May 15, 2008
The House Armed Services Committee agreed Wednesday to cut the Army’s Future Combat System to provide money for National Guard and reserve equipment.
The 33-23 vote to cut $233 million from the FCS program was along party lines.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee’s air and land forces panel and a supporter of the MRAP funding, said the committee’s version of the 2009 defense policy bill includes money for most of the Bush administration requests for the Army, including $2.2 billion for upgrading Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and Stryker vehicles; $3.4 billion for tactical vehicles including $947 million for heavily armored Humvees; $3.1 billion for helicopters; and more than $1 billion for munitions.
However, the bill also makes a 5.5 percent reduction in funding for the Army’s FCS program. Abercrombie said the cut is needed so that money can be shifted to higher priorities, like readiness, and also reflects a “history of delays and cost overruns” in the program.
“It is $110 billion over budget and five years behind schedule,” he said. “I hardly think they have been cut short. And, it has not produced a single deployable system in six years of development.”
There's a lot of good stuff coming out of the FCS program (the NLOS-C, for example) by overall it's a moneypit with little to show and less hope for the future of combat.
I think scaling back the budget for FCS to upgrade current systems that work and are in use today only makes sense.
MO Comments Policy: I make it up as I go along
Basically, I don't mess with them unless you're out of line or spamming. The definition of "out of line" is 'whatever Murdoc feels is out of line' but is generally limited to truly hateful stuff.
Don't make a fool out of yourself.
