The Army and Marine Corps will be in the market for a new generation of ground vehicles soon. But acquisition officials there should think hard before they buy, according to Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, the president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (listen to interview)
The modernization of Army and Marine Corps ground vehicles is the subject of a recent CSBA report, "The Road Ahead: Future Challenges and Their Implications for Ground Vehicle Modernization."
Krepinevich and his co-author, Eric Lindsey, wrote that the while both services are in the early stages of vehicle modernization, those efforts "will be severely constrained by the budget cuts looming over the Department of Defense."
The report found a number of "trends," that will impact vehicle requirements, including:
- "The evolution of the armor/anti-armor competition" — the fluctuation between efforts to create capabilities that defeat vehicle protection vs. those that protect combat vehicles.
- "The proliferation of precision-guided weaponry" — The increasing use of guided rockets and other artillery by both state and non-state actors.