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AGS Reborn?
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noona-@comcast.net
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Feb 17, 2004 17:38 PST
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Inside The Army
February 16, 2004
Pg. 1
Paratroopers' Needs Rekindles Talk Of Defunct Armored Gun System
The 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, NC, still needs a rapidly deployable vehicle with firepower, a requirement some say could be met sooner rather than later if the Army is willing to shake the mothballs from its defunct Armored Gun System, sources say.
“They want an air-droppable platform for forced entry,” said a service source, and “they want it now.”
As a result, the division recently passed along an “operational needs statement” to Army Forces Command that outlines the unfulfilled requirement, said Maj. Rich Patterson, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, which oversees the division. The Army’s operations and plans office, or “G-3,” is reviewing the requirement with Training and Doctrine Command, but no decision has been reached, Patterson said.
While Army leadership may determine AGS is not the solution, the idea of moving the system back into the limelight, at least in a limited way, has caught the attention of a lawmaker who represents the Ft. Bragg area.
The requirement for an air-droppable platform has existed at least since the late 1990s, when the division disbanded one of its battalions -- the 3rd Battalion of the 73rd Armored Regiment, which was equipped with an aging armored reconnaissance vehicle called the Sheridan. At the time, service officials thought other capabilities would become available to the paratroopers once the M551 Sheridan retired.
When the division deactivated the armored battalion in 1997, however, Army officials had already terminated AGS, which had been regarded as the Sheridan’s replacement. Proposed in the 1980s as a lightweight combat vehicle that could fit aboard a C-130, AGS featured a 105 mm cannon, an ammunition autoloader and options for armor protection. United Defense LP had produced a handful of prototypes of the vehicle in 1996, when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer terminated the program. Eliminating AGS freed more than $1 billion over the service’s outyear funding plan -- money that was badly needed for other cash-strapped programs, officials said at the time.
What was not eliminated was the need to equip light forces with an air-droppable platform that had enough firepower to hold off opposing forces until heavier forces arrived, sources said.
According to the Army’s program executive office for ground combat systems, five AGS prototypes exist today. Four systems reside at UDLP’s manufacturing facility in York, PA; one is at a UDLP facility in San Jose, CA.
Herb Muktarian, a spokesman for UDLP’s ground systems division in York, said the four M8 AGS vehicles there have been regularly maintained.
“They are in a standard configuration and are in excellent condition,” he said. “We are prepared to provide the vehicles and any required support if we were to receive an official request from the Army.”
The unmet requirement has caught the attention of Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC), a member of the House Armed Services Committee whose district includes Ft. Bragg. Hayes contacted the Army’s legislative liaison office last December requesting specifics on the ongoing “discussion about getting the AGS” into Army “tactics, techniques and procedures.”
“What is your assessment of the immediate operational need for a system to support airfield seizure, forced entry and other missions of the 82nd Airborne Division?” Hayes asked in a Dec. 15, 2003, e-mail. “Can the AGS serve as a near-term solution to an immediate operational need?”
Hayes requested several other details from the Army, including the cost of reviving AGS, spare parts needs and the status of the 82nd Airborne’s needs statement. Hayes’ spokesman, Jonathan Felts, said Feb. 10 that the congressman has not yet received a response from the Army.
“Congressman Hayes’ top priority is that we help our soldiers in the field as quickly as possible,” Felts wrote in a statement.
“Let me be very clear to say that this is not a matter of advocating one system over another,” he added. “Rather, the congressman knows that there is an existing technology presently sitting unused, and he is simply inquiring if it is feasible to utilize the capabilities while awaiting future technologies that are in production.”
The division’s interest in an AGS-like system is nothing new. The division’s 17th Cavalry Regiment expressed a desire for such a system several years ago, according to the Army source.
As Inside the Army reported in the fall of 1999, service officials then were looking at all vehicles that could serve as a near-term solution for light forces -- including AGS, the Marine Corps’ Light Armored Vehicle, the Pandur lightweight vehicles used by the Kuwait National Guard and a variant of the M113 armored personnel carrier (ITA, Oct. 4, 1999, p1; Sept. 27, 1999, p1).
The PEO for ground combat systems, which had overseen the AGS program, was directed to conduct a review of the various candidates. For AGS, the office provided Army leaders information on three options: field AGS in the state it was in when the program was terminated; revamp the system with newly developed technologies, then field it; or field AGS in the condition it was in when terminated, but with plans to retrofit the system with new technologies.
Past inquiries into AGS and other systems, however, have failed to “go anywhere,” the service source said.
Pulling AGS out of storage might be a more tenable idea today, however, than in 1999 when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki announced plans to invest heavily in a lighter, more lethal future force. After years accepting considerable risk in its current force to fund transformation goals, the Army once again shifted gears last year to focus on ensuring the current force -- stretched thin across the globe -- is adequately equipped. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who took over Shinseki’s job last August, told reporters in October 2003 that he had directed his staff to scrub the force and its transformation plans for existing technologies and equipment that could be used by troops in Iraq or Afghanistan (ITA, Oct. 13, 2003, p1).
-- Anne Plummer
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Michael P. Noonan
Research Fellow (Defense Policy)
Foreign Policy Research Institute
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