Speaking of dressing up Pentagon acquisition projects as federal work programs, Future Combat System program managers gave reporters a booklet last week at AUSA that broke down, in graphic state by state form, how many suppliers in each U.S. state provide parts to the Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV) segment of the FCS program.
The MGV’s, remember, have been getting some attention lately as the target of possible cuts, with reports stating that four of the eight MGV’s might get the axe: the Non-line-of-Sight Mortar, Medical Vehicle, and Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, and Mounted Combat System.
According to the handout, the MGV program “encompasses more than 839 suppliers in 38 states totaling more than $6.2B in development cost impact.”
Big winners include California, with 159 suppliers, Texas with 89 and Michigan with 86. These suppliers obviously all have a small (some more so than others) slice of a pretty large pie, but the fact that FCS is publicizing the nation wide reach of the program, and by extension the horses that lots of senators and representatives have in the race, is a nice little hat tip to lawmakers that cutting the program might mean a loss in revenue for their district. Come election time, this is the sort of things that oppo research dreams are made of.
(Photo: FCS MGV. US Army)
Not too much gold plating, maybe use the approach the USAF is apparently taking with NGB and leverage technologies that are mature or near maturity to build a vehicle that ensures our war fighters with overwhelming capability that the Abrams provides now. I'd imagine we could get the vehicle weight down to 50-55 tonnes while still increasing KE and CE survivability. Better signature and active protection are certainly viable and a hybrid drive train for better fuel economy may be sufficiently mature in this timeframe as well (mature for heavy vehicles).