Quote Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger View Post
Gates said: "But it is important to remember that every Defense dollar spent to overinsure against a remote or diminishing risk or, in effect, to run up the score in capability where the United States is already dominant is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable." (Emphasis added.) I assume (yes, I know ) that he's referring to recapitalizing the current ground force vehicle fleet.
As an Armor guy, I'm not shedding any tears for the demise of FCS. Its fundamental assumptions were invalid - namely - that "information=force protection", and risk could be assumed with armor in favor of deployability. If "information dominance" would protect us, we wouldn't be losing soldiers to IED's. Like EBO, FCS tried to eliminate fog and friction from war, instead of embracing it and developing systems to compensate.

Combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan (CDN), and Israel have all demonstrated the necessity of heavy armor in urban combat. I am all for a recapitalized fleet and new vehicles with less maintenance/logistics requirements, but not at the expense of combat effectiveness. One size fits all approaches rarely work well, we need a mix of high/low capabilities.