Multi-Mission Combat Systems

Slide I - Introduction
It is my privilege to be here this morning to tell you about an exciting new initiative in 
which DARPA and the Army are partnering to explore ways to truly revolutionize our 
ability to seize and control territory – to revolutionize the way we execute future ground 
combat missions.

The title of the effort, which is in its early formative stage, is “Multi Mission Combat 
Systems.”  You may also hear it referred to as “Future Combat Vehicles” or “Future 
Combat Systems.” 

Despite the inconsistency in names for the effort, I am here to assure you that the need for 
such a program and the overarching goals of the effort are clear to both DARPA and the 
Army.  

This project represents one attempt, as Dr. Fernandez explained yesterday, to initiate radical 
innovation with the intent to achieve operational dominance through the partnership of 
DARPA and the Services. 

Today I am going to:
Outline the background that demonstrates the need for the effort, 
Describe generically what we mean by multi-mission combat system concept, 
And tell you about how we plan to attack the problem.

I also want to ask you to start thinking of good ideas and concepts that you might contribute 
to a future program in this area.

Slide 2.  
Let me set the stage with a little background in the next few charts.

What’s wrong with the way we do ground combat today?  After all, we are the undisputed 
leaders in this area, as proven by Desert Storm.  There is no doubt that we have the best 
troops and the most powerful, effective equipment available in the world.  However, the 
problem is partially captured in the statistics shown on this slide.  When we go to war on 
the ground, we have to take a lot of people and material with us.  We have to keep those 
forces supplied with fuel, water, food, and other supplies – presenting us with a huge, costly 
logistical challenge.

Our ground combat vehicles are heavy and hard to transport.  And since we have lost the 
luxury of being forward based in many parts of the world, we have a real problem getting 
the force to the fight.

Slide 3.  
Take the recent situation in Kosovo.  Shown here are some of the reported estimates of the 
number of troops it would take to accomplish various missions there.

If we were to decide that we wanted to deploy ground troops, we could get the personnel 
there relatively quickly.  In Desert Storm, we got 240,000 troops in place in a month.  The 
problem is getting the equipment and supplies necessary to fight in place.  It takes many 
weeks or months to deploy.

As The Admiral said yesterday, we need to be able to deploy in days.  At present, that 
means we have to rely on air transport.  But today’s heavy, voluminous ground systems – 
for example tanks and Bradleys and infantry vehicles – and their support equipment are too 
big to fit in the available aircraft.

Slide 4.  
We know that we will have to rely heavily on C-130 type aircraft which have weight 
limitations of well under 40 tons and even more restrictive height and width restrictions.  
Even many of the advanced concepts for Future Combat System (FCS), that have been 
extensively worked by the Army in support of Army After Next with the idea of doing the 
“tank mission”, can’t be designed to fit.  

Slide 5.
For combat vehicles today, the most critical element driving the weight and size of any 
vehicle is accommodation of people.  The second and third most important factors are the 
weapon systems and the drive train.  

Recently we have come to understand that, if we start with requirements for how many 
people it takes to do a mission and what the level of lethality and survivability must be 
associated with the equipment, we have an over-constrained problem that defies solution.   

Slide 6.  
The Army After Next initiative has made some great strides at looking at how we will have 
to fight in the future.  But many of the vehicle concepts developed for AAN have presented 
a problem of having to give up survivability for mobility and transportability.

Slide 7.
We accept that it is essential to get some capable offensive early entry forces in within days 
to prevent the enemy from having the time to “set” and gain the early advantage on us.  But, 
our current systems and structure do not allow us to do so.  

The point that I hope I have made with this background part of the presentation is that, if 
we want to make the radical changes that the Army predicts we will need to meet the future 
threats, we have to address issues like deployability, transportability, sustainability, 
lethality, and survivability of our systems and we have to figure out why we have been 
unable to come up with the solution using the infrastructure and design paradigms that we 
have used successfully in the past.

Slide 8.
Now I want to describe the approach for the new initiative.  Our hypothesis is that we need 
to take a total systems approach to the problem.  Typically when designing new systems, 
the Army works all parts of the problem independently in different centers of expertise then 
integrates them into a platform based on a set of requirements.  This requirements-based, 
platform centric design paradigm has many advantages in terms of optimizing the 
individual aspects of the problem.  For instance, typically to get advanced lethality, we 
move to bigger guns with more propellant or to more powerful missiles.  To get increased 
survivability, we add more armor, depending on mass, to protect the required number of 
people and critical systems.  

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point: that by working the problem in this way, 
we are moving away from the place that we want to go – away from lighter, more 
deployable, more transportable systems.

Slide 9.
Another way of looking at the problem is that current approaches tend to use the “building 
blocks” method where every critical subsystem (like weapons, protection system, or drive 
system) comes as a discrete package that must be integrated into the platform.  The number 
of blocks that can be fit into the platform, and thereby the capability, is severely limited if 
we make weight and volume the platform constraints – as we must if we want 
transportability.  And, if we set capability as our goal, the total package gets too big to be of 
interest.

Slide 10.
So, we believe that we must find some new approach to designing Future Combat Vehicles 
– one that will allow us to identify and exploit those ideas that will result in a convergence 
of all the “ilities”.  At first look, we have identified some interesting technologies and 
concepts that might fit in the area of intersection.

Technologies like robotics, stealth, hybrid-electric power, power sharing and power 
management, active protection, directed energy weapons, and integrated functional 
packaging provide a set of interesting possibilities.

Concepts like manned/unmanned teaming, vehicle reconfigurability and multi-mission 
vehicles, and creating systems of systems that work together to accomplish missions in 
different ways also have potential to make big changes possible.  This will require re-
thinking the tactics and operational aspects at the same time as we are designing the 
equipment. 

We will have to make maximum use of modeling and simulation tools and virtual systems 
combined with hardware demonstrations in order to make this affordable. 

In my opinion, we will have to be very creative and flexible, and we will have to use a 
combination of almost all the good ideas we know about today to achieve our goals.  

Slide 11.
So, here is where we are in the process of getting this new initiative started.

DARPA and the Army have agreed to embark on a Joint Study that has the goals described 
here.

Dr. Allen Adler and I are coordinating this in the Tactical Technology Office.  We have a 
team of senior Army staff from the RDA community and the full support of TRADOC 
leadership. The Army is in the process of identifying funding for a new program in this area 
and, based on the results of this study, DARPA will identify the elements of a potential 
Joint Program.  

We are setting up a Senior Advisory Group for the study to help us refine the issues and 
focus in on the really high-pay off ideas.

Slide 12.
This summer we plan to conduct some study tasks that will lead to a clearer articulation of 
what a Multi-Mission Combat System is.  Right now I can’t tell you what it is.  However, I 
can tell you what it is not.
It is not a new tank, a new infantry vehicle, a new scout vehicle, or a new gun system.  

Slide 13.
I can tell you that we will be looking at all aspects of fighting…

Slide 14.
And we will be drawing heavily on the work that has been and is being conducted in 
DARPA and the Army and other places.  We will be looking for the good ideas and 
concepts that can contribute to the solution from all sectors.  At some point we will be 
coming to you all for input.

Slide 15.
This slide sums up, the concept.

Slide 16.  
This slide is a start at identifying the interesting azimuths that the study might explore.  

Slide 17.
And this graphic really indicates the value of the kind of partnership arrangement that we 
are forging with this initiative.  

DARPA can add the activation energy necessary to enable the Army to reach its goals.  

Slide 18.
This effort is about changing paradigms and challenging traditionally unchallengable issues 
within Army – namely how we design vehicles, how we develop doctrine and how we 
organize to fight ground battles.  

The good news is that there is unprecedented support in the Army Research, Development 
and Acquisition Leadership, in TRADOC, and in DoD for this kind of revolutionary 
change.  The not so good news is that it is going to be a huge challenge – requiring high-
risk technology development, complex integration, and development of new tactics and 
new doctrine.  In partnership, DARPA and the Army believe that we can address all these 
aspects.

We are very excited about the potential for this Multi-Mission Combat System effort to take 
off and to initiate the revolutionary innovation that is desired and needed.

Thank You