There's a post over at Ares about the NLOS-C platform for the FCS program.
What I find intersting is the timeframes involved. From 6 months after the contract was signed, the first proof of concept vehicle was delivered and less than six years after that the full production vehicle will be delivered for testing as well. For defense contracting, that's very fast. It'll be a couple years after that for fielding, but even so. It's impressive.
One of the reasons that its so is that the NLOS-C takes advantage of existing technologies. Yes, some important ones are being developed - and some are problematic to be sure - but its considerably different than is normally done. More often than not, the sky is promised when a competition is started and then it falls on the buyer when too many tech related risks take longer than expected to develop.
One of the suggested reforms that has come up is that the Pentagon pay for a string of constant development of components that can be assembled into a system because of following standards based interfaces. They need not be civvie based standards either. Now this does have an increased tech development overhead, making DARPA and the techies eat a larger portion of the pie. Yet, if done properly, this would massively reduce the risk involved with deploying new weapon systems. It becomes a case of systems integation which has risk, but not developmental risk!
Diatribe over, fun speculation now. What would I do with the NLOS-C? The two that I would think of are 1) fire on the move capabilities 2) improved armor on the chassis without compromising weight, and 3) LOS hit to kill capabilities. Now that latter would only be advisable if the cannon was actually mounted on something that other than the chassis they have it on or at least a much uparmored one, otherwise the temptation to use these guys as tanks would be too great. The idea that every armored fighting vehicle with a large calibre gun could be either artillery or a tank is an exciting one. Imagine a brigade able to fire on the same massed enemy force all at once: 120+ guns all able to be brought to bare. Very frightening if you're on the other end of it.
What I find intersting is the timeframes involved. From 6 months after the contract was signed, the first proof of concept vehicle was delivered and less than six years after that the full production vehicle will be delivered for testing as well. For defense contracting, that's very fast. It'll be a couple years after that for fielding, but even so. It's impressive.
One of the reasons that its so is that the NLOS-C takes advantage of existing technologies. Yes, some important ones are being developed - and some are problematic to be sure - but its considerably different than is normally done. More often than not, the sky is promised when a competition is started and then it falls on the buyer when too many tech related risks take longer than expected to develop.
One of the suggested reforms that has come up is that the Pentagon pay for a string of constant development of components that can be assembled into a system because of following standards based interfaces. They need not be civvie based standards either. Now this does have an increased tech development overhead, making DARPA and the techies eat a larger portion of the pie. Yet, if done properly, this would massively reduce the risk involved with deploying new weapon systems. It becomes a case of systems integation which has risk, but not developmental risk!
Diatribe over, fun speculation now. What would I do with the NLOS-C? The two that I would think of are 1) fire on the move capabilities 2) improved armor on the chassis without compromising weight, and 3) LOS hit to kill capabilities. Now that latter would only be advisable if the cannon was actually mounted on something that other than the chassis they have it on or at least a much uparmored one, otherwise the temptation to use these guys as tanks would be too great. The idea that every armored fighting vehicle with a large calibre gun could be either artillery or a tank is an exciting one. Imagine a brigade able to fire on the same massed enemy force all at once: 120+ guns all able to be brought to bare. Very frightening if you're on the other end of it.
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