Oh Great

Maybe it'll work as well as the Missile Defense System. NYTimes (03.28.05):

"The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity. Army officials said Saturday that the first phase of the program, called Future Combat Systems, could run to $145 billion. That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the Army, does not include a projected $25 billion for the communications network needed to connect the future forces. Nor does it fully account for Army plans to provide Future Combat weapons and technologies to forces beyond those first 15 brigades." Cost Concerns Plague Army's High-Tech Plan

"Paul L. Francis, the acquisition and sourcing management director for the accountability office, told Congress that the Army was building Future Combat Systems without the data it needed to guide it. 'If everything goes as planned, the program will attain the level of knowledge in 2008 that it should have had before it started in 2003,' Mr. Francis said in written testimony. 'But things are not going as planned.'" Mr. Francis also noted that Future Combat Systems is a network of 53 technologies, 52 of which are unproven. "Brig. Gen. Charles A. Cartwright, deputy director for the Army research and development command, said in an interview that Future Combat was a work in progress, evolving in an upward spiral from the drawing board to the assembly line." Stop me if you've heard this before, but is this guy saying they're making it up as they go along? "'We are working through the affordability,' General Cartwright said. He acknowledged that the Army's cost estimates could spiral upward as well." Really.