. This "motion effects" challenge involves a host of problems including, but not limited to: the presentation of critical information in an understandable way, the implementation of control devices that allow the successful completion of mission Operations, and the reduction of potential disorientation and motion sickness, all of which will be adversely affected when Soldiers are bounced around in moving vehicles. Making decisions on how to deal with motion effects issues is all the more difficult because potentially crucial design choices must be made for vehicles whose ride characteristics are still unknown. Through the combined efforts of researchers at TARDEC and ARL, a systematic approach using motion-base simulation is being implemented to address some of these challenges.
Army R & D labs have played a crucial role in the evaluation of emerging systems that equipped the war fighter with superior lethality. The Future Combat System's (FCS) aggressive acquisition strategy of conventional (armor, munitions, propulsion) and non-conventional (unmanned sensors, robotics) technologies place a greater demand on labs for rapid and accurate analysis of potential weapon systems. A combination of validated engineering analysis codes, Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) and Enterprise Commercial Off the Shelf Software (COTS) can greatly accelerate the evaluation of candidate systems. Traditional Modeling and Simulation (M & S) activities are not well suited for today's acquisition environment. In particular, they suffer from: premature design commitment, a failure to quickly identify dominant design factors and adapt to changing design requirements. Many of these problems stem from a lack of human engineering concurrency and communication. A partial solution to this problem is to enable virtual collaboration among a lab's modeling and simulation codes. Genetic Algorithms (GA), a subset of EA's, are an ideal catalyst for multidisciplinary concept exploration. GA's mimic the selection process that occurs among biological species in nature, but to various engineering disciplines they provide an excellent focal point in determining a weapon system's optimal configuration based on a set of given mission parameters. The organizational and cultural impact of setting up this type of virtual cooperation is far reaching and cannot be overstated. Concept exploration engines have been around for a number of years; an outstanding example is the Integrated Hypersonic Aeromechanics Tool (IHAT) used at Naval Air Command, China Lake to design hypersonic air breathing vehicles in the Mach 4-8 regime. Likewise, the Aviation and Missile Command has adopted a multidisciplinary approach through its Army Missile Collaborative Design Environment (AMCODE).
