New Technologies and the World Ahead: The Top 20 Plus 5
Abstract
About 10 years ago, the Naval Air Warfare Center in Southern California set out to determine what future wars might look like, what the flow of future military history might be, and what our world (along with the potential military threats we may someday face) could look like. We performed a variety of studies looking at the history of Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMAs), what causes them, and how they work. This allowed us to construct projections of future world military evolution, while building and studying possible future geopolitical scenarios. When we studied these geopolitical model sets, we discovered that these models were probably not going to be the major drivers of future military history. Rather, it seemed more likely that advancing technology would become the major driver of future human affairs, as well as of future military history. The emerging technologies that would reshape the world as a whole were advancing independently of geopolitical scenarios. In effect, we discovered that, to understand the nature of war, armaments, and military threats in the coming age, we must first look at the based technologies driving the new order and then ascertain what effect they will have on future military affairs. To do this, we started with a review of known, emerging technologies and projected out their growth and impact potential.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA576887
Entities
People
- James H. Irvine
- Sandra Schwarzbach
Organizations
- Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division