CBO To Army: Scrap Ground Combat Vehicle, Buy German Puma (BREAKING)

[unhappycamper]

http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/02/cbo-to-army-scrap-ground-combat-vehicle-buy-german-puma-break/?icid=trending2



German's new Puma troop carrier

CBO To Army: Scrap Ground Combat Vehicle, Buy German Puma (BREAKING)
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: April 2, 2013

(updated) WASHINGTON: The Army's proposed Ground Combat Vehicle would offer less combat power, at a higher cost, than buying the German-made Puma already in production or even just upgrading the Army's existing M2 Bradley, according to the Congressional Budget Office. CBO issued a report today assessing different alternatives to upgrade Army heavy brigades' infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), tank-like war machines with tracks and turrets designed to carry troops into combat.

The non-partisan CBO, Capitol Hill's in-house thinktank, has slammed the Ground Combat Vehicle program before, but never this hard. The office's analysts took the Army's own criteria and created a grading system that scored different combat vehicles for effectiveness. Using a scoring scheme that prioritized protection above all, followed by firepower, mobility, and passenger capacity, in that order, the CBO rated the Puma highest, followed by a notional upgrade to the Bradley, followed in distant third place by the GCV. (The Israeli-built Namer came in fourth). Even under an alternative grading scheme that weighted all four criteria equally -- putting much more emphasis on the capacity to carry troops -- the 6-passenger Puma still edged out the 9-passenger GCV, largely because of its superior firepower.

Add in the cost and risk of developing a new vehicle, and the analysis swings even farther in favor of the Puma. Since the Germans already have the Puma in production -- the vehicle entered Bundeswehr service in 2011 -- there's no untested technology to cause problems. And even after buying 25 percent more Pumas to make up for its smaller carrying capacity, the Army would spend half as much as to develop, test, and build the GCV, according to CBO's estimate: $14.5 billion for 2,048 Pumas as opposed to $28.8 billion for 1,748 GCVs.

~snip~

There is room to argue with CBO's scoring system. To start with, since the GCV does not yet exist, CBO grades the vehicle based on the Army's 2010 "Design Concept After Trades"; the actual GCV might be better or worse. For example, CBO assumes the GCV will have only a 25 millimeter cannon, rather than the Puma's 30 mm, but Army officials I spoke to were still hoping for the larger caliber.