FUTURE COMBAT SOFTWARE
FUTURE COMBAT SOFTWARE
Developers See Progress on Information Networks for Massive Army Modernization Project.
by Peter A. Buxbaum, MIT Correspondent
With its estimated 90 million lines of code, software for the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) has long been seen as one of the most difficult aspects of development of the massive modernization initiative, which is designed to link soldiers to a wide range of weapons, sensors and information systems by means of a mobile ad hoc network architecture.
But while the ultimate fate of the program remains unclear, proponents are pointing to successes at the recent Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX), where FCS provided the ground maneuver (brigade and below) network portion of the JEFX.
“By using portions of the FCS network during a real operational setting, joint service staff were enabled to share situational awareness between ground and air assets. This near real-time awareness between Army and Air Force assets is not available on today’s battlefield,” according to Major Troy Crosby, assistant project manager (joint), FCS Network Systems Integration.
A report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this year, on the other hand, slammed the program, calling into question whether “the information network that is at the heart of the FCS concept can be developed, built and demonstrated by the Army.”
“Significant management and technical challenges have placed development of the network and software at risk,” the report said. “These risks include, among others, network performance and scalability, immature network architecture, and synchronization of FCS with Joint Tactical Radio System [JTRS] and Warfighter Information Network-Tactical [WIN-T] programs. It is unclear when or how it can be demonstrated that the FCS network will work as needed.”
Proponents of FCS, by contrast, point to the “unprecedented success” with which U.S. forces “smashed the Iraqi Army and toppled Saddam Hussein,” as a paper from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, put it. Although FCS has yet to be deployed as such, U.S. forces in Iraq were equipped with forerunners of the planned vehicles and systems.
The FCS vision promotes a new way of ground fighting that depends on networking people, platforms, weapons and sensors seamlessly in a system of systems. Another important and related aspect of FCS is the development of lighter and more maneuverable ground vehicles. The enhanced data links provided by the FCS information network will promote better situational awareness, allowing the deployment of lighter and faster vehicles which could better evade an enemy and keep him on the defensive. The efficacy of this vision has been proved in Iraq, say FCS proponents.
SYSTEMS OF SYSTEMS
The Army is preparing for a variety of future contingencies, and FCS is delivering, thanks to a decision to develop capabilities in phases—networking, sensing and communications capabilities that are being used by today’s warfighters and will be used into the future. The cloud that still hangs over FCS is whether, in the end, the Army and the taxpayer will have reaped an acceptable return on their investments in the program, and whether the original grand FCS vision will ever come to fruition.
The Army is clearly not giving up on FCS. At a Pentagon budget briefing earlier this year, FCS was apparently foremost on the minds of Army budgeters, who are concerned about prospective congressional action on FCS funding. The Army is requesting $3.6 billion for FCS for fiscal year 2009, a $100 million increase over 2008. Congress cut the administration’s request for FCS by $229 million for fiscal year 2008 and by $250 million the year before.
Congressional criticism of FCS in recent years has centered on scheduling delays, often due to the lack of technological readiness, as well as its $200 billion price tag. FCS systems were slated to enter production by 2006 and to start initial fielding in 2008, but the schedule has been extended by over six years.
“We cannot afford to cut any more out of FCS this year,” said Lieutenant General David Melcher, the Army’s deputy budget director, adding, “Congress has RDT&E fatigue,” in reference to the research, development, testing and evaluation processes.
FCS will have to develop massive amounts of software to connect all of the new systems with each another and with the Army’s existing systems. At least 90 million lines of software code must be generated by current estimates, over five times the amount needed for the Joint Strike Fighter, DoD’s largest software development project to date, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report.
“Software problems in complex systems can be quite daunting,” explained Philip Coyle, senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information and a former assistant secretary of defense. “It is easy for things to go wrong.”
To be sure, FCS is not alone when it comes to the difficulties associated with complex software and integration projects. The Coast Guard’s Deepwater program has suffered from numerous systems failures and cost overruns. Deepwater is analogous to FCS in that it envisions development of a new series of vessels together with a system-ofsystems network to tie them together. “That program continues to face a degree of underlying risk,” a 2007 GAO report concluded, “in part because of the unique system-of-systems approach with the contractor acting as overall integrator.”
Other cases in point include the Navy’s DDG-51 destroyer, FFG-7 frigate and LPD-4 amphibious ship acquisition programs, each representing an integrated systems approach and experiencing problems with subsystems. These problems, according to the GAO, have affected the vessels’ day-to-day operations.
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
These experiences led FCS managers to consider alternatives to the program’s original big-bang approach. One possibility would eliminate all or part of the program’s ground vehicles while retaining its communications equipment and sensors. The Army would incorporate some FCS technologies into its current fleet of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, as it is already doing, and upgrade them, thereby increasing their capabilities and extending their useful lives.
But such a plan would compromise the original FCS vision, noted a 2007 CBO report. “The Army would forgo potential benefits of the capabilities it now seeks in the FCS program,” the CBO report concluded, referring to vehicle weight and maneuverability.
Some of the criticism that has been leveled as FCS emanates from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the development of the program is proceeding, according to Paul Mehney, an Army FCS spokesman.
“You need to take a couple of steps back in order to understand how this program differs from other Army acquisitions,” Mehney said. “Historically, the Army has done stovepipe acquisitions programs. They proceed from the design phase to limited production and get user feedback when the system is almost ready to be fielded. At that stage, there are only limited opportunities to make any changes.”
That scheme worked well for the development of the Abrams and the Bradley because they were equipped with limited connectivity, Mehney contended. “The result was that the Army was running multiple communications systems. FCS is not merely developing technology. It is a new way to field a brigade. Networking and communications are an essential part of what is necessary to succeed in this mission.”
That is why FCS is simultaneously developing hardware and software, according to Mehney, and then putting them to the test and getting user feedback at earlier stages of development than in traditional acquisitions. “It would be insane to fully develop software before we know what it is being plugged into,” he said. “The GAO seems to be saying that we need to prove that the end software product works in totality before we have developed the nodes that the software will be installed on.”
The implication of such an approach is that the software is being developed in stages. “It gives soldiers the opportunity to provide feedback on what works and what doesn’t before we have the final brigade fielding in 2015,” Mehney said. “This should also avoid costly redesigns at the final stages before deploying the systems to the first brigades.”
“We expected requirements to change,” said Ted Goetz, director of software and distributed systems at Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, the FCS lead systems integrator. “There are two ways to develop software. One is the big bang, when you do it all at once and hope it comes out in the end. The other is to do a little at a time, test it out in the field, and then update the software. An incremental software build approach lays out an initial set of requirement, but those requirements change as the system matures. The spiral model involves a continuous cycle of designing, building and testing, and then incorporating the lessons learned back into the next build.”
Soldiers of an Army FCS evaluation task force in Fort Bliss, Texas, are currently at work and will continue over next several years to test phased network builds as they become available, Mehney added. “A real key point the GAO glossed over in its report is the reason why we are doing this. It is to be able to have users test and evaluate the products as the build phases become available. This way, by the time we field the core network, we will have a usable product that has been soldier tested and proven.”
FCS has successfully implemented such a program for its lower-level components, Goetz contended. The vehicle-mounted computers, battle command system software, and several of the system sensors are all undergoing design review and are expected to be completed by the time a system-of-systems preliminary design review is conducted next spring.
Some of the feedback the Fort Bliss task force recently delivered to network designers related to message encryption protocols, Mehney reported. “One thing they told us is that if they just want to send a message to an adjacent vehicle, there is no need to encrypt it,” he said. “That kind of feedback is crucial to connectivity issues and will result in a better end product for us. That feedback is ongoing right now. It is a new way of doing business to get soldiers into the development cycle up front.”
BATTLE COMMAND
The JEFX exercise included representatives of the other services as well as the British military. “The experiment helped us to prove that an unmanned aerial vehicle can pick up data from an unattended ground sensor and pipe it over the network to the Marine Corps, the Air Force, even the international folks,” said Mehney. “This allows the initiation of a joint fire call and allows the Air Force to hit the target in real time.
“Today we call for fire by describing the grid coordinates and hope that the Air Force hits the right target,” Mehney continued. “Now we can give F-16 or B-52 pilots a description of the target, let’s say, a blue van with a white stripe, and they can take a look and verify the target based on a picture provided with Army sensor data. The Air Force was thrilled because it allowed them to look at an Army sensor picture in real time in the cockpit and to destroy the target. That is a big step for us.”
Following the experiment, FCS engineers are working on some communications and data transfer issues that were brought to light and are developing the final aspect of this capability, Mehney said.
A second example of an FCS win comes in the form of the initial development of the B-Kit, a package being used to provide FCS-like networking connectivity to Abrams tanks, and Bradley and Humvee vehicles. The kit provides those vehicles with limited JTRS connectivity and battle command system capabilities, all integrated into a computer system that will eventually emerge as one of the key FCS components, the System of Systems Common Operating Environment.
Battle command system capabilities being deployed to the Abrams, Bradleys and Humvees include a non-line-of-sight launch system, a package of 15 missiles with a range of 40 kilometers and equipped with a JTRS-based targeting system; unattended ground sensors that inform the network whether ground has been reoccupied by the enemy after it has been cleared; an intelligent munitions system, a networked device for targeting vehicles; and vehicle-mounted JTRS radios.
The vehicle-mounted systems that have already been deployed have undergone testing at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Goetz said. “We incorporated lessons learned from field testing into the design,” he added. “We will continue to mature the design as we head for a critical design review in about a year and a half.”
Design changes brought about from these field tests focused on the user friendliness of the hardware as well as the usability and understandability of the systems’ fusion algorithms. Future field testing at Fort Bliss and at the FCS Systems Integration Laboratory in Huntingdon Beach, Calif., later this year will demonstrate how hundreds of FCS systems— referred to as platform nodes—can work together. “We will have 100 platform nodes in test mode later this year,” said Goetz. “Next year we will going to 300 to 500 platform nodes and then up to almost 600.”
Systems to be tested include several variants of manned and unmanned ground vehicles as well as unmanned aerial vehicles. “”We are integrating and testing mission operational software and demonstrating how they all work,” said Goetz. “As the design concept matures, we will be rerunning those tests to demonstrate scalability.”
Future FCS brigades will be fielded with a total of around 1,200 platform nodes. These achievements still don’t quiet FCS critics. “There are tons of problems involved with spiral software development,” said Coyle. “It is like building a house without a floor plan. You can do it, but you end up with a very expensive house, and, when you finally stop building, neither you nor your family much cares for it. These programs can be very difficult to manage and very expensive and complex.”
Coyle places the blame for some of FCS’s software readiness delays on decisions made early on in the program to save money by emphasizing the acquisition and integration of COTS technologies.
“In principle, there is nothing wrong with using COTS,” he explained, “provided you get the user manual and know what it can do. Some of this software is being deployed in military environments that were never envisioned by the software designer. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that you run into a situation where the software doesn’t work with another system, either commercial or government.”
This, in turns, leads to efforts at rewriting or otherwise modifying code, by contractors who didn’t write the software in the first place and don’t know what is buried in the code. “When you start fooling with it, you don’t know what kind of new problems you are creating in addition to the ones you’re trying to solve,” Coyle said, “and you end up facing the same situation you were trying to avoid in the first place by buying COTS.”
The fact that the Army is spiraling emerging technologies into existing vehicles and systems raises the question as to whether it intends to go forward with its full-blown FCS vision, which includes the development of new classes of ground vehicles such as the manned ground vehicle (MGV).
“The MGV was thought to be an integration platform for FCS,” said Dean Lockwood, a weapons systems analyst at Forecast International, “but the Army seems to be more concerned with spiraling developing technologies into existing vehicles.” In fact, he added, the successful deployment of FCS communications technologies to existing fighting vehicles could provide fodder to congressional critics of FCS to severely slash funding.
FCS’s bright spot, for Lockwood, has been its ability to spiral out new technologies, such as blue force tracking and battlefield management, into the current force. “You are getting bits and pieces integrated into current systems,” he said, “but the real FCS system as originally envisioned seems distant. The Army has seriously lowered its sights as far as what it thinks it will be able to do.
“At the end of the day, FCS may be reduced to being a technology feeder, delivering technologies the Army is deploying to the boots on the ground,” Lockwood added. “That ultimately may be biggest benefit of FCS.”
But Goetz argued that while the spiral introduction of technologies is a significant achievement, the ultimate vision of fielding light, agile, and networked brigades is still viable. “It’s nifty we were able to spin out early versions of systems to help warfighters now. But the Army’s great vision of where it wants to go with FCS is still pretty well on track.” ♦
