The document summarizes analyses of the Army's Interim Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) and future combat systems program. It finds that the IBCT lacks key capabilities like organic aviation, effective firepower, and the ability to operate autonomously in a joint task force. Analysis by TRADOC also found the IBCT vulnerable to enemy fires and unable to go "head-to-head" with enemy armor. The document argues the programs are focusing on technology instead of new operational concepts and joint integration, and that the IBCT is unsuited for combat operations.

1. The real story on the ARMY’S
wheeled IBCT and FCS?
x 3494
119 1998 409 51 273 118 382
HHC (666X3)
BSB
41/6/72 6/0/45 28/2/243 6/0/112 37/9/336
39/1/369
73 HQ &Dist
CO
HHC
4/2/67 OOO
Bde Spt
CO
SUPPORT
71
MI OOO Bde Spt
Med CO
6/6/59
2 X 120mm
MGS
4X120mm
MET
2X81mm
Current Brigade Combat Team Design: 3,494 Troops.
1

2. The purpose of this
briefing is to establish
two things:
First, an accurate
picture of the Army’s
proposed interim
brigade combat team;
(IBCT) and,
Second, an accurate
assessment of Army’s
proposal to spend
nearly $70 billion
dollars on a future
combat system (FCS).
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3. What is real and what is not real about the IBCT!
•No New Joint Operational Architecture:
PROBLEM: IBCT cannot operate as an autonomous force under the Joint Task
Force Commander! The reinforced brigade requires the deployment of a division
commander and his 500-man headquarters when deployed to a regional CINC.
•No New Communications Technology:
PROBLEM: Communications in the brigade are single service (SINCGARS &
EPLSRS). No new near-term digital radios or Joint C4ISR in the IBCT.
Upgrades to this EPLRS will not achieve near-real time picture of Army Forces in
Joint Common Operational Picture! The IBCT also lacks platform digitization
and an operational architecture that integrates information to achieve a coherent
and relevant picture of the Joint battlespace. Perfect “situational awareness” is a
myth.
•No Organic Army Aviation:
PROBLEM: Without organic aviation, the BCT cannot integrate additional
Aviation assets and it cannot integrate USAF and Naval airpower, let alone
manage air 3D battlespace much less maneuver through it. The IBCT is too weak
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to extend its reach over the 2D battlespace routinely controlled by an Army

4. Firepower is Low-tech: IBCT artillery is towed 155mm.
PROBLEM: Towed artillery is a dinosaur. Poor survivability, no counter-
battery capability and decreased rates of precision fire. Furthermore, this
towed unit requires more personnel and far more logistics than self-
propelled artillery.
Wheeled Armor Chassis with Mobile Gun is not a combat system!
PROBLEM: Mobile Gun (105mm) doesn’t fire full-power 105mm rounds
and will not shoot effectively on-the-move. Without a vehicle that can fire
and move cross-country like a modern direct-fire tracked tank, entire
formation is at severe risk! [Lesson from wheeled, tankless 9 th HTTB
Division in ‘80s] Simply put, this force has no fire and maneuver
capability to gain a positional advantage over an adversary in a close
(under 5 km) fight.
No New Tactics or Organization: IBCT Tactics are unsound. PROBLEM:
Organization: Same old reinforced brigade. Tactics: On the one hand,
avoid contact with the enemy - not an option. On the other, air-filled,
rubber-tired wheeled armored cars designed to support dismounted
infantry in the attack cannot traverse terrain to support-by-fire nor avoid
road ambushes [fate of Group Mobile 100]. These tactics were tried and
abandoned in Afghanistan after Russians sustained heavy casualties
against the low-tech Afghans operating on foot on commanding high
ground, with heavy machine guns, RPGs.
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Army Personnel System Unchanged: Temporary Stability is Artificial.

5. What about IBCT equipment?
•LAV-III/IAV lacks the hull and
suspension strength to carry the
additional armor needed to meet
the Army’s requirement to
protect against RPG-7 threats.
Rubber tires not protected at all.
•LAV-III/IAV with add-on armor
weighs 43,000 lbs, results in
significantly lower reliability,
acceleration and nil cross-country
Old Organization, Old mobility = too heavy for C-130s
and only two can fly in a C-17--
Thinking, No 2D/3D the same number of more capable
Bradley Fighting Vehicles that
Maneuver or Jointness can fly in a C-17
destine the IBCT to a •The LAV-III/IAV is not designed
to carry a 105mm gun and cannot
“Low-Tech Grave” by provide a stabilized platform that
RPGs and small-arms allows the system to fire-on the-
move. 5
fire!

6. Is no one scratching his head at this
wheeled armored car nonsense?
•The Army says their vehicles need less protection because
Army leaders will know everything about the battlespace and
thus, the risk of being discovered or attacked is low. Further,
Army says IBCT will avoid contact with the enemy! Does the
enemy know this? Somalia taught a different lesson? Perfect
situational awareness will never exist!
•Transition from peacekeeping to warfighting can be swift
and sudden. USAF could not effectively target the 50,000
heavily armed Yugoslav troops in Kosovo if they attacked
Macedonia in the extreme weather conditions of April 1999.
•When it became clear that an attack by the Yugoslav Army in
April 1999 under the cover of bad weather threatened to
quickly destroy NATO ground forces in Macedonia because
they were composed of light infantry, rubber-tire wheeled
armor and light helicopters for “peacekeeping only,” NATO
Nations quickly sent in heavy tracked armored fighting
vehicle ground forces. An attack by the VJ under the cover of
bad weather in March or April 1999 would have transformed
KFOR into a large POW camp!
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7. What Do TRADOC Analysts Say About the
Current Medium Force Initiative?
Mr. Ronald G. Magee from U.S. Army TRADOC Analysis
Command delivered the following remarks to the Military
Operational Research Society under the title: “Transforming the
Army: Medium Brigade Analysis”. These remarks were based on
both analysis and simulation of the interim brigade combat team
concept.
TRADOC's analysis of the performance of an Army medium
force brigade in both a major theater war (MTW) and smaller-scale
contingency (SSC) revealed a number of limitations. The briefer
first described what such a force might look like*a brigade
consisting of between 2-4 battalions comprised almost entirely of
light wheeled armored vehicle variants. A HIMARS 227mm
multiple rocket launcher was also included for added fire support
even though it is not part of the current brigade combat team
organization. 7

8. Key findings. IBCT cannot go head-to-head with any
enemy force that contains armor. It will need to rely on an
aggressive reconnaissance and surveillance capability,
constant movement, and a willingness to bypass
hardened or armored enemy forces to avoid its own
destruction. This will place significant burden on follow-
on heavy forces found that themop-upforce in thin armored
Fires. TRADOC in terms of medium operations.
bodies rolling on rubber tires was extremely vulnerable to enemy
artillery. To survive, the medium force will rely heavily on joint
close air support and artillery support (“bombardment”) before
risking physical occupation of enemy held terrain. Force cannot
fire & maneuver, only bombard and hope to occupy.
Sustainment. TRADOC found that the medium force used a
tremendous amount of firepower particularly counter-battery fire
to keep enemy fires away from its vulnerable vehicles. Such pre-
emptive bombardment will kill friendly civilians and not be
politically acceptable. This led to additional sustainment
problems, which TRADOC is still addressing. The current concept
of three-days worth of supply is the self-professed weak leg of the
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concept and makes the medium force highly dependent on joint

9. Bottomline: LAV-III/IAV armored car IBCTs Very
Vulnerable and Little Value Added for the Dollars
Invested!
Force Effectiveness. The introduction of medium-sized armored
car brigades into a conflict involving more than peace enforcement
resulted in reduced overall force effectiveness as other units were
forced to shoulder a much heavier burden than otherwise would be
the case.
•In short, the medium wheeled force suffered heavy losses when
faced with an unavoidable 2D close fight with a tracked
mechanized force. When aviation or artillery support was
provided, the brigade's performance improved, but this required
reinforcement from a division that was not deployed.
•TRADOC anticipates that attaining future MTW mission
objectives with the use of medium wheeled forces will take
longer and that heavier forces will have to compensate for the
lack of combat capability.
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10. During the PBS Frontline program, “Future Warfare”, MG
Dubik, CDR of the first IBCT, was asked if the new wheeled
brigades were designed for Peacekeeping? Below are his
answers:
What do you say to the critic who says what you're doing here is just
building a peacekeeping force?
“I say to him, Come out and watch that training, watch us fight. Watch us go into
the urban combat. Bullets fly within five feet of one another as you're going into a
city…. Come and watch us do combined-arms fighting with mortars and field
artillery, and then tell me that I'm not doing combat."
This sounds good on the surface, mixing just arty and mortars with
motorized infantry does not make a complete combined-arms team. While
watching the show it was obvious that the Soldiers were preparing for
crowd control and civil disorder in peacekeeping ops and wore the
lightest gear imaginable.
How much did the transformation draw from the lessons learned with
Task Force Hawk in Kosovo?
"Task Force Hawk was one of the influences. If you look at the variety of
operations that we conducted since the end of the Cold War--Panama, Somalia,
Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo--each one has some very similar characteristics."
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Most of them have "similar characteristics" alright. With the exception of
Panama they were all peacekeeping ops. The half-truths abound!

11. Replacing proven Warfighting Equipment with
Medium-weight but lightly Armored Cars to
mouse-click firepower does not equal
TRANSFORMATION!
• "The Army will focus on science and technology efforts until it
becomes possible to develop systems that will give desired
characteristics to the force." Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki
House National Security Committee, Feb. 10, 2000.
• In response to this approach, DARPA Director Frank Fernandez told
top Army officials that the [FCS] program will be hard-pressed to meet
its deadlines, including whether his agency and the Army will be ready
to build the first prototypes in 2006.
BUT REAL TRANSFORMATION involves new joint
operational concepts for decisive fire &
maneuver, cultural reform, reorganization and
change to fully exploit existing and new
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technology. These are absent from the Army’s

12. This is what a DARPA Scientist Said about FCS!
•“FCS is attempting to accomplish, in the complex,
dirty, land warfare environment, what the aviation
and naval components have yet to accomplish in the
comparatively simple air or maritime
environments. Networked forces of manned and
unmanned platforms, sharing data and targets, and
meshing fires and movements, is still proving
challenging for the surface Navy (and the
JTAMDO/BMDO world), extremely difficult for the
submariners, and not even seriously attempted by
the Air Force”.
•“Given the Army's limited budgetary and
technological resources, the Army may have bitten
off more than it can chew with their dreams for the
objective BCTs (the interim force is extremely
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13. Current IBCT Design: It is not 3D rapidly
air-transportable, not Joint, It is Not New
and It is not Designed to Fight!
• The nation should not fund organizations that cannot
fight! The promise that future wheeled armed cars with
computers that do not exist will do the job of ground
maneuver some day by mouse-clicking firepower is not a
plan, it is a false hope!
• The argument that the IBCTs forming at Fort Lewis will
be used exclusively for peace support operations or small
scale conflict is not valid. In crisis, the NCA will deploy
what it must to win!--ready or not---casualties or not.
• There is no reason to field a formation that cannot
maneuver or work directly for a JTF Commander. The
notion that a division headquarters should be deployed to
interface with a JTF CDR reveals the real agenda - no
change to Army structures…but can launch expensive
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munitions to grab media attention and insure budget share !

14. Is no one scratching his head at this
nonsense?
• There is no reason why a robust, warfighting fire and
maneuver capable force cannot be developed using
existing M113A3 Gavin-type tracked armored vehicles
for projection with USAF strategic airlift. The
technology exists. The IBCT based on the too heavy
for C-130 transport LAV-III/IAV armored car is not
the force America needs!
•Replacing existing, proven combat equipment with
wheeled armed cars is not TRANSFORMATION!
• TRANSFORMATION involves new joint operational
fire & maneuver concepts, reform, reorganization and
change to exploit new capabilities. Before more money
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is wasted, the approach must change!