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News Index
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Army Plan May Boost State Firms (Boston Globe)
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High-tech overhaul plays to the strengths of local contractors
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | February 7, 2006
WILMINGTON -- Dozens of Massachusetts defense contractors caught a sneak preview of tomorrow's Army yesterday, and it looked like the kind of highly networked ''system of systems" that plays to the strengths of the state's manufacturing and technology industries.
Vietnam-era tanks and ground vehicles will be replaced with manned and unmanned air and ground systems, intelligent munitions, unattended ground sensors, and soldiers equipped with new technologies, all integrated with command and control, communications, and firing capabilities. Still in the design and development stage, this Army modernization program called Future Combat Systems, or FCS, carries an estimated value of $120 billion over the next quarter-century.
''The Army has all but bet the farm on this program," said retired Lieutenant General Daniel R. Zanini, program manager for SAIC, a research and engineering company that has been tapped, with Boeing Co., as lead contractors for the FCS program. ''We're trying to get real-time information to the soldiers in time for them to act on it."
Zanini and other program officials briefed dozens of business representatives from Massachusetts and other New England states at the sprawling Textron Systems plant here. Some of the contractors already are working under research and development contracts for FCS, and many other vendors and suppliers are expected to participate as the program moves forward. Economic development officials project it could be worth as much as $6.9 billion to military contractors in the region, making it one of the largest defense technology programs ever.
Ranch C. Kimball, Massachusetts' economic development secretary, said FCS could help the state add to its 65,000- to 85,000-member military-related workforce substantially over the coming decade. ''This is one of the few areas in the country that has a base in precision manufacturing, systems integration, and technology modules," Kimball said, noting that all are critical skills for the Army modernization program.
Several state companies working on FCS research and development showed off their wares yesterday. Mark S. Catizone, general manager at Textron Systems, which has more than $100 million worth of FCS contracts through 2014, held up a sand-colored ground sensor node roughly the size and shape of a bowling pin, with an antenna sticking up from the top and four air brakes protruding from the side like a pinwheel. Catizone described how the radio-equipped device, equipped with acoustic, seismic, and magnetic sensors, will be dropped from a drone into the desert to identify and track enemy vehicles.
Across the room, a PackBot Explorer mobile robot, built by iRobot Corp. of Burlington to detect roadside bombs in Iraq, rolled across the carpet on its rubber treads and reared up on two front flippers, its bug-eyed light-emitting diodes flashing. ''It's the soldiers' robot," said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot, which has been awarded Army contracts worth a total of $51.4 million for FCS. ''It's the robot they take with them. They send it into places that are too dangerous to go. And, most important, it eliminates casualties."
PackBots currently deployed weigh 42 pounds. But under the FCS program, iRobot will try to slim them down to 25 pounds, enabling solders to carry them in backpacks before dispatching them into areas where they can transmit data to the network.
Boeing Co. demonstrated a visual interaction presentation system, with three giant flat screens, that will enable Army planners to visualize battlefield scenarios. And, the Army Soldier Center in Natick showed off elements of its Future Force Warrior system, which embeds new technologies in soldier
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