The Pentagon this week dropped a bundle of bad news on Boeing Co. and its St. Louis-based Integrated Defense Systems unit: The $160 billion Future Combat Systems program has been canceled.

The program was managed here, but development and production work was farmed out to dozens of contractors across 40 states. Much of it may continue, although under separate contracts. Boeing’s role as “integrator” of a vast system of 14 different super high-tech weapons components will be ended.

The decision was not a surprise. In April, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates halted the biggest piece of the FCS contract, the Manned Ground Vehicle Program, and expressed skepticism about the rest of the program. Last week, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army vice chief of staff, told a Senate subcommittee that FCS programs would be moved to the Army’s Brigade Combat Team modernization program.

Still, the loss of the six-year-old FCS program is a major blow to Boeing. The company had hoped the FCS program would make it a leader in systems integration: Pulling together an incredibly complex set of technologies and linking them across 14 separate weapons systems, right down to the individual soldier.

The goal was nothing less than revolutionizing the battlefield. The challenge, a Boeing official said in 2005, was tantamount to putting a man on the moon.

There was an awful lot of Buck Rogers in Future Combat Systems. Imagine an individual soldier, armed a with new generation of lightweight assault rifle. He is protected by a new generation of lightweight body armor. In 20 years, maybe his battle dress uniform is a soft-fabric suit that senses an approaching bullet and through the miracle of nanotechnology, instantly turns into an impenetrable shield.

A flipdown screen inside his helmet connects him with satellites, helicopters and surveillance drones, giving him a view of the entire battle space. Sensors throughout his uniform send information on his body functions back to medics and commanders.

Robot soldiers assault buildings, sending real-time information back to human soldiers, even unloading machine gun fire or grenades. Unmanned cannons and munitions offer fire support. An entire fleet of manned vehicles are deployed, each one with a different purpose — troop carrier, assault vehicle, gun-wagon, mini-tank even a 155-mm cannon.

Controlling all this is a system of ground and airborne sensors, mine detectors, chemical weapons detectors — everything a combat soldier could want except a cold beer and his girlfriend.

What could possibly go wrong? To begin with, the fleet of manned vehicles was designed with flat bottoms and lightweight armor, making them vulnerable to low-cost weapons like roadside bombs.

As to the more exotic weapons, a Government Accountability Office report suggested that the much of the technology was “immature,” meaning it didn’t work. Major production decisions were scheduled before basic designs were complete. The GAO reported in April, “It is not yet clear if or when the information network that is at the heart of the FCS concept can be developed, built and demonstrated.”

Adding to the problem: a lack of oversight. The FCS problem was conceived during the Bush administration, when Pentagon inspector generals were lopped from the payroll and contractors often signed off on their own work.

Much of the FCS contained good ideas whose time has not yet come. As its components are re-bid as part of the Army’s effort to modernize its brigade combat teams, proven technologies, sound cost estimates and accountability should be part of the deal. Even Buck Rogers is not rocket science.