WASHINGTON — The Army’s vision of the future includes computerized battles fought with a range of tools, from sensor-packed unmanned aircraft the size of a trash can to giant cannons capable of hitting targets miles away.
But the envisioned marriage of high-tech innovations with heavy firepower comes with a big price tag, including an estimated $160 billion for the Army’s top-priority modernization program. That fact, combined with ongoing economic turmoil, a coming change in the White House and the recent passage of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, elicited cautious funding predictions from Army leaders Monday.
“It is critical we maintain a basic and predictable line of funding,” said Army Secretary Pete Geren, speaking about pressure on the service’s budget and the trend that military spending often falls as wars wind down. “We cannot go back to the days of a hollow budget.”
Under President Bush, the Pentagon and Army budgets grew significantly as the military fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of it funded through special supplemental bills that supported the two conflicts. Overall defense spending for next year is slated to be $612 billion, by far the largest portion of the federal budget.
That size, combined with the publicity surrounding the passage last week of the plan to shore up the ailing financial industry by buying its bad debt, has led some analysts to predict defense spending as a ripe target for cutbacks. Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have preached greater scrutiny of defense spending, though they differ on how to do it.
The goal of the high-tech makeover is to vastly increase the battlefield information available to soldiers. Unmanned aircraft hovering over a combat zone are meant to pinpoint enemy fighters; sensors spread over a battle zone are designed to detect hostile troops; and automated artillery will make pinpoint strikes. Battles and combat missions would be orchestrated on computer screens that sometimes resemble computer games.
It also encompasses a wide range of defense contractors. Boeing and SAIC are the lead contractors, but companies such as Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin also are involved.
Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson III, the military deputy to the Army’s acquisitions secretary, acknowledged Monday that Future Combat Systems is expensive but said the Army needs to update its force and eventually replace older weapons systems.
“You have got to continue to modernize to stay up with the challenges out there,” he said.
Some military analysts say the financial-industry bailout package passed last week poses a major problem for expensive programs such as FCS.
