Four More Years Of War -- Just For Starters

Four More Years Of War -- Just For Starters

First Posted: 07-30-10 09:30 AM | Updated: 07-30-10 10:33 AM

Dan Froomkin

froomkin@huffingtonpost.com

The ever-accumulating case against the war in Afghanistan was bolstered this week by WikiLeaks's dissemination of over 70,000 previously secret reports documenting in vivid and unvarnished detail the brutality and futility of the American mission there.

But even as the public's patience with the war in Afghanistan is growing shorter, the timeline for an American troop withdrawal appears to be growing longer.

There are increasingly clear signs that President Obama's vow to start withdrawing American troops less than a year from now will be fulfilled through a technicality if at all, and that the real timeline for significant troop withdrawal -- barring a change in course -- now extends at least to 2014, if not far beyond.

One signal was Vice President Joe Biden's offhand remark to ABC News earlier this month that the promised summer withdrawal "could be as few as a couple thousand troops" although "it could be more."

This from the administration's most prominent opponent of escalation, a man who had earlier said you could "bet on" a "whole lot of people moving out" in July 2011.

The uninspiring Senate testimony in mid-July from Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan , also raised red flags. Holbrooke repeatedly ducked questions about what the administration's desired "end state" is, and whether things are going along on schedule. He instead pointed senators toward a list of what he called "benchmarks."

But the document to which Holbrooke referred is in fact full of vague, sometimes entirely unmeasurable "milestones" that carry no deadlines and trigger no consequences.

"All of these benchmarks are designed to pacify onlookers on the Hill, help to justify our presence in the country, and set unrealistic goals that everyone knows are not going to be met," said retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, a respected military strategist and author. "You're never going to achieve them. None of this is aimed at extricating American power and forces from anywhere."

So, asked for an exit strategy, the administration instead offered up guidelines for an endless occupation.

And then last week, in a nearly unnoticed development at an international conference in Kabul, world leaders including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed their "support for the President of Afghanistan's objective that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014."

That's right: The end of 2014.

"I was kind of struck that the 2014 didn't get more critical attention than it did," said Paul R. Pillar, formerly the CIA's top Middle East analysis and now a Georgetown University professor. "The war will have gone on 13 years at that point."

Pillar said he expected a strong public reaction along the lines of "Wait, what does that imply in terms of our troop presence? In terms of how fast or how slowly our withdrawal next year is going to go?" And: "Whoa, you mean it's going to be another four years from now... and even that's not total victory?"

And keep in mind that 2014 is the corrupt, ineffective Afghan President Hamid Karzai's best-case scenario. That's if all goes according to plan. And nothing in Afghanistan ever goes according to plan.

Indeed, the Guardian recently reported that plans made not so long ago to begin handing control of some provinces to Afghan security forces by the end of this year "have been quietly dropped."

The British paper also noted: "Gen. David Petraeus is said to be planning a campaign measured in years, not months."

The uselessness of the so-called "benchmarks" the administration is now citing, in a document entitled Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy, are particularly telling.

Some are specific -- but meaningless in the absence of a target date:

"That means you're going to create a national system in a place that has never been a nation-state?" asked Macgregor, the military strategist. "If you wait for that one, you will be in Afghanistan for about 200 years."

Some are delusional. For instance under the heading of reducing corruption:

Appointment of competent, reform-minded leaders of critical ministries... and also to key provincial and district positions in the South and East.

Macgregor grumbled to the Huffington Post: "If they find them there, they should recruit them and use them here first."

Some are naïve, delusional, unmeasurable and meaningless all at once.

Afghanistan's neighbors begin to shift their policies to reinforce increased cooperation, over time.

Macgregor sees the benchmarks not as reflecting a sincere attempt to describe a way out of Afghanistan . Rather he sees them as a witting or unwitting reflection of the neoconservative desire to keep the American military deployed in that region indefinitely. "They're designed to keep you in Afghanistan , because you're never going to achieve them," he said.

"If you wanted to pick a place that was a nightmare for every conceivable form of nation-building, Afghanistan would be it," Macgregor said. Only the people that live there can fix their problems, he said. "It's not going to happen as a result of military power."

It's worth noting that the benchmarks document itself apparently went through a pretty serious declawing process, sometime between last September, when the Foreign Policy website got hold of an early draft, and January, when the first version of the existing plan was first released.

For instance, gone from the new plan is this commitment:

By March 30, 2010 and on regular intervals thereafter, the interagency will draft an assessment of progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan . As a check and balance on the interagency, a separate assessment will also be produced by a Red Team, led by the National Intelligence Council."

In the earlier draft, but missing from the final version, are actually measurable metrics, such as "percent of population living in districts/areas under insurgent control" and "Afghan Government's institutions at the national, provincial, and local level, including ability to hold credible elections in 2009 and 2010" (already quite definitively resolved to the negative.)

The administration's aversion to real benchmarks is understandable, to a certain extent. So far, all accountability has got them is heartache.

Specifically, in audit report after audit report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Arnold Fields, has exposed major problems not just in accomplishing key goals, but also in the administration's attempts at measuring them.

For instance, the successful development of Afghan security forces is, of course, central to Obama's strategy. But the SIGAR reported last month that the "Capability Milestone" rating system (CM) that has been the Pentagon's primary metric for measuring the development of Aghan forces had overstated their capabilities.

Among other problems the SIGAR found, top-rated Afghan units were not capable of what the Pentagon said they were, and the rating system didn't sufficiently account for such endemic problems as attrition, corruption, poor leadership, drug abuse, and illiteracy.

And then there's the single biggest problem with benchmarks: Their fundamental misuse by this administration, just like the last one. Benchmarks only really mean something if meeting them -- or failing to meet them -- has consequences.

But Obama, just like George W. Bush did with Iraq, refuses to say what message he will take from these assessments. If we meet the benchmarks, does that mean mission accomplished and we can leave? And more realistically, if we fail to meet the benchmarks, does that mean we have to try harder? Or does it mean that we finally acknowledge the futility of the enterprise and withdraw?

Ironically, it was then-senator Obama who, back in 2007, asked then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice the exact questions he won't answer today, namely: What if things don't go according to plan? What if the occupied country's government remains in shambles? What exactly are the benchmarks for success? And what are the consequences if they are not met? Is the United States really willing to walk away? (See my December column, Obama's Questions for Obama.)

But when it comes to the "or else" part of the benchmarks, Obama, just like Bush, is boxed in because he has declared this to be a war that we must win.

Meanwhile, however, Obama remains on the record as saying that his commitment to Afghanistan is not open-ended. "There's gotta be an exit strategy," he told CBS News last April. "There's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift."

But perpetual drift is as good a description of what we're seeing today as any. And the longer the drift continues, the louder the voices of concern and dissent will get.

Already, there are signs that the political dynamic that has fueled our war efforts may be shifting. Since 9/11, continuing the war has generally been seen by politicians as synonymous with supporting the troops and keeping our nation secure. (It's the ultimate victory of the Neocons.) In reality, of course, they are not synonymous at all -- if anything, they are inimical. But with the Republican Party in lockstep behind the war effort, the Democratic leadership -- terrified of appearing weak -- has gone along enthusiastically.

Now, however, there are signs that some Republicans are joining forces with some Democrats in opposing the war.

So far, they are short of critical mass.

In a series of votes in the House on July 1, a measure to provide funds only for a withdrawal won 100 votes. A measure to create a timetable for withdrawal drew 162 votes of support.

And on Tuesday, 102 Democrats joined a dozen Republicans to oppose Obama's war supplemental in its entirety, resulting in a 308-114 vote.

With polls showing a distinct drop in support for the war, and opposition growing in Congress, Obama's options may soon become more limited.

"I think the political pressures back here are going to push the Obama administration into something more rapid than that 2014 implies," said Pillar.

WATCH Obama questions Condoleezza Rice about the Iraq benchmarks in 2003:

Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.

News Alert: Secret Archive Gives Grim View of Afghan War

Hopefully, the revelations from these archives, especially about the inadequacy of the deployed forces, equipment, generalship and RoE in Afghanistan even with the "surge," and the perfidious duplicity of so-called "allies" and "partners" in Kabul and Islamabad, along with the acute lack of progress on most fronts, will make it clear that the US and NATO need to pack up their civilians and conventional forces and withdraw quickly, and totally shift to a punitive policy of seeking out and liquidating international Islamist terrorists and those harboring them inside and outside of the United States. The United States cannot afford to modernize, secularize, liberalize, democratize, or even enduringly stabilize Afghanistan , let alone, the Islamic World even if it was possible to do so and it is not. We should withdraw and let the centuries-old Great Game between India , Russia , and Iran play out without wasting American, British, French and other allied blood and treasure in a pointless military intervention.

A gradual pull-out will only lengthen the agony, increasing the cost in lives and resources without changing the ultimate outcome: persistent civil and cross border conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan . There is no point in delaying the inevitable withdrawal and the equally inevitable de facto division of Afghanistan along ethnic and cultural lines. The same holds true for pulling out of Iraq . Extending the time will not alter the strategic outcome.


Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Sun, July 25, 2010 -- 5:27 PM ET
-----
Secret Archive Gives Grim View of Afghan War

A six-year archive of classified military documents to be
made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level
picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects
more grim than the official portrayal.

Read More:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html?emc=na

Seized sub quantum leap for narcos... and terrorists

Remember that most of the major narco-trafficantes also provide services-for-hire to Islamist extremists. A submarine like this one operated by Latino Drug Traffickers can carry many things including Chemical, Biological and Nuclear materials into American coastal waters along with the Muslim Terrorists to employ them.

The Muslim Terrorists who directly threaten the American people are not in Afghanistan or Iraq . They are operating right now from Central and South America against us, using our open borders and coastal waters to infiltrate into the US . Nothing we are doing in Afghanistan , Iraq , Somalia , Yemen or anywhere else in the Islamic World is securing the American people against the growing nexus of terrorism and criminality in the Caribbean Basin . Thanks, Doug Macgregor


DEA: Seized submarine quantum leap for narcos
FRANK BAJAK
From Associated Press
July 04, 2010 7:14 PM EDT

Flotilla Fallout

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4668157&c=FEA&s=COM

Flotilla Fallout
Damage Done by Israel 's Raid Echoes in Region

By U.S. ARMY COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR (RET.)
Published: 14 June 2010

No one predicted the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico , particularly after the largely accident-free drilling of thousands of off-shore oil wells. Neither could anyone have predicted that Israeli troops would kill Turkish civilians in Israel 's effort to block last week's humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza .
Yet these recent events are creating a proverbial sea change in the Middle East , one that signals the end of Israeli-Turkish security cooperation and friendship, the keystone in the region's American-sponsored security architecture since the end of World War II.

Washington's eyes are now justifiably riveted on Ankara where the sea change is well underway. The attack on the Turkish-flagged ship and the killing of Turkish citizens was an affront to Turkish national pride. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey 's prime minister and a devout Muslim, confronts the situation with the wholehearted support of an enraged Turkish population.

Turkey is the 13th-largest economy in the world. Its military establishment, the largest among European NATO members, is also well-equipped, disciplined and aggressively nationalistic. Turkey , not Iran , is the region's true superpower, a nation-state with the power to create a new Middle East.

The big unknown for Washington is what Erdogan will do next. Will Erdogan direct the Turkish military to escort the next humanitarian flotilla into Gaza ? How will the Turkish generals, who view themselves as the guardians of secularism inside Turkish society, react?

Surely, the Turkish generals who've cooperated closely with the American and Israeli military establishments are frantically searching for a way out of the crisis. Or, perhaps this thinking is wrong; perhaps this crisis has inadvertently forged a bond between Turkey 's Islamist prime minister and Turkey 's secular military leaders?

Terrible Timing

The crisis could not come at a worse time. Washington is betting heavily on the Turks to help stabilize Iraq as U.S. forces withdraw. Erdogan has worked hard to end the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, which has claimed 40,000 lives, even sanctioning the use of the Kurdish language in all Turkish broadcast media and political campaigns.

For Turkey , which tends to view Iraq 's Kurdistan Regional Government as indistinguishable from the violently anti-Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party, better known as the PKK, this development has been nothing short of a miracle.

Once again, events in Gaza may put these arrangements at risk. Turks, secular or Islamist, never had much incentive to allow anti-Turkish Kurds to exploit 3 percent of the world's oil reserves in northern Iraq to bankroll regional aims and terrorism against Turkey.

Ankara and Tehran have reportedly discussed spheres of influence in Iraq when the United States leaves, giving Turkey control of Iraq 's northern (Kurdish) territory, as well as its enormous oil wealth, leaving Iran to control the central and southern Iraq through its Shiite Arab surrogates in Baghdad .

Now, Turkey and Iran may form substantive agreements that are antithetical to Washington 's interests.

Meanwhile, if a confrontation with the Turks over Gaza ensued, Turkish conventional military strength might lead Israel to threaten use of nuclear weapons against Turkey . If NATO, under pressure from Washington , refused to acknowledge Turkey 's protection under Article V of the NATO Charter (NATO's nuclear umbrella), then NATO would certainly dissolve and the Turks would likely turn to Russia , Iran or even China for support.

Ankara also could go nuclear much faster than Tehran , given the assistance of the Pakistani military establishment, the Turkish military's longtime strategic partner.

For the moment, things are unlikely to go this far, but no one in the United States or Israel should miss the long-term strategic impact of the American and Israeli military occupations of Iraq and Palestine . Both created radicalized groups and embittered Muslim populations scarred by the unwanted presence of foreign troops.

Israeli occupation of Lebanon and Palestine enabled Hizbollah and Hamas to emerge as viable political forces, while U.S. military occupation of Iraq expanded Iranian strategic power and influence.

Eventually, the United States will tire of pouring billions into contractors and making payoffs to Arabs and Afghans and withdraw its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan . But the Israelis contend with an insoluble security problem at their very gates. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson's words, in Gaza and in the rest of the Palestinian territories, " Israel has a wolf by the ear, and Israel can neither hold him, nor safely let him go."

Whatever course Israel adopts in the months ahead, it must measure carefully what it might gain from maintaining the blockade by what it might lose, not just in Gaza , but from the Nile to the Black Sea .

---
U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) is a fellow at the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, Washington. His latest of four books is "Warrior's Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting."

Surgin' Safari

F. Scott Fitzgerald discovered long ago that people can be stroked with words. In Washington, DC everyone likes flattery; and when it comes to generals and politicians inside the beltway, a smart journalist lays it on with enthusiasm if he wants the access he needs to write stories that translate into money. As Jeff Huber points out, this sort of behavior has grave consequences for U.S. National Security. In the course of cultivating access, the truth, the very thing the vaunted Third Estate claims to seek is entirely lost.

AntiWar.com
December 29, 2009

Another Surgin’ Safari

by Jeff Huber

Devotees of President Obama’s plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan hope to repeat the "success" of our surge in Iraq. That’s likely to prove easier to accomplish than even the most rabid Afghanistan surge proponent dares to hope.

The Iraq surge was already in motion in January 2007, when Bush and Cheney flipped off the Iraq Study Group and decided to escalate the war with David Petraeus, the "Teflon General," at the helm of the operation. A shameless self-promoter, "King David" created the illusion of a successful surge by lowering violence statistics through his usual method of operation: hand out weapons to the bad guys, bribe the bad guys not to use the weapons, and pretend to be shocked, shocked when the bad guys take the bribes and use the weapons anyway.

Petraeus’ personal stenographer, former journalist Thomas E. Ricks, admits that Petraeus misled Congress and the public into thinking he was trying to end the war when he was in fact laying "the groundwork for a much more prolonged engagement in Iraq."

Three years after the surge began, violence shows no signs of disappearing. Holiday attacks were especially brutal. Mosul Mayor Zuhair Muhsen al-Aaraji escaped an assassination attempt on Christmas Eve. (Mosul is the town Petraeus supposedly "tamed" during his first tour in Iraq. Within weeks after he left and the graft well ran dry, Mosul went up for grabs and has been a trouble spot ever since.)

Also on December 24, as the Shi’ite religious festival of Ashura approached, five attacks killed at least 19 people and wounded over 100. The Iraqi government was quick to blame al-Qaeda in Iraq, but I’ll bet you a shiny new Ohio quarter that the Sunni-based Awakening movement that Petraeus armed and funded had more than a little something to do with the attacks.

On Christmas Day, a roadside bomb killed six Shi’ites during a religious ceremony in Baghdad. In several parts of the country, fights broke out between Christians and Shi’ites over competing religious decorations.

Many Iraqi Christians were afraid to make any public celebration of Christmas. Midnight mass had to be observed in daylight. A bomb exploded near a historic Christian church in Mosul on December 23, killing two people and wounding five. Security around Christian churches was the heaviest it has been since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.

On December 22, a series of coordinated car bombings killed 112 people in Baghdad. This was the third coordinated attack on Baghdad in four months; the bombs struck areas near justice buildings, a Finance Ministry office, and a police checkpoint, symbols of government authority all under tight security after the earlier bomb attacks.

On October 18, a roadside bombing and other attacks killed 10 U.S. troops, making it the deadliest day for American forces in 10 months. (We have, by the way, spent over $14 billion on programs to defeat roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices [IEDs] and have yet to find a solution. The Army’s Joint IED Defeat Organization [JEIDDO] rather symbolizes our entire war on terror: mind-numbing amounts of treasure poured down a rabbit hole to no avail.)

Iraqi security forces have proven unable to provide the security necessary to keep the peace. That should come as no surprise: the man in charge of training them in 2004 and 2005 was Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who, in that capacity, lost track of over 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols that without question found their way into the hands of militia groups. This happened while the staff at the U.S. Army War College was assembling the new field manual on counterinsurgency operations that Petraeus later took credit for writing, a myth that Ricks and other media sycophants helped propagate.

The best summary of the "success" of the Iraq surge came in the form of a July memorandum from Army Col. Timothy Reese, chief of the Baghdad Operations Advisory Team, titled "It’s Time for the U.S. to Declare Victory and Go Home."

Reese describes the "ineffectiveness and corruption" of the Iraqi government as "the stuff of legend." The so-called anti-corruption initiative is merely a campaign tool for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki’s government is taking "no rational steps" to improve the country’s infrastructure or oil exploration. Sunni reconciliation is "at best at a standstill and probably going backwards." The Kurdish situation "continues to fester." Political violence and intimidation is "rampant."

There is no possibility of implanting a "professional military culture" in Iraq’s security forces. Corruption in the officer corps is "widespread." Enlisted men are neglected and mistreated. Cronyism and nepotism are "rampant." Laziness is "endemic." Lack of initiative is "legion." Iraq’s security force’s "near total ineffectiveness" prevents it from becoming self-sustaining.

Gen. Ray "Desert Ox" Odierno, Petraeus’ handpicked successor as overall commander in Iraq who Ricks laughably claims was the real brain behind the Iraq surge, calls Reese’s concerns mere "tactical issues."

Gen. Stan "The Man" McChrystal, whom Petraeus handpicked to command in Af-Pak, has been charged with leading a successful surge in that theater of operations. Given the corruption that exists in the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the incompetence and corruption in their militaries, and the seemingly uncontrollable levels of violence in both countries, I’d say McChrystal is well on his way to surpassing the accomplishments of Petraeus and Odierno by a wide margin.

In fact, I see no reason why President Barack Obama shouldn’t fly aboard an aircraft carrier tomorrow and declare "mission accomplished" in Af-Pak.

It Won’t Work

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/obamas-surge-strategy-in-afghanistan/

It Won’t Work

Douglas Macgregor is a retired Army colonel. He is author of “Warrior’s Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting.”

***************

President Obama may or may not realize that Generals Petraeus and McChrystal cannot fix Afghanistan. They cannot stabilize or control it. They cannot put a dent in the heroin trade, because we have nothing with which to replace it.

Adding more American troops to the Afghan morass merely diverts attention from the 120,000 U.S. troops languishing in Iraq.

Nor can the generals prevent Pakistan from moving ever closer to its nuclear showdown with India. What Petraeus and McChrystal can do is further entangle the United States, its resources and its forces in an unending war inside the ungovernable wasteland that lies between Iran and India.

For the political forces inside the Beltway desperate to keep the war going, adding 30,000 more American troops –- all we can realistically come up with at this point –- to the Afghan morass may be just enough to divert attention from the 120,000 United States troops still languishing in Iraq at the cost of billions we don’t have each month.

Mr. Obama must also know that widening the war inside Afghanistan to fight millions of Pashtun tribesmen is the equivalent of ending world hunger and poverty. It won’t work.

But it will help transform the Taliban’s fight with President Hamid Karzai’s corrupt narco-state into a Pashtun war of liberation against the unwanted American military presence that supports Mr. Karzai.

Still, pressing economic conditions at home combined with the realization that whenever the last American leaves Afghanistan it will look remarkably similar to the way it looked before our arrival may ultimately change Mr. Obama’s strategic calculus. However, until then, he will look a lot more like Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, presidents who capitulated to the fear of seeming weak. Fortunately for Mr. Obama, his course in Afghanistan is not irreversible. Roughly 30,000 to 35,000 troops is not 300,000.

U.S. Army Drafts Some Specs for New Vehicles

See the article below.



Funny, but General Vane argued just months ago how the MGV was definitely the answer to the 'lessons learned in Afghanistan' requirement (see his quote below in last February's Defense News). Now it's the son-of-FCS. Setting aside the inaccuracy of his claims about American armor and its value in AFPAK, it is both comical and sad to see how Chameleon-like this general is. There is obviously not the slightest bit of actual conviction behind his words, only whatever script he's handed. Whenever the wind changes direction so do the generals and that’s the real problem from acquisition to AFPAK. Doug

Michael A. Vane from February 2009 in Defense News: "Q. How is the Army adapting to the challenges of Afghanistan? A. One of the things that is not talked about very much is that we need to be an expeditionary force. When you think about going into Afghanistan with small units separated from their higher headquarters over a country much larger than Iraq, you ask how are you going to bring the network into small units? How are you going to get coms into small units? What the MGV [Manned-Ground Vehicle] brings is the network embedded in the platform. Instead of having to bring a whole bunch of stuff with you when you go to Afghanistan or someplace else, now you have the network embedded into the platforms, so you are bringing the infrastructure with you. Now, you can share a common picture from enclave to enclave. If you get away from the forward operating base in some of your heavier vehicles in Afghanistan, you are going to have a hard time operating. You will find that with MRAPs [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles]. MGV brings you that tractability. The MGV is a lighter vehicle that can operate off-road. Right now, tanks, Bradleys and Paladins can't get there."

full article: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3958918



Defense News
August 10, 2009

U.S. Army Drafts Some Specs for New Vehicles

By KRIS OSBORN

The U.S. Army’s next armored vehicles may have V-hulls and tracks, and should definitely be better protected than the canceled Future Combat Systems (FCS) vehicles, according to a draft paper that will shape the formal requirements for the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV).

The service plans to buy hundreds of GCVs over the next 10 to 20 years for use throughout the force. The first models are slated to be ready within five to seven years.

The paper, which details lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, codifies the decade long shift away from a vehicle mix focused on all-out war, said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, part of Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va. “We need to look closer at the lessons of close-quarter combat and IEDs — the ability to attack our vehicles horizontally and from the top,” Vane said. Unlike the FCS vehicles, the new GCVs will likely not share a common chassis.

“There is a set of attributes that we want the ground combat vehicles to have,” Vane said. “Depending on the role or function, it may have a greater set or lesser set of that attribute. Rather than [sharing the] same chassis, they may need different levels of force protection lethality; some may need a different set of sensors.” The paper is the work of Fort Monroe-based Task Force 120, which was established to draft new vehicle requirements after FCS was canceled earlier this year. The group drew on input from soldiers, Marines, program engineers and key allies such as Britain, Germany and other NATO countries.

It will be presented to Gen. George Casey, the U.S. Army chief of staff, the week of August 10, along with related papers.

The requirements are slated to be finished by September 7, and then to go for approval to Army and Pentagon decision-makers before Army developers begin sketching vehicle designs. The papers indicate that the new vehicles will likely:

■ Be heavier than the 27-ton FCS Manned Ground Vehicles, with more traditional armor.

■ Not have a common chassis.

■ Be built to carry more nonlethal weapons.

■ Accept new networking gear and armor as it arrives.

The GCV might have a V-shaped hull, even if it rolls on tracks.

“We have to be concerned about deployability, transportability and reliability. All of those will become important factors in determining whether they should be a V-shaped vehicle,” Vane said. “V-shaped hulls and flat-bottom hulls can achieve the level of protection desired, but there are a lot of other variables such as the weight of the vehicle, the wheel wells and final drives in the case of a tracked vehicle.”

Heavy Weapons

Army officials also are thinking about putting on the GCVs offensive weapons that once would have been reserved for heavier vehicles. Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs) and more mobile 12-ton vehicles have created new possibilities, and one of the canceled 20-ton FCS vehicles was to carry a 120mm gun of the sort carried only on 50-ton Abrams tanks.

“We’ve seen some tremendous advances ... wheeled vehicles that can be more mobile than they were five or six years ago with a lot of weight,” Vane said.

The Army may configure more MRAPs as ambulances and command-and-control vehicles, allowing commanders to tailor forces to specific missions, Vane said.

One analyst said the Army is working hard to keep the money once slated for FCS secure for the new program. It totals $100 million for 2010, as a starting point.

“A lot of that shows after what they went through with FCS, they are open to anything right now,” said Dean Lockwood, a policy analyst with Forecast International, a Connecticut-based think tank. “They don’t want to make the same mistakes they made with FCS. They will do this incrementally and move through the next generation one thing at a time, because trying to do it all or nothing at once fell flat on its face.

“They will try to phase in new technologies as they become available,” he said. “That way, they are not overshooting in terms of technologies and budgets.” Lockwood said the Army may seek to emulate the rapid development approach of the MRAP. “They may be thinking in terms of a quick turnaround program.” he said. “They went from proposal to con tract in a matter of weeks - — rather than years, the way it used to be.”