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Army after Next Technology: Forging Possibilities into Reality

Technologies and services available on the open market will test the Army's ability to maintain atechnological edge over potential adversaries. State and nonstate players are likely to challenge us by fielding capabilities that are asymmetric counters to our own. Current AAN research strongly suggests that any serious military threat between now and 2025 will likely involve asymmetric forces designed specifically to make our advantages less meaningful. THE ACCELERATING PACE of change in today's world is due in large part to everincreasing advances in science and technology. Since World War II, technology has been the catalyst for revolutions in military capability. Even at this time, the Industrial Age is giving way to the information age with the explosion in information technologies. The US Army has long recognized that technology enables new warfighting concepts and offers opportunities to develop new capabilities. What is new is the pace of technological change and the fact that in some areas of vital importance to the military. the commercial sector is "driving the train." The Army must link the evolution of technology with its vision for thefuture. Technologies and services available on the open market will test the Army's ability to maintain a technological edge over potential adversaries. State and nonstate players are likely to challenge us by fielding capabilities that are asymmetric counters to our own. Current Army After Next (AAN) research strongly suggests that any serious military threat between now and 2025 will likely involve asymmetric forces designed specifically to make our advantages less meaningful. Adversaries may rely on the same commercial infrastructure from which we will generate various aspects of combat power, and they may develop countermeasures and draw us into unfavorable terrain. Sound Army science and technology (S&T) investments will become even more critical in addressing these potential concerns. The AAN Project is currently tasked to conduct broad studies of warfare to about the year 2025 to frame issues vital to the development of the Army after about 2010. The choice of a 30-year point of focus for the AAN Project enables military art and technology experts to decouple their thinking from concepts and capabilities associated with the programmed force of Army XXI to more novel ap proaches to achieving the AlAN vision. It also provides enough lead time to incorporate innovative technologies as well as unanticipated revolutionary discoveries that can support this vision. This is not to say that current and programmed Army S&T investments do not support AAN goals and objectives. On the contrary, these investments are producing militarily significant innovative technologies and systems that teach us what we can and cannot do along the pathway to AAN. These efforts enable us to refine our choices as a function of time and optimize our investment decisions for achieving critical AAN warfighter capabilities. We believe identifying critical technologies to enable AN capabilities and deciding on appropriate investments is achievable through teaming the Army's S&T community, combat developments community and the AAN Project. But technology is part of a bigger whole and must be viewed in the proper context. A truly effective land power force will emerge from the innovative nesting of operational concepts, organizational design, deeper understanding of human behavior in combat, a picture of the future geostrategic setting and where technology is likely to take us into the future. Challenges and Opportunities Even as technological opportunities can be expected to appear more and more frequently, funding for research, development and acquisition to transform them into military capabilities will remain limited for the foreseeable future. We must continue to carefully craft a balanced S&T investment strategy to address affordable near-term opportunities and to focus on critical Army requirements for the future. …