Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), yesterday proposed an "aggressive" development of unmanned combat systems. "The goal that I intend to propose is to aggressively develop and field unmanned combat systems in the air and on the ground," according to a transcript of Warner's remarks yesterday before a SASC hearing on the Clinton administration's FY '01 budget request. Warner said that he believed it was "reasonable" to try to make one-third of the operational deep strike aircraft unmanned within 10 years and within 15 years to make one-third of U.S. ground combat vehicles unmanned. Funds for the development of such remotely manned vehicles would likely add to money spent on such programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Such vehicles could supplement existing strike assets, like the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-117 stealth fighter or the General Dynamics [GD] M1 tank and United Defense, L.P. Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The unmanned ground combat vehicle may weigh 10 to 15 tons and enhance the mobility and force protection for heavy Army divisions. "We have a superiority in this country, and we've got to transfer that to the men and women in uniform. I do not think that we have adequately utilized this enormous technological capability that we have in this country," according to the transcript. Warner noted the "extraordinary record" of Operation Allied Force in which the military conducted a 78-day air campaign that included 38,000 combat sorties, but no casualties. "I think incorrectly, but nevertheless, the American people are looking to the future for less and less risk to our people, with chances for other military operations not to have casualties. I think that's unrealistic, but nevertheless it's a direction which our country seems to be thinking [about]. More high tech will help achieve those goals," according to the transcript of Warner's remarks. During the SASC hearing, Cohen noted the vulnerability of such systems that are so heavily dependent on computers. "Secretary Cohen replied [to the proposal] by [saying] our vulnerability goes up. But that vulnerability is there now," Warner told Defense Daily after the hearing. "I'm not sure it goes up. The same computer that is running a tank full of men today is just a first cousin to what we would put in the remotely manned vehicle." Les Brownlee, majority staff director for the SASC and a decorated Army veteran, helped develop the Warner proposal. "I'm just determined to push to the edge on this," Warner said. SASC is examining whether to shift money in the FY '01 budget to start the development of such vehicles. Though Warner did not have an estimate of how much such development would cost in FY '01, he said he wants to include the initiative in the FY '01 Defense Authorization Bill. "I'll bet you there's a head of steam in there, and I'll get it going," Warner said of his proposal. During the SASC hearing, Cohen said that the Pentagon applied lessons learned from Allied Force in its FY '01 budget request. specifically, Cohen mentioned the budget's inclusion of more than $250 million for another Northrop Grumman [NOC] Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft--the military's 15th such plane, $400 million for the acceleration of the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle program, $500 million for another squadron of Northrop Grumman EA-6B jamming aircraft and upgrades to the planes, $400 million to buy 624 of Raytheon's [RTNA/RTNB] Tomahawk land attack missiles and $178 million for the accelerated buy of Boeing [BA] Joint Direct Attack Munitions. Despite the Pentagon's final attainment of the long-sought $60 billion procurement goal in its FY '01 request, Cohen said that number would be inadequate for the future. "The big bills are going to be coming between 2008 and 2015," Cohen said, as systems designed today enter production and are fielded. Cohen again called for two additional rounds of base closure to trim the military tail and sharpen its tooth by adding the money to procurement. Though Pentagon plans now call for devoting $70 billion in FY '05 to modernization, even that "will not be sufficient in the coming years to deal with the kind of programs that we are constructing today," Cohen said.