Future Combat Systems: High Ratings
 On February 1, at Fort Bliss, Texas, the U.S. Army celebrated the successful completion of Experiment 1.1, the first live-fire exercise using technologies and equipment for its modernization program, Future Combat Systems (FCS). FCS is an ambitious vision for transformation of U.S. joint forces into a fast, nimble, and fully networked system of systems. It is the most comprehensive effort toward modernization in more than half a century.
Experiment 1.1 is the first step in speeding the implementation of FCS technologies in today's fight, delivering valuable capabilities to the current force. The exercise spanned from July 2006 to February 2007. It was made up of three phases. The first involved engineering laboratory events that were conducted from July through September 2006 at the FCS System of Systems Integration Laboratory in Huntington Beach, California, and at the Systems Engineering and Experimentation Lab at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Those exercises tested the integration and interoperability of hardware and software systems.
Phase 2 consisted of field events carried out in a rigorous environment during the fall of 2006 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and at Fort Bliss, gathering information about the performance of FCS systems under more realistic conditions. More than a dozen soldiers acted as observers of Phase 2 as the FCS team demonstrated non-line of site launch system networking, distributed fusion management capabilities, unattended ground sensors, radio systems performance, and the interoperability of these systems with current Army and Marine Corps systems. This phase of the exercise also demonstrated the real-time exchange of video images between an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a monitor in the cockpit of an AH-64D Apache helicopter.
The third and final demonstration phase was conducted in January and February 2007 at the White Sands Missile Range and at Fort Bliss. Thirty-six soldiers participated in the live-fire exercise. It was the first time warfighters used FCS systems in a live environment with an FCS computer-training support system. The exercise at Fort Bliss’s Oro Grande Range tested such systems as unmanned urban and tactical unattended ground sensors that can, for example, detect objects and intruders entering a building occupied by U.S. troops. The exercise tested unmanned vehicles designed to clear roads and buildings and robotics that can clear buildings without sending soldiers inside. Unattended ground sensors are part of the Army’s first Spin Out in 2008 of advanced FCS technology. Also included in the first Spin Out and tested on February 1 were an early version of the FCS network and the non-line of sight launch system, which together will give U.S. forces greater long-range precision attack capability with a much smaller footprint.
The feedback from the soldier participants in the February 1 prototype demonstration was overwhelmingly positive. They felt that the technology would make warfighters more effective and that it would in turn save many lives. The FCS management team will use the soldiers' comments to validate what works and to learn what must be improved as Future Combat Systems moves forward with its effort of transformation.
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