American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

Military theorists generally agree that a defending army can hope for success if the attacking enemy has no greater than a 3:1 advantage in combat power. The best intelligence estimates in the 1970s concluded that the Warsaw Pact armies enjoyed a much larger advantage. Con- tinuing budget constrictions made unlikely the possibility of increasing the size of the American military to match Soviet growth. To solve the problem of how to fight an enemy that would almost certainly be larger, the United States relied in part on technologically superior hardware that could defeat an enemy with an advantage ratio higher than 1:3. To achieve that end, the Army in the early 1970s began work on the new "big five" equipment systems: a tank, an infantry combat vehicle, an at- tack helicopter, a transport helicopter, and an antiaircraft missile.

Several factors affected new equipment design. Among the most important was the flourishing technology encouraged by the pure and applied research associated with space programs. Although the big five equipment originated in the years before AirLand Battle was first enun- ciated, that doctrine quickly had its effect on design criteria. Other fac- tors were speed, survivability, and good communications, essential to economize on small forces and give them the advantages they required to defeat larger, but presumably more ponderous, enemies. Target ac- quisition and fire control were equally important, since the success of a numerically inferior force depended heavily on the ability to score first-round hits.