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Iraq war drove weight of FCS vehicles

The Iraq war helped persuade Army planners to increase the weight of the Future Combat Systems Man-Ground Vehicle (MGV) from 18 tons to the current planned weight of 27 tons, FCS planners said.

The first bump came in 2004, when the planned weight was upped to 24 tons. In 2006, the weight was raised again as designers sought to build a vehicle that could withstand rocket-propelled grenades, heavy and light machine-gun fire, anti-tank guided missiles and tank rounds.

The vehicles are slated to have active protection systems and lightweight composite and add-on armor, but the vehicles kept getting heavier.

“Survivability is the coin of the realm,” said Col. Charles Bush, who directs the Army’s efforts to plan FCS.

He and other planners had originally conceived 18-ton vehicles that could be flown aboard a C-130 airlifter, but “the physics were not there to meet our objectives,” Bush said. “If you are shooting a 100-pound projectile 20 miles, the force of that shot would present stability challenges for a 14-ton chassis.”

An 18-ton vehicle might only have met 75 percent of Army requirements, Bush said.

The 27-ton vehicles will be deployed aboard C-17 Globemaster IIIs, three to a plane. If need be, the cannon or mortar can be disassembled from a vehicle and the components flown to a location aboard two C-130s, Bush said.

A C-130 can land more places than a C-17, which needs a hardened landing strip, he noted, but a C-130 could only fly the vehicles about 500 nautical miles — and the vehicles would come off the C-17s ready to go.

Bush said there are enough C-17s in the current fleet to meet the Army’s rapid mobility requirements.