Did Army ignore past lessons in GCV effort? - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Did Army ignore past lessons in GCV effort?

Why did the Army delay its Ground Combat Vehicle development effort? Because it didn’t learn a key lesson of the failed Future Combat Systems program: don’t overreach.

That’s the consensus from industry and congressional officials, as well as the DoD-Army red team whose review led the Army to cancel the request for proposals it issued in February.

Service officials said Wednesday they would issue a revised request in 60 days.

“The new RFP will reflect changes to the program’s efforts to minimize technology integration risk and to ensure that we have a viable acquisition strategy to deliver the vehicle within seven years of the contract award,” GCV program spokesman Paul Mehney said Thursday.

FCS died because it relied upon immature technologies that became increasingly irrelevant the longer they took to develop, said Dave Johnson, a retired colonel and a senior analyst at the Rand Corp.

The GCV delay indicates the service is still trying to get this right.

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates cancelled the vehicle component of FCS in April 2009, the Army quickly forged a new program to buy next-generation combat vehicles, issuing an RFP in 10 months and vowing to start production within seven years.

“There is an old saying in the Pentagon, ‘If you want it bad, you get it bad,’ ” said Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Within months, the red team had deemed the effort as too ambitious.

“This vehicle had too many performance requirements and too many capabilities to make it an affordable and readily fielded system,” Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson said.

Analysts said the Army’s delay amounted to an admission that service leaders recognized their mistakes and are moving to correct them early on. The service is “really serious about getting this into the realm of, not the possible, but the likely in the timeframe they’re looking at,” Johnson said.

Krepinevich agreed.

“A few months’ delay in the program now could reap great benefits down the road,” he said.

But others said the Army’s inability to articulate its future operational needs is already weakening policymakers’ confidence and putting funding at risk.

Army moved quickly

When Gates ordered up a replacement for the FCS vehicle program last year, he indicated that a new program should adhere as closely as possible to the FCS vehicles’ fielding schedule. But he also said that “because of its size and importance, we must get the acquisition right, even at the cost of delay.”

The vehicle component of FCS was valued at $87 billion.

“The danger you always run when a program is canceled is that if you don’t explain quickly how you’re going to reapply the money to meet the mission needs, it will be taken away and spent someplace else,” Thompson said.

One source who attended an Army industry day last fall said he wondered whether GCV was a “conceptual Kabuki dance” meant to placate Gates until he retires, and then allow the Army to take a “deep and informed breath” and figure out what it really needed.

Gates appeared to boost the pressure this spring, when he told an audience at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that “we can shave a little time off” the GCV schedule, citing the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program, which went from an idea to full-rate production “in a year.”

The House Armed Services Committee added its own pressure this spring. In a report that accompanied their version of the 2011 defense authorization bill, lawmakers encouraged the service “to carefully consider whether or not it is possible to upgrade current vehicles, including some foreign designs, to meet baseline GCV requirements on an accelerated schedule that could get a vehicle in the hands of troops more quickly than the current seven-year timeline.”

The Army has considered the option of upgrading vehicles it already owns instead of buying a new vehicle. According to sources, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of the Army, asked during a combat vehicle portfolio review, “What will I get with the GCV that an upgraded Bradley [armored fighting vehicle] won’t give me?”

Based on a series of recently released Army concept papers, the answer to that question appears to be squad integrity. The GCV is being designed to carry an intact nine-man squad, plus a crew of three, while the Bradley can only carry six squad members and a three-man crew. The Stryker personnel carrier can carry a full nine-man squad, but has a lower level of protection and therefore has to dismount farther from the objective, the papers explain.

While the Army remains committed to the GCV concept, the recent stop-and-start may prove costly.

The Army requested $934 million for GCV for fiscal year 2011. One congressional source said the delay means the service “may lose a good portion of the FY11 request, depending on what the new program schedule looks like.”

Mehney said the Army is working its own budget analysis, “based on the decision and the delayed time period.”

Red team

Unusually, the Army decided to conduct an analysis of alternatives at the same time it issued an RFP. The proposal drew some resistance from DoD and congressional officials, but Maj. Gen. John Bartley, program executive officer for integration, explained in February that the parallel efforts would allow the Army to better consider industry’s proposals, their cost and alternatives to a new vehicle.

“If the analysis says the gap can be filled by product improving the Bradley or the Abrams [tank] or a Stryker, then the GCV goes away and the Army looks at upgrading those systems. That’s a very big possibility,” Bartley said at the time.

According to industry sources familiar with the first RFP, the requirements placed on industry were stringent and demanded an enormous level of armor to protect soldiers, the vehicle and its sensors. This led to heavy and costly solutions.

A disconnect emerged between what the Army required in its RFP and what the service expected to get, an industry source said. A light went on after industry responded to the Army’s questions about the June bids. The Army got a “resounding” response from industry of “you asked for it, you got it,” the source said.

New contracts in 6 months

The GCV program was also gearing up for a September Milestone A review with Pentagon acquisition executive Ashton Carter.

“The program continues to work preparations for a pending milestone review,” Mehney said. “However, due to the changes in the RFP and acquisition strategy, the milestone review date is now delayed.”

However, even with the delay, the Army plans on awarding competitive contracts for the technology development phase of the program within six months, Mehney said.

Mehney said the new RFP, for which work is underway, will still emphasize force protection and survivability.

Industry reaction

The Army’s decision took many by surprise, including the industry teams competing for contracts for the first phase of the program. The Army had planned to award those this fall.

“We are currently evaluating the impacts of this decision and are consulting with Government program officials to determine a path forward,” said Kelly Golden, spokeswoman for BAE Systems, who teamed with Northrop Grumman to propose a hybrid-electric vehicle.

“While we are disappointed in the government’s decision to cancel the Ground Combat Vehicle solicitation, we support the Army in its effort to further refine critical requirements,” said Melissa Koskovich, SAIC spokeswoman. SAIC is leading a team that includes Boeing and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, whose Puma vehicle served as the basis of the team’s bid.

“Our team is committed to provide the Army a comprehensive response after it adjusts its requirements and issues a new request for proposals,” said a spokesman for General Dynamics Land Systems, whose team included Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

ADVS, a small business based in Michigan, submitted a fourth proposal that the Army rejected. ADVS protested the service’s decision and the Government Accountability Office was in the process of evaluating that protest.

“We are surprised by the sudden RFP cancellation and are looking forward to understanding the Army’s revised requirements and being a part of GCV in the future,” an ADVS spokeswoman said. The ADVS vehicle proposal offered an “extraordinary level of crew protection, exceeding many GCV requirements,” according to the ADVS statement. According to an industry source, the team submitted a wheeled vehicle solution.

The GAO will halt its evaluation of the ADVS protest now that the RFP is canceled, an Army official said.

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