Senior Army officials are circling the wagons to protect the crown jewel of the service's modernization effort, the Future Combat System, a network of 18 different platforms that service officials say is as essential to ground forces as aircraft carriers are to the Navy.

Facing an $32 billion cut across the fiscal year 2007 to 2011 budget, the Office of the Secretary of Defense in October suggested cuts to key elements of the Army’s Future Combat System, according to Army officials. The service instead proposed reducing its force structure, as InsideDefense.com first reported Nov. 2. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported some details of the proposed force structure cuts, which include cutting one active-duty brigade and as many as six National Guard brigades.

Throughout, the Army has been steadfast in its opposition to FCS cuts.

“Of the top 20 programs in the [Defense] Department, we have one,” Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac, military deputy to the Army’s acquisition executive, said following a speech to investment bankers here at a conference sponsored by Credit Suisse First Boston and Aviation Week. “Why in the hell wouldn’t I fight for one? Because that’s our future; that’s the future of ground combat.”

More broadly, Army officials say they also are looking to break the practice of tapping service investment accounts to pay unforeseen bills. Over the last decade the Army has lost a large number of programs, including its Crusader artillery system -- canceled at the Pentagon’s direction -- and the Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter, which the service offered up for termination as it shifted its priorities. For many years in the 1990s, Crusader and Comanche were the Army’s top two modernization priorities. The other services have managed to hold on to similarly prized programs.

A partial list of other Army programs killed over the last decade, for various reasons, includes the Armored Gun System, the Command and Control Vehicle, the Follow-On To TOW missile, the Line-of Sight Anti-Tank missile system, the Wolverine, the Grizzly Assault Breacher and the Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle system.

Senior service officials said the Army leadership has in recent weeks adamantly argued to the Office of the Secretary of Defense -- particularly acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England -- that it is not willing to cut even a small part of its $161 billion Future Combat System program. That tracks with comments made earlier this year by the Army secretary and others.

Instead, the Army is proposing jettisoning units that are expected by war planners to be deployed late in any major war against a conventional adversary, Yakovac said.

“Maybe there’s force structure that we never had or never could have afforded, because we never equipped them properly,” said Yackovac. “Maybe there are some pieces of that that you never used, unless you went to [the] high end of conflict.”

Whether the Office of the Secretary of Defense will abide the Army’s desire to cut troops instead of its procurement accounts will be revealed in coming weeks as the fiscal year 2007 budget takes final shape and decisions regarding the Quadrennial Defense Review are settled.