WASHINGTON, March 28 (Xinhuanet) -- The US Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity, The New York Times reported Monday.

    Army officials said the first phase of the program, called Future Combat Systems, could run to 145 billion dollars. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the "technological bridge to the future" would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers each, orabout one-third of the force the Army plans to field, over a 20-year span.

    That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the Army, does not include a projected 25 billion dollars for the communications network needed to connect the future forces, the report said. Nor does it fully account for Army plans to provide Future Combat weapons and technologies to forces beyond those first 15 brigades.

    "We're dealing today with a train wreck," Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a March 16 Congressional hearing on the cost and complexity of Future Combat Systems.

    "We're left with impossible decisions," said Weldon, a strong supporter of Pentagon spending. One of those decisions, he warned, might cut back Future Combat.

    The Army sees Future Combat as a seamless web of 18 different sets of networked weapons and military robots. The program, one of the biggest items in the Pentagon's plans to build more than 70 major weapons systems at a cost of more than 1.3 trillion dollars, is at the heart of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's campaign to transform the Army into a faster, lighter force.

    But the bridge to the future remains a blueprint. Army officials issued a stop-work order in January for the network that would link Future Combat weapons, citing its failure to progress, according to the Times. They said this month that they did not know if they could build a tank light enough to fly.

    David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, told the Times that there was a substantial gap between what the Pentagon is seeking in weapons systems and what the United States would be able to afford. Congress needed "to make some choices now," he said.

    Paul L. Francis, the acquisition and sourcing management director for the accountability office, told Congress that Future Combat Systems is a network of 53 crucial technologies, and 52 are unproven.

    The system was designed to make tanks, mobile cannons and personnel carriers so light that they could be flown to a war zone. In place of armor, American soldiers in combat would be protected by information systems, so they could see and kill the enemy before being seen and killed, Army officials say. Enditem