But an Army, not matter how theoretically effective it may be, an Army that cannot get to the war or conflict is useless to the American people. Frank Finelli Frank Finelli works for The Carlyle Group, parent company of United Defense, which plans to build the Crusader. When we talk about transformation not looking forward, here seems to me an example of a piece of equipment in which, if you use it, you are looking backward. Now you've called it leap-ahead technology, but some of the people we've talked to say it is 16th century siege artillery. I think Crusader enables a revolution in tactical fires.
People understand very little about it besides it weighs a lot.
Given General Shinseki's initiative, the system has been, they have undertaken a number of weight reduction initiatives and now have received the indication that they will be able to deploy two Crusader systems or two Crusaders howitzers or a full Crusader and resupply vehicle system on a single C17 air craft. What that means is you can get this system virtually anywhere that you can get a C17 aircraft, which largely opens up many of the airfields that we would be using with this C130 capable force. What Crusader does that is not appreciated in this dialogue are its capabilities to provide rapid precision fires. It has a very, very high rate of fire and the precision is something that really is unparalleled in any form of cannon artillery. We're also not achieving that with rocket launched affects at this time.