Future Combat Systems

(Newser) - Bush-holdover Robert Gates is using his position in the Obama administration to try to remake Washington’s biggest bureaucracy, refocusing it on the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington Post reports. Gates has pushed the Pentagon to shift from preparing for high-tech conventional wars of the future to...

(Newser) - The US Army has moved up the timetable for its high-tech weapons program, hoping to get new devices into the field by late 2010, 5 years ahead of its original schedule, Popular Mechanics reports. It’s also shifting focus away from conventional warfare tech like tanks and artillery and toward...

(Newser) - Some 95 of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems are a total of $295 billion over budget and arrive an average of 2 years late, according to the Government Accountability Office. But GAO auditors say the Pentagon is getting sloppier, not better, reports the Washington Post. "It's taking longer and...

(Newser) - More than 2,000 developers are working on a $200 billion software project considered the biggest Army modernization since World War II, but many worry the Boeing-led Future Combat Systems may come in late and severely flawed. FCS, which dwarfs Windows in complexity, would enable communication with hovering drones, bomb-defusing...