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April 2, 2013
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Bernard Kempinski and Christopher Murphy
The U.S. Army plans to spend about an additional $34 billion in 2013 dollars to develop and purchase a new armored vehicle for its infantry, the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). The GCV is supposed to operate across the full range of potential conflict types while providing unprecedented levels of protection for the full squad of soldiers it will carry. To achieve the Army’s goals, the GCV would weigh from 64 to 84 tons, making it the biggest and heaviest infantry fighting vehicle that the Army has ever fielded—as big as the M1 Abrams tank and twice as heavy as the Bradley, the Army’s current infantry fighting vehicle. Designing such a vehicle presents important technical challenges.
To aid the Congress in its oversight of the GCV program, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared two reports. This CBO working paper provides background information for understanding the technical challenges that the program faces. It presents the Army’s technical goals for the GCV program, examines the threats that the vehicle could face in combat, and explores the variety of approaches that vehicle designers can take to protect the vehicle and its passengers and to meet the Army’s other requirements. A companion report, The Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle Program and Alternatives, examines the GCV program (including the number of vehicles, the production schedule, and the cost) and alternative approaches that the Army could take that would cost less but still provide substantial improvements over today’s fleet of combat vehicles.
The Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle Program and AlternativesApr 2013 - CBO compares the Army’s plan for the GCV with four options and finds that, although no option would meet all of the Army’s goals, all are likely to be less costly and pose a smaller risk of delay than CBO expects for the Army’s plan.

The Congress directed CBO to review the modeling techniques that the military services use to generate their budget request for activities associated with operational readiness. CBO focused on identifying models used to inform the operating forces portion of the services' base budgets for operation and maintenance. CBO included only those models used at the services' headquarters.
CBO found that:
Using models does not guarantee good budgeting; not using them does not equate to bad budgeting.

Operating forces is the largest budget activity within the services' budgets for operation and maintenance. Funding for operating forces pays for the training of combat and support units, as well as the maintenance and operation of most service installations. CBO did not review budget models outside of the operating forces activity.
For the purposes of this study, CBO defined a model as:

a set of mathematical relationships or similar logical expressions that link a military service's activities, such as training and maintenance, to the cost of those activities.
Additionally, CBO:

The Navy established a goal for a fleet of 33 amphibious ships in its 2012 30-year shipbuilding plan. Those ships are designed primarily to carry marines and their equipment into combat but also to perform other missions.
Under the current plan, between 2012 and 2041, the Navy will:
At any given time:
In 2007, the combatant commanders requested nine ships for routine deployment. That request could be accommodated with the existing fleet.

By 2010, the combatant commanders asked for 18 ships. (The number increased because the combatant commanders were being asked about "unconstrained" demand—how many ships they wanted in the absence of any fiscal or force structure constraint.)
Meeting the request for 18 ships with the existing force would substantially increase deployment time and reduce time in ships' home ports.
Over a 27-month (117-week) operating cycle:
