Heeding President Bush’s call to “skip a generation” of technology toward military advancement, the Pentagon has announced its intention to cancel the Army’s Crusader program.

“This is the best example yet of the Defense Department’s commitment to creating tomorrow’s military,” said Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a widely acknowledge expert on military transformation.

While the Crusader artillery system was clearly an improvement on the Army’s Paladin artillery system, those improvements could not offset the fact that fielding a dramatically different type of capability would be more relevant to the critical operational challenges confronting the U.S. military.

“A top of the line typewriter doesn’t fit the bill in a laptop era,” Krepinevich noted.

As thoroughly analyzed in Krepinevich’s backgrounder, “Skipping ‘Skipping a Generation,’” tomorrow’s Army will have to be a lighter, more rapidly deployable expeditionary force. To accomplish this, the Army is attempting to effect dramatic reductions in weight in designing its future combat systems. The Crusader simply does not fit the Army’s vision of what it must become.

“The Administration deserves credit for doing the right thing, however politically unpalatable,” Dr. Krepinevich added. “President Bush came to Washington promising to force new thinking and make the hard decisions for the sake of a stronger, better designed military. Canceling the Crusader is a strong indication that they intend to keep that promise.”

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The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) is an independent policy research institute established to promote innovative thinking about defense planning and investment strategies for the 21^st Century. See our website at http://www.csbaonline.org.