Identifying Potential Implications of Technologies on Military and Security Options

Identifying and assessing the potential implications of emerging, disruptive and surprise technologies on military planning and security operations, linking them with future military and security concepts is highly complex. Technology surprise occurs through rapidly emerging technologies and the use of commercial technologies in military and security operations and by adversaries. Predicting the use of traditional, novel or the combination of these technologies in both asymmetric warfare and public security has not yet been solved. The use of war game scenarios has been suggested, but the resources to carry this out are thought to be too extensive for just one or two nations to fulfill. The writing of future operational scenarios have been also suggested, since war-fighting / peacekeeping capabilities in the future might be predicted by setting a future geopolitical/environmental context, but this requires extensive knowledge in many interdisciplinary fields that might be beyond most forces individual capacity to mount. A full cooperative effort by allies is considered the best way ahead. The challenge is to assess the potential implications of these technologies on military and security operations, linking them with future military concepts. The military needs to be involved in terms of "effects" or "impacts" not just technologies.