Combat Vehicle Developments to Propel Army of 2030 – and Beyond

Combat Vehicle Developments to Propel Army of 2030 – and Beyond by Dan Heaton Protection from above, an adaptabili ty for future technology and a reduced logistical footprint are among the transformational capabilities of the new armored vehicles in development for the Army’s divisions and armored brigade combat teams (ABCTs). As the Army moves toward 2030, its 16 ABCTs (11 in the active-duty force and five in the National Guard) are un dergoing a once-in-a generation trans formation to bring new capabilities to leaders and Soldiers. The ABCTs of 2030 require new and different capa bilities to defeat potential adversaries on future battlefields that will use ad vanced equipment and cutting-edge technologies in the 21st Century. To counter these future threats from peer adversaries, the Army Future Command’s Next-Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team (NGCV CFT) works with both internal and ex ternal partners to develop faster, more survivable and more capable armored vehicles, able to deliver increased fire power to the battlefield. Transforming the capabilities of ABCT is a team sport. The next generation of combat vehicles is being developed with a partnership that stretches across the Army and beyond:

• The Maneuver Center of Excellence is the Army’s centralized planner, manager and integrator for capability development and user activities for Army combat formations.

• NGCV CFT is responsible for developing sound requirements for the highest-priority capabilities, supported by Soldier feedback, to close capability gaps.

• The Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate is responsible for determining and developing future-force capabilities for the infantry and armored force of tomorrow and for conducting capability-based doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership development, p e r s o n n e l , f a c i l i t i e s a n d policies assessments, experiments and integration.

• The Ground-Combat Systems Center conducts the foundational research and prototyping required for potential new systems.

• Program Executive Office-Ground Combat Systems acquires the vehicles. Together, this team – with support from industry and academia – are moving deliberately to deliver cutting-edge capabilities to Soldiers. To achieve maximum effect, armored and combat vehicles must be able to operate in a formation capable of working with our sister services, allies and partners. Individual platforms must have robust, interoperable com munications data links both to other platforms in the formation and to higher-echelon commanders. Realtime communications will allow divi sion-level-and-above leaders to see and understand the big picture and rapidly allocate and employ assets to attack an enemy across all domains, while commanders at the brigade lev el and below focus on the close fight. Developments underway now in the Army’s next generation of combat ve hicles will ensure our formations re tain overmatch into 2030 and beyond. The U.S. Army is now delivering its first new tracked armored vehicles in 40 years. In January 2023, the first Ar mored Multi-Purpose Vehicles (AMPVs) will arrive at 1st ABCT, 3rd In fantry Division, at Fort Stewart, GA, in what will be the first of a steady stream of AMPV deliveries to ABCTs. Development of Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicles (OMFVs) continues to proceed, with manufacture of pro totype vehicles starting in 2023. Ex perimentation on concepts that will inform future decisions on upgrades to the Abrams tank will continue in 2023, supporting development efforts that could eventually lead to the Next-Generation Main Battle Tank (NGMBT). While AMPV, OMFV and tank research are all at different stages of develop ment, they share key commonalities: digital design and open systems archi tectures. OMFV and future tank devel opments will feature the Ground-Com bat Systems’ Common Infrastructure Architecture (GCIA), which is also known as Modular Open-System Ar chitecture (MOSA). The GCIA approach is central to cur rent OMFV design efforts. Simply put, GCIA allows the Army to incorporate today’s technology into a vehicle, while its operating system is intention ally designed in such a way that future technology can still be easily incorpo rated. GCIA also allows future technol ogy from Company X to be incorporat ed into a vehicle designed by Company Y because of the “open” nature of the underlying system. AMPV is being fielded with a MOSA-compliant sys tem. “On OMFV, our industry partners are looking at different armor-package considerations, different track config urations, what systems will we be us ing for targeting and active protection systems [APSs],” said BG Geoffrey A. Norman, director of NGCV CFT. “The science is continuing on all these fronts, and we don’t know for certain which technologies will be ready next. But we will have the architecture in place where we can add those tech nologies when they have reached the appropriate level of maturity.” While science and technology devel opments are happening in industry and in government labs and test cen ters, the Army is also closely watching how armored vehicles are being em ployed in the most recent Russian in vasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as how they were used in the Nagorno-Karabah conflict of 2020. In both of those conflicts, losses of tanks and other armored vehicles largely appear to stem from lack of combined-arms tactics, compromised logistics, de layed and neglected maintenance,

Fall 2022 poor training and even morale issues. Where armor has been properly main tained and employed as part of a mo bile combined-arms operation, tanks and other combat vehicles proved their operational value on the battle field. In a change from 20th Century vehicle-design philosophies, vulnerabilities from unmanned aerial systems or more conventional weapon systems require new approaches. Future U.S. vehicles are therefore being devel oped with 360-degree defense sys tems as part of the original design. Logistics-chain issues are being ad dressed through several avenues. AMPV was designed on a significantly upgraded chassis of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV), which provides a level of mechanical commonality to vehicles already existing in the formation. Per haps most exciting is the development of efficient and reliable hybrid diesel-electric engines to power future vehicles. OMFV is being designed with a requirement that under most tacti cal-use cases, it would need to be re fueled no more than once per day. Further, OMFV will be able to operate on silent watch and to move for short distances in a silent mode. Increasing ly, hybrid engines are viewed as the means to achieve these increased re liability and reduced logistics de mands. This will not only significantly decrease the logistical tail needed to support the ABCT but will greatly add to the agility and adaptability OMFV will bring to the armored division.

AMPV

“Tough beats fancy,” BG Norman said. “And AMPV is not fancy. It is simply a tough vehicle that is going to bring a level of reliability and durability that our modern formations demand.” AMPV will replace the aging M113 family of vehicles, which first entered active service in 1959. The Army is forecast to eventually purchase more than 2,800 AMPVs. AMPV will be de livered in five variants: general pur pose, mortar carrier, medical evacua tion, medical treatment and mission-command vehicles. AMPV will fulfill the Army’s strategy requirements of protection, mobility, reliability and in teroperability. Perhaps the most significant attribute that AMPV brings to the fight is its ability to keep pace with the Abrams and Bradley, allowing the formation to maneuver more quickly and operate in a more dispersed manner.

OMFV

To defeat our adversaries on the mod ern battlefield, the Army of 2030 re quires new, advanced combat plat forms that are not merely updates of vehicles designed in the 1970s. While OMFV will replace the BFV in the ABCT, the OMFV is not merely an up dated Bradley. Rather, OMFV will be a transformational infantry fighting ve hicle, incorporating new technologies Figure 1. The AMPV has undergone extensive testing at all three of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground’s natural environ ment test centers: Yuma Test Center outside Yuma, AZ; Cold Regions Test Center at Fort Greely, AK; and most recently at Tropic Regions Test Center in the jungle of Panama. (U.S. Army photo)

Fall 2022 and all the Army has learned about mechanized-infantry effectiveness since the Bradley was first fielded in 1981. Put simply, the OMFV will be more le thal and more survivable, and will fea ture capabilities that were barely imagined during the Cold War-era de sign of its predecessor. The OMFV development process re cently concluded a digital design phase in which five companies created virtual prototypes of what the Army’s next infantry fighting vehicle might look like. A competition in which up to three companies will be selected to create actual prototypes is now under way, with industry partners to be se lected in April 2023. To meet silent-watch and fuel-performance require ments in the digital prototype phase, all five of the Army’s industry partners proposed the use of a hybrid-electric engine, and some proposed using composite rubber tracks rather than traditional steel track. While it remains to be seen if a hybrid-electric engine or new track systems will remain in the final proposal, these are just two examples of the way emerging technologies could trans form how mechanized infantry con tributes to combined-arms operations. OMFV will integrate APS from the be ginning of development. These APS capabilities, coupled with improve ments in passive armor, will allow OMFV to better protect against a range of incoming projectiles. Ad vancements in network data links will facilitate the sharing of targeting infor mation with unit commanders, allow ing better, faster decisions to be made assigning the best shooter to the right target. GCIA allows the Army to cost effectively update or exchange APS and other capabilities as technologies improve and threat capabilities evolve.

NGMBT

While work continues on upgrades to the Abrams tank, Army senior leaders challenged the Army and industry to explore the potential capabilities and technologies for a possible future NGMBT. Research on NGMBT charac teristics of need is in the early stages, focused on the observations from re cent conflicts abroad and strategic guidance from Army senior leaders, as well as experiments and touchpoints with Soldiers and units from the oper ating force. This effort is also leveraging lessons-learned from the development of OMFV and of another platform, mo bile protected firepower, which is slat ed for delivery to infantry BCTs start ing in 2025. These lessons are inform ing the NGMBT experimentation and analysis. Figure 2. A multi-month evaluation at U.S. Army Cold Regions Test Center helped ensure the Army’s latest armored personnel carrier works even in the world’s coldest environments. The AMPV boasts the same powertrain and suspension system as the BFV and M109A7 self-propelled howitzer, which eases maintenance and logistics challenges for all three vehicles in the field. (U.S. Army photo by Sebastian Saarloos) While the requirements for an NGMBT are early in the development phase, several characteristics rise in impor tance. NGMBT must reduce the over all weight of the vehicle. A lighter ve hicle creates operational and strategic advantages for the Army and the Joint force. NGMBT will also:

• Provide improved survivability and force protection;

• Allow increased mobility and improved transportability compared to the Abrams;

• Increase lethality through next-generation fire control and improved accuracy;

• Reduce logistical impact to the ABCT and increase operational range and endurance; and

• Provide growth margins for future capabilities. Conclusion As each platform is delivered, it is im portant to note that the Army is taking a holistic approach to transforming our units. Integral to the development of new armored vehicles is a focus on how sustainment looks in the future. As the Army moves toward more hy brid-electric vehicles, batteries grow in importance and development of these capabilities continue alongside the development of the vehicles them selves. Lighter vehicles increase operational mobility over varying road networks and bridges. Vehicles designed to be more climate-resistant can operate in the extreme temperatures – hot or cold – in which they may be required to perform. Across all fronts, advance ments are being made. The work to transform the capabilities of the Army’s ABCTs continues as a team effort. NGCV CFT will focus on experimentation and requirements development to deliver Soldiers and leaders combat vehicles that can see more and sense farther than our ad versaries; maintain low signatures and footprints while remaining highly le thal; allow our forces to converge at the time and place of our choosing to present our adversaries multiple di lemmas; and achieve new levels of protection, reliability and connectivity.

Fall 2022 Dan Heaton is director of communica tions for NGCV CFT, based at Detroit Arsenal, MI. Mr. Heaton – a U.S. Navy veteran – is also serving as a senior master sergeant public-affairs special ist in 127th Wing, Michigan Air Nation al Guard. Previous jobs include public-information officer, Macomb County, MI; manager, media relations, Ma comb Community College, MI; and newspaper reporter in Michigan and Illinois. Mr. Heaton holds a master’s of arts degree in marketing from Walsh College, a master’s of science degree in management, also from Walsh Col lege, and a bachelor’s of arts degree in human resource management from Spring Arbor University. ABCT – armored brigade combat team AMPV – Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle APS – active protection system BFV – Bradley Fighting Vehicle GCIA – G(round Combat Systems) Common Infrastructure Architecture MOSA – Modular Open-System Architecture NGCV CFT – Next-Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team NGMBT – Next-Generation Main Battle Tank OMFV – Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle Acronym Quick-Scan