(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Army's effort to make its ground combat forces more agile and versatile is coming under fire by liberal lawmakers and special interest groups that are pressing for funding cuts, a conservative defense policy analyst said.

The Army's Future Combat Systems Program (FCS) uses advanced communications and technologies to link soldiers on the ground with vehicles and sensors both on the ground and in the air. The goal is to give soldiers access to more data so they have a better idea of what's going on around them.

According to the Boeing Company, which is helping to develop FCS, the Army plans to equip several Brigade Combat Teams with FCS capabilities, making those teams the Army's "future tactical war fighting echelon." The combat teams will be highly mobile and maneuverable, capable of performing offensive, defensive, stability and support operations.

The FCS program, among other things, consists of manned and unmanned air and ground combat vehicles linked to advanced systems for targeting and firing, all of which is connected by a high-tech information network.

"Working together, these systems will help soldiers share real-time information across the battlefield," reads the FCS Web site. Overall, FCS will provide soldiers vastly increased situational awareness, survivability, and lethality, ensuring they can take the fight to the enemy before the enemy has time to react."

The FCS program is still in the testing phase, but some critics say the money would be better spent elsewhere.

A liberal interest group - Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities (BLSP) run out of the Vermont offices of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream - is pressing for passage of a U.S. House bill that would cut $47 billion in Defense Department spending and direct the money to other priorities, including education, job training and children's health programs.

House Resolution 1702, the Common Sense Budget Act of 2007, was introduced in the first session of the 110th Congress by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and is awaiting subcommittee action.

While the bill is not expected to advance under a Republican administration, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has endorsed several of the BLSP's recommendations, as Cybercast News Service previously reported.

Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a member of BLSP's military advisory committee, has called the FCS program "necessary," but he says its current development and deployment schedule "is far too ambitious, given the complexity of the program."

According to Korb, among the FCS network's 53 crucial technologies, 52 are unproven. "Therefore the $3.7 billion requested (for FCS) in 2007 should be reduced to $1 billion, and the $25 billion proposed over the next five years cut back to $10 billion," Korb wrote in a report advocating Pentagon spending cuts.

"[The Army is] rushing the darn thing, and basically, there's no real need to rush it because, right now, their big priority is counter-insurgency," Korb told Cybercast News Service. "It's a good something to have in the future, but the cost of the program has gone up exponentially. What I urge is to slow down, take your time, get it, and get it right."

The FCS initiative, he noted, was started before the 9/11 terror attacks as a way of bringing the Army into the high-tech age. Korb said it was not expressly intended to assist the Army in conducting counter-insurgency warfare.

Mackenzie Eaglen, senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Cybercast News Service, "There is a valid concern that the Army has put 'all its eggs in one basket' in developing FCS."

She said the Army has canceled more than 100 programs to free resources for FCS, which accounts for a "significant share" of the Army's discretionary spending.

In Fiscal Year 2007, however, FCS accounted for only 3.7 percent of the Army's total budget. Therefore, Eaglen said, "FCS is not the albatross its critics would make it seem." Eaglen also said the program eventually will save the Army "billions" of dollars in maintenance, fuel and personnel costs.

Unlike the Cold War, during which the U.S. Army trained for the possibility of conflict with the Soviet Union, "the army no longer has the luxury of preparing for one type of opponent," Eaglen said. "Instead, the Army must be capable of operating in irregular, traditional, catastrophic, or disruptive conflicts - or perhaps all at once."

"The FCS enables the Army to become more expeditionary and capable of responding to all types of contingencies, ranging from peacekeeping, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, to high-intensity conventional combat," she said."

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