New Army Strategy Sees Future Combat Vehicles As Highly Mobile, Highly Lethal: The Army's plan to modernize its combat vehicles fleet in the near-term looks to acquire a new lightweight vehicle for infantry brigade combat teams and increase the lethality of its Strykers, according to the service's brand new combat vehicle modernization strategy.
In the outlying years of the strategy, vehicles will have robust mobile protected firepower capability and formations could see mostly unmanned, autonomous systems carry out security and reconnaissance missions.
The strategy acknowledges there are no "silver bullet technologies," Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the head of the Army's Capabilities Integration Center and chief architect of the service's operating concept, told Defense News in an exclusive interview. "We recognize that there is no single combat vehicle that does everything for you . . . so what we do in the Combat Vehicle Modernization Strategy is identify, okay, 'Hey, what are our first principles for combat vehicle development. What do we really want to do through the fielding of combat vehicles?"
The Army's brigade combat teams need to come to the battlefield overmatching the enemy's capabilities, McMaster explained. "We know that in a battle a fair fight means barely winning, and barely winning is ugly and costly."
