Science & Technology Trends 2020-2040

Science & Technology Trends: 2020-2040 provides an assessment of emerging or disruptive Science & Technologies (S&T) and their potential impact on NATO military operations, defense capabilities, and political decision space. This assessment draws upon the collective insights of the NATO Science & Technology Organization (STO), its collaborative network of over 6000 active scientists, analysts, researchers, engineers, and associated research facilities. These insights have been combined with an extensive review of the open-source S&T futures literature and selected national research programs.

The report aims to assist current and future military and civilian decision-makers in understanding emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs). In particular, it focuses on

• Why EDTs are important to future Alliance activities;
• How they are expected to develop over time; and,
• What this will mean to the Alliance from an operational, organizational, or enterprise perspective?

Ultimately, this assessment is intended to provide focus to Alliance S&T efforts and will: (1) at the senior level provides an overview of the threats and opportunities presented by EDTs; (2) at a staff level, assist in guiding the design of future military concepts and capabilities; and, (3) overall, aid policymakers in preparing Alliance forces and the NATO enterprise for mission success in the future security environment.

Over the next 20 years, four overarching characteristics can be expected to define many key advanced military technologies:

• Intelligent: Exploit integrated AI, knowledge-focused analytic capabilities, and symbiotic AIhuman intelligence to provide disruptive applications across the technological spectrum;

• Interconnected: Exploit the network of virtual and physical domains, including networks of sensors, organizations, individuals, and autonomous agents, linked via new encryption methods and distributed ledger technologies;

• Distributed: Employ decentralized and ubiquitous large-scale sensing, storage, and computation to achieve new disruptive military effects; and, • Digital: Digitally blend human, physical, and information domains to support novel disruptive effects.

Technologies with these characteristics are bound to increase the Alliance’s operational and organizational effectiveness through the development of a knowledge and decision advantage; leveraging of emergent trusted data sources; increased effectiveness of mesh capabilities across all operational domains and instruments of power; and, adapting to a future security environment replete with cheap, distributed and globally available technologies.

Eight highly interrelated S&T areas were considered to be major strategic disruptors over the next 20-years. The first seven EDTs were approved by Defence Ministers in October 2019, while an eighth (Materials) was added as an area for future consideration and development by the STO. These S&T areas are either currently in nascent stages of development or are undergoing rapid revolutionary development. The EDTs are:

• Data
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Autonomy
• Space
• Hypersonics
• Quantum
• Biotechnology Materials

Technological development in Data, AI, Autonomy, Space, and Hypersonics are seen to be predominately disruptive in nature, as developments in these areas build upon long histories of supporting technological development. As such, significant or revolutionary disruption of military capabilities is either already ongoing or will have a significant impact over the next 5-10 years. New developments in Quantum, Biotechnology, and Materials are assessed as being emergent, requiring significantly more time (10 - 20 years) before their disruptive natures are fully felt on military capabilities.

Disruptive effects will most likely occur through combinations of EDTs and the complex interactions between them. The following synergies and inter-dependencies are projected to be highly influential for the development of future military capabilities:

• Data-AI-Autonomy: The synergistic combination of Autonomy, Big Data, and AI using intelligent, widely distributed, and cheap sensors alongside autonomous entities (physical or virtual) will leverage new technologies and methods to yield a potential military strategic and operational decision advantage.
• Data-AI-Biotechnology: AI, in concert with Big Data, will contribute to the design of new drugs, purposeful genetic modifications, direct manipulation of biochemical reactions, and living sensors.
• Data-AI-Materials: AI, in concert with Big Data, will contribute to the design of new materials with unique physical properties. In particular, this will support further developments in the use of 2-D materials and novel designs.
• Data-Quantum: Over a 15 - 20-year horizon, quantum technologies will increase C4ISR data collection, processing, and exploitation capabilities, through significantly increased sensor capabilities, secure communications, and computing.
• Space-Quantum: Space-based quantum sensors, facilitated by Quantum Key Distribution communication, will lead to an entirely different class of sensors suitable for deployment on satellites. Increasingly commercial, smaller, lower power, more sensitive, and more distributed space-based sensor networks enabled by quantum sensors will be an essential aspect of the future military ISR architecture in 20 years.
• Space-Hypersonics-Materials: Development of exotic materials, novel designs, miniaturization, energy storage, manufacturing methods, and propulsion will be necessary to fully exploit space and hypersonic environments by reducing costs, increasing reliability, improving performance, and facilitating the production of inexpensive task-tailored on-demand systems.

Alliance forces and a NATO enterprise enabled by EDTs will expand the Alliance’s ability to operate in rapidly evolving operational environments, such as space, cyber (including the information sphere), and urban areas. However, NATO will be challenged to ensure legal, policy, economic and organizational constraints are properly considered early on in the development of these technologies.

Read it here

by NATO Science & Technology Organization