new ground combat vehicle , page-2

http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/0909/news/220909_ground_combat_vehicle.html

U.S. Army Defines Ground Combat Vehciles (GCV) Priorities
The Army's U.S. Army's TACOM Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) is inviting candidate industries capable of designing, developing and producing the next generation vehicles of Ground Combat Vehicles to line up for the program.
According to the U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Ground Combat Vehicle modernization program will focus on three basic components:

Brigade Combat Team Capability modernization
Network Capability Sets
Vehicle Strategy
The U.S. Army is planning on developing and fielding, in an incremental approach, a class of ground combat vehicles that will be integrated into the Army's Brigade Combat Teams (BCT). The new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) will replace the recently cancelled 'Manned Ground Vehicle' element of the Future Combat Systems program, introducing highly survivable, lethal and supportable ground combat vehicles.

Vehicle Strategy
The new vehicle platforms will introduce, over time, several variants to the BCT in an incremental acquisition approach starting with a lead vehicle development effort. These new combat vehicles are expected to achieve highly challenging interoperability between the crew and the platform as well as within the formation, maintain high survivability, lethality and mobility in different operational environments, and meet high supportability, availability, affordability and transportability objectives facilitated by contemporary and proven technology.

The Army expects these vehicles to integrate and provide the crew real time network capabilities. It will be designed to operate across a wide spectrum of operations, and as such, will maintain, besides its main and secondary armament - non-lethal effects and capabilities. It will have embedded training capabilities to be fielded as an integral part of the combat vehicle.

Based on the Army's experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, mobility was raised to the top as the key operational design criteria. The vehicle's design will focus on sustainability more than we ever have done in procuring an Army major weapons system.