An Assessment of the Lead Systems Integrator Concept as Applied to the Future Combat System Program

Abstract : On October 12, 1999, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Eric Shinseki, delivered the keynote address at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual symposium in Washington, D.C. In this momentous speech, he shared his vision for transforming the Army, with the goal of making the Army's forces light enough to deploy, lethal enough to fight and win, survivable enough to return safely home and lean and efficient enough to sustain themselves whatever the mission. The vision called for an immediate off-the-shelf solution which became the Stryker Brigade Combat Team to stimulate the development of doctrine, organizational design, and leader training as the Army began to develop new technologies to field the objective force (Shinseki, 1999). A short time later, the Chief of Staff gave the Army its mission: build and field the First Unit of Action, equipped with Future Combat Systems (FCS), capable of full spectrum operations, by the end of 2010. The Army's response to this challenge was to initiate a revolutionary acquisition program that utilizes an innovative system development paradigm called a Lead Systems Integrator (LSI). This is article provides an assessment of the Lead Systems Integrator (LSI) concept, now that it has been in use for nearly 3 years on the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. It will not assess the progress of the FCS program, any of its pros and cons, nor the outlook for its future. This article will also avoid any quantitative or qualitative measures of how the chosen contractor team has been performing as the LSI.