WASHINGTON — The US Army's plan to modernize its combat vehicle 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 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, told Defense News in an exclusive interview.

The Army's brigade combat teams need to come to the battlefield overmatching the enemy's capabilities, McMaster explained.

When the Army is "in close combat with the enemy, you want to be the Terminator, if you can be," he added.

The Army has struggled to get new vehicle programs off the ground, canceling its Future Combat Systems and the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) without providing new capabilities. The Army awarding a contract to Oshkosh for its new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle is the service's only recent victory in the vehicle realm.

The strategy, obtained by Defense News, acknowledges that future missions will require the Army's brigade combat teams to fight with a joint force and "to win against well-armed state, non-state and hybrid threats across a range of operations. Therefore, there is urgency in refocusing the Army's combat vehicle modernization strategy and a need to increase investment to prepare for existing and emerging threats."

Those investments will include quickly procuring a lightweight combat vehicle for infantry brigade combat teams to rapidly deploy in restrictive areas across all types of terrain and urban and austere environments.

The Army also wants a light reconnaissance vehicle in the near term particularly for cavalry squadrons that would need to execute early or forced entry operations.

Stryker armored personnel carriers need to be more lethal. That means adding a 30mm cannon on half of them and Javelin anti-tank missiles on the rest, along with machine guns.

With the cancellation of the GCV program, the Army has fallen further behind in replacing its aging Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. A newer program, the Future Fighting Vehicle, is on the horizon, but McMaster said the Army needs to move on its development "like now. I mean like right now."

The strategy also called for the near-term replacement of the M113 armored personnel carrier. The Army needs to do "everything it can do to accelerate the AMPV because we are already behind," McMaster said, adding the M113 is "kind of a death trap now."

The service also needs mobile protected firepower and will adopt an interim capability and then develop a solution that fully meets its needs later.

For more details on the Army's Combat Modernization Strategy, pick up a copy of the Association of the United States Army's show daily.

Email: jjudson@defensenews.com

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

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