By Lexington institute on Monday, June 3rd, 2013
Has Israel Created A System the U.S. Army Couldn’t Build?
Remember the long run Combat System (FCS)? This was a posh “system-of-systems” which involved manned and unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, advanced weapons systems and sensors, a few of them remotely operated and an all-encompassing command, control and communications network to hang all of it together. After nearly a decade of development and the expenditure of tens of billions of bucks with virtually nothing to teach for it, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled this system.
So how is it that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), operating on a good budget and timeline, seems to were ready to do what the U.S. Army with all of the technological and fiscal resources available to it couldn’t? Take the network, what was to be the guts of the FCS. The network was speculated to connect vehicles, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), robots, autonomous sensors, remote weapons and dismounted soldiers, transmitting voice, data and video effortlessly, thereby enabling commanders and headquarters to preserve a standard operating picture. The military could never get the network to work properly.
The IDF is now deploying, albeit in pieces, the basic elements of this type of network. Portion of this technique is the Digital Ground Army (DGA), a true-time system that gives a standard operating picture for all echelons. DGA generates a map, updated in real time, of all forces – friendly and hostile – in a battle arena. Various units, including aircraft and ships, can share the coordinates of the enemy – and their very own location – all through a battle. DGA is associated with the computers of tanks and cannons, and combat vehicles. The system will work in any respect echelons, from the person soldier or vehicle, as much as battalion, brigade or even division commanders. Another piece of the network is named See-Shoot, which operates along Israel’s borders. See-Shoot rapidly processes and transmits data from multiple sensors to remote firing stations in addition to mobile platforms similar to tanks, artillery and the Tammuz precision weapon. a 3rd element is a frequency switching radio in a position to transmitting voice, data and video with encryption. Sounds frequently just like the FCS network to me.
The Tammuz is another example of an ability that FCS was speculated to produce. One focus of the FCS was an autonomous missile system, called the Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) Launch System, essentially a clutch of tactical missiles in a box that may be deployed anywhere at the battlefield and launched remotely. Tammuz is solely this kind of capability: an NLOS version of the Spike anti-tank missile with a 25 km range, deployed in a canister, capable of be launched remotely in accordance with data from distributed sensors. Tammuz is now deployed along Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon. The IDF also has the mini-Spike electro-optic guided missile, the world’s smallest personal missile, 70 cm long, 75 mm in diameter, weighing just 4 kg and with a number 1.5 km.
FCS planned on employing an array of advanced unmanned ground and aerial sensors and vehicles. The unattended ground sensor was among the many last bits of FCS to be cancelled. The IDF has a number of such systems, including the EyeBall, a complicated audio-visual surveillance device a bit bigger than a tennis ball, the Skylark, man-portable mini UAV, the Guardium Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle and the SnakeCam for investigating tunnels and caves.
Filling out the array of FCS-like systems within the IDF’s inventory is the Trophy Active Protection System for military vehicles, an intensive family of medium and big UAVs, the Iron Dome tactical missile defense system, long-range guided mortars and advanced armored fighting vehicles together with the Namer – which were considered a potential competitor for the role of the U.S. Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle. In case you go down the list of the dozen or more elements of the FCS system-of-systems, the IDF has deployed virtually them all.
Together with traditional systems akin to the Merkava main battle tank, Apache attack helicopter and self-propelled artillery and rocket systems, the IDF has within the field an ability for advanced mobile, combined arms warfare that the U.S. Army can only dream about.
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