I spent the bulk of my career working at a defense contractor which specialized in automated weapon systems (Northern Ordnance, which was bought by FMC, which became United Defense, which was bought out by BAE). We had been developing automated missile launchers and gun systems for the US Navy for decades – even earning multiple “Excellence” awards. We were pretty good at it.
In the 1980s, we started suggesting to the Army that we could do the same thing for their weapons that we had done for the Navy’s. In 1990 the green machine told us to back up our bluster, and awarded us a contract to demonstrate the feasibility of a fully automated, self-propelled, 155mm howitzer – called the Advanced Field Artillery System (AFAS).
AFAS was to be able to
- Fire a 100 lb. projectile up to 40 kilometers downrange,
- Sustain a firing rate of 10 rounds per minute,
- Be capable of a 6 round “time on target” mission (6 rounds from the same gun hitting the target simultaneously),
- Be fully automatic,
- Have a crew of 4 soldiers (which was more than needed), and
- Incorporate a liquid propellant (LP) cannon which the Army would provide.
This thing would have been lethal.
Our job was to design the chassis, autoloader, magazines, fire control, soldier interface, and integrate all the pieces – including the stuff being provided by the Army.
Our kickoff meeting was our first exposure to Army procurement efficiency. We had 50 engineers assigned to design the demonstrator, and the Army had 50 engineers assigned to do oversight. It seems the Army’s approach to making sure no mistakes are made is to assign one cop to every motorist. It also has the effect of doubling the time to build anything.
After kickoff, the first analysis we did was of the LP cannon. We invited our “helpful oversight” guys to a meeting and shared our analysis, which concluded that liquid gun propellant was not ready for prime time. The gun which the Army was going to provide used nearly pure hydrogen peroxide, a chemical which tends to explode and catch fire when exposed to dirt – a substance commonly found on battlefields.
We warned that LP howitzers would likely spend more time energetically dismantling themselves than causing any serious inconvenience to the enemy. We suggested modular solid propellant instead, but the Army declined – because “LP is wicked cool!” We dutifully answered, “Sir, yes sir” and went back to work.
At the end of our four-year contract, our demonstrator was delivered on time, and within budget. The howitzer was tested in the heat, cold, and sand to prove that an automatic howitzer was feasible. It did everything it was supposed to … except fire a bullet.
You see, while we had been designing the overall system, the Army had been developing the barrel, breach, and liquid propellant system. While our components were under construction, the Army’s LP gun contractor had been predictably blowing up test labs energetically dismantling guns and labs. It turns out that hydrogen peroxide gun systems must be refueled in near clean-room conditions – facilities which aren’t particularly prevalent in combat. The Army delivered the cannon with a warning, “Install it, but don’t you dare fire it. We’ve already burned down too many labs.”
Fortunately, the artillery men brought in to review the testing really liked the automation. The Army changed the system specs to use a solid propellant cannon, and then issued another contract to build a full up prototype – the XM2001 Crusader.
We scaled up the engineering effort by a couple of hundred guys, and got to work. But a funny thing happened while we had been working on AFAS. “Slick Willy” Clinton had been elected President, and he appointed General Eric Shinseki (yes, the same Shinseki who would later turn the VA into the swampy mess it is) to be the Army Chief of staff. It turns out Shinseki had his own ideas about weapon systems for the 21st century.
In 1999, four years into the design of Crusader, we got a call from the Army program office. The brass wanted Crusader to be lighter, and incorporate components common to other armored vehicles under development.
We did an engineering study and concluded that by reducing the crew size and the onboard ammo storage, we could cut 10 tons from the beast. The Colonel in charge of the procurement said that would be satisfactory (which is military speak for “Thank you for saving my career.”).
Our engineering staff cancelled their vacations, muttered a few expletives about the Army procurement office, archived the Crusader plans, and started over – again. That’s how it went for another couple of years.
But in 2001, President “Compassionate Conservative” took office, and Donald Rumsfeldt decided that Shinseki’s vision for the 21st century was all wrong. He decided that what the Army really needed was a whole new family of armored vehicles called the Future Combat System (FCS). FCS would be a collection of different armored vehicles, sharing common components, and networked together on the battlefield. One of the variants in the FCS family was to be a non-line-of-sight cannon (NLOS-C), which had many of the same capabilities as Crusader, but in a much smaller and lighter package.
So, Crusader was cancelled, and we were awarded a contact to develop NLOS-C. In addition to everything else, this bad boy would also have hybrid electric drive – think olive-drab Prius with a big honking gun on top. Green had come to the green machine. The engineering department went out for a few cocktails, spent the night b*tching, and started over – again.
Everything was proceeding according to the new plan until 2009, when President “Fundamentally Change America” was sworn in. After the inauguration we learned that our community organizer in chief was not a fan of anything that increased the lethality of our warfighters. FCS was cancelled with no replacement planned.
From the first AFAS award to the eventual cancellation of FCS
- Eighteen years had lapsed, and our howitzer had been redesigned 4 times;
- Over 7 million engineering hours had been consumed;
- Company executives got their bonuses – it turns out there was good money to be made on the redesigns;
- The Army officers and bureaucrats who had overseen the program were all promoted;
- Hundreds of engineers – who had devoted their careers to giving soldiers the finest weapon possible, were pink slipped; and
- Taxpayers received a field full of discarded prototypes for their money.
But the worst part is that soldiers who risk their lives, and depend on effective indirect fire … got nothing.
In the end, several billion dollars was wasted on an artillery piece that was never fielded, and a whopping $35 billion was flushed down the FCS toilet. It was a colossal waste of time and money, because the Army’s procurement process takes longer than Presidential term limits, and the incoming leadership rarely honors the decisions of their predecessors. DOGE can’t happen fast enough.
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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