| rdfs:comment
| - The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) network allows the FCS Family-of-Systems (FoS) to operate as a cohesive system-of-systems where the whole of its capabilities is greater than the sum of its parts. As the key to the Army's transformation, the network, and its logistics and Embedded Training (ET) systems, enable the Future Force to employ revolutionary operational and organizational concepts. The network enables Soldiers to perceive, comprehend, shape, and dominate the future battlefield at unprecedented levels as defined by the FCS Operational Requirements Document (ORD).
- As planned, FCS included the network; unattended ground sensors (UGS); unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); unmanned ground vehicles; and the eight manned ground vehicles. The Boeing Company and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) worked together as the lead systems integrator, coordinating more than 550 contractors and subcontractors in 41 states. The DoD released a memorandum on 23 June 2009 that cancelled the Future Combat Systems program and replaced it with separate programs under the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization umbrella to meet the Army's plans.
|
| abstract
| - The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) network allows the FCS Family-of-Systems (FoS) to operate as a cohesive system-of-systems where the whole of its capabilities is greater than the sum of its parts. As the key to the Army's transformation, the network, and its logistics and Embedded Training (ET) systems, enable the Future Force to employ revolutionary operational and organizational concepts. The network enables Soldiers to perceive, comprehend, shape, and dominate the future battlefield at unprecedented levels as defined by the FCS Operational Requirements Document (ORD). The FCS network consists of four overarching building blocks: System-of-Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE); Battle Command (BC) software; communications and computers (CC); and intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) systems. The four building blocks synergistically interact enabling the Future Force to see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively. System-of-Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE) Central to FCS network implementation is the System-of-Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE), which supports multiple mission-critical applications independently and simultaneously. It is configurable so that any specific instantiation can incorporate only the components that are needed for that instantiation. SOSCOE enables straightforward integration of separate software packages, independent of their location, connectivity mechanism and the technology used to develop them. System-of-Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE) architecture uses commercial off-the-shelf hardware and a Joint Tactical Architecture-Army compliant operating environment to produce a nonproprietary, standards-based component architecture for real-time, near-real-time, and non-real-time applications. System-of-Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE) also contains administrative applications that provide capabilities including login service, startup, logoff, erase, memory zeroize, alert/emergency restart and monitoring/control. The System-of-Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE) framework allows for integration of critical interoperability services that translate Army, Joint, and coalition formats to native, internal FCS message formats using a common format translation service. Because all interoperability services use these common translation services, new external formats will have minimal impact on the FCS software baseline. The FCS software is supported by application-specific interoperability services that act as proxy agents for each Joint and Army system. Battle Command (BC) can access these interoperability services through application program interfaces that provide isolation between the domain applications, thereby facilitating ease of software modifications and upgrades.
- As planned, FCS included the network; unattended ground sensors (UGS); unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); unmanned ground vehicles; and the eight manned ground vehicles. The Boeing Company and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) worked together as the lead systems integrator, coordinating more than 550 contractors and subcontractors in 41 states. A spiral model was planned for FCS development and upgrades. As of 2004, FCS was in the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase, which included four two-year spirals. Spiral 1 was to begin fielding in Fiscal Year 2008 and consist of prototypes for use and evaluation. Following successful evaluation, production and fielding of Spiral 2 would have commenced in 2010. The evaluation was conducted by the Army Evaluation Task Force (AETF), previously known as Evaluation Brigade Combat Team (EBCT), stationed in Fort Bliss. As of December 2007, AETF consisted of 1,000 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division. In August 2005, the program met 100% of the criteria in its most important milestone to date, Systems of Systems Functional Review. On October 5, 2005, Pentagon team recommended "further delaying the Army's Future Combat Systems program" in light of the costs of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and expected declines in future budgets. The Pentagon announced plans in January 2006 to cut $236 million over five years from the $25 billion FCS 2007-2011 budget. The entire program was expected to cost $340 billion. As of late December 2006, funding was scaled back for critical elements of the overall FCS battlespace, and the most advanced elements were deferred. The program had completed about one-third of its development as of 2008, which had been planned to run through 2030. Technical field tests began in 2008. The first combat brigade equipped with FCS had been expected to roll out around 2015, followed by full production to equip up to 15 brigades by 2030. However, the program had not met the initial 2004 plan of fielding the first FCS-equipped unit in 2008. On April 6, 2009, President Barack Obama's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates announced plans to cut FCS spending as part of a shift toward spending more on counter-terrorism and less to prepare for conventional warfare against large states like China and Russia. This included, but was not limited to, cancelling the series of Manned Ground Vehicles. In May 2009, the proposed DoD budget for fiscal year 2010 has minimal funding for Manned Ground Vehicles research. The Army plans to restart from the beginning on manned ground vehicles. The service is to restructure FCS so more Army units will be supported. The DoD released a memorandum on 23 June 2009 that cancelled the Future Combat Systems program and replaced it with separate programs under the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization umbrella to meet the Army's plans.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)